Transportation For America » Take Action: Senators want to slash transit funding

Take Action: Senators want to slash transit funding

September 15, 2009
By Stephen Lee Davis

As you may have read on Streetsblog yesterday, Senator John McCain has just proposed 20 amendments to a transportation funding bill that have one common theme: Breaking a federal promise to fund long-planned public transportation projects.

As one news report said, “McCain’s targets range from a light rail project in Sacramento, California to a bus-rapid-transit system in Washington state to a rail extension linking Washington, D.C. to Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.” Other projects, both urban and rural, would be cut in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, North Carolina, and Utah.

Aside from one small, token bridge project, McCain’s hit list would leave billions in highway earmarks alone.

Senators are expected to vote TODAY on these amendments: Please write your senators now and tell them to vote NO on this assault on clean, oil-saving transportation projects – and to encourage their colleagues to do the same.

And that’s not the only threat.

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has proposed seven additional amendments to block the Department of Transportation from spending any money on clean transportation. Sen. Coburn would completely bar communities from using their federal funding to support bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

We have to stop this today: Tell your senators to vote against the McCain and Coburn amendments and stop this assault on communities that are building a transportation network for this century, rather than the last one.

Take action now, and share and post this action to your Facebook profile or your Twitter stream with the share button below.

Filed under: Campaign Blog
Tags: action, coburn, featured, mccain

OO

Where is the link to a full description of these amendments so that I can make up my own mind about them?
http://t4america.org/author/sdavis/ Stephen Lee Davis

From the League of American Bicyclists, here are two of them that cover transportation enhancements (TE), which pays for bike paths, sidewalks, and other transportation improvements that don’t fall under transit or roadway categories:

“Senator Coburn (R-OK) is offering two amendments to the FY10 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill that will strike funding for transportation enhancements. The two amendments are S. Amendment 2370 and S. Amendment 2371.

S. Amendment 2370 prohibits funding for transportation enhancements if the Highway Trust Fund does not contain amounts sufficient to cover unfunded highway authorizations.

S. Amendment 2371 allows states to opt out of the 10% set aside rule that require states to spend at least 10% of their surface transportation funding on transportation enhancements.”
Tom

On Sen. McCain’s website he’s posted his floor statement:

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=bf2b2a40-b676-68b1-958a-e5a022dc3d68

It’s the usual diatribe against earmarks, and granted, the 2002 THUD bill had some real doozies.
But the ONLY thing he rails on in the new bill that seems fairly outrageous is a beach park promenade earmark in Mississippi. He makes one dismissive aside to funding in the new bill for “those who happen to ride bikes in Spokane,” like they’re space aliens, then really says nothing else specific about the items in the new bill that should be eliminated.

All amendments, by Sen. McCain at least, are there to reroute funding for upgrading the air traffic control system. More carbon anyone??