Transportation For America » Details on the anti-bike and ped amendments in the Senate

Details on the anti-bike and ped amendments in the Senate

September 16, 2009
By Stephen Lee Davis

We wrote yesterday about dangerous amendments from Senators McCain and Coburn, asking you to take action to help preserve funding for desperately-needed bike and pedestrian facilities. We’re happy to report that Senator Coburn’s amendments were defeated today, preserving critical funding for bicycle and pedestrian facilities across the country. We thank you for taking the time to weigh in with your Senator. (The Coburn amendment failed to pass, garnering only 39 votes.)

The anti-bike and anti-pedestrian amendments Sen. Coburn offered would have allowed states to ignore a requirement (since 1991) in transportation law requiring states to spend 10% of their surface transportation budgets on what’s known as Transportation Enhancements (TE). Maybe that sounds like an unneccessary transport buzzword, so to simplify it somewhat, TE essentially covers the things that don’t fall under the much broader categories of highways or transit. TE includes things like bike trails, new sidewalks, complete streets, streetscape improvements, and converting abandoned rail corridors to rail-trails, among many others.

With that in mind, it was interesting to see how Senator Coburn characterized the amendment in the summary on Thomas:

To remove an unnecessary and burdensome mandate on the States, by allowing them to opt out of a provision that requires States to spend 10 percent of their surface transportation budgets on enhancement projects such as road-kill reduction and highway beautification.

So if you thought that TE funded things like the super popular Capital Crescent Trail in DC (used by commuters every day) or the Silver Comet Trail in Atlanta, Ga., you might be confused to read the summary and find out that it’s about “road-kill reduction.”

From our partners at Bikeleague.org, here’s a breakdown of the vote.

Democrats voting for Sen. Coburn amendment:
Klobuchar (MN)
Bayh (IN)
McCaskill (MO)
Feingold (WS)
Webb (VA)

Republicans voting against Sen. Coburn amendment:
Bond (MO)
Cochran (MS)
Voinovich (OH)
Collins (ME)
Murkowski (AK)
Snowe (ME)
Shelby (AL)