To pit the lives of people on foot or bicycle against the lives of people driving across our bridges – and they are often the same people — sets up a false choice. Transportation for America shares the concern of many members of Congress who believe we must be investing in the repair and maintenance of our roadways and bridges, but not at the expense of the safety of other users of the road.

We have advocated for the need for a stronger, more accountable road and bridge repair program. In fact, we are one of the many organizations that support Senator Cardin’s Federal-Aid Highway Preservation and Renewal Program Act (S 1193).

But taking the tiny sliver of money that supports safe walking and bicycling to address the large backlog in bridge needs wouldn’t even come close to meeting the need. Let’s examine the facts:

• * Nearly 70,000 of our nation’s bridges are structurally deficient. FHWA estimates to address the backlog in bridge repairs and replacements would cost more than $70 billion, not including bridges that will become deficient over the next decade.
• * Funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects amounts to just 1.5 percent of total federal transportation outlays. This tiny amount of funding is aimed at addressing improvements and safety for the 10 percent of all trips that are made by bicycling and walking, and to prevent the 47,000-plus pedestrian and bicyclist deaths that have occurred over the last decade. Two-thirds of these fatalities happened on federal-aid roadways.

So what if we decided to ignore the significant safety issues faced daily by pedestrians and cyclists, and spent that money instead on bridge repair as some have suggested? We could indeed fix all the currently deficient bridges in the state of Missouri, for example. We’d just need to be patient because it would take 82 years. The State of Washington could get to its backlog in 164 years. And Pennsylvania could finish up with its deficient bridge list at the start of the 24th century.

So let’s get serious. We need a transportation authorization bill in Congress that increases investment in infrastructure so we can make a real dent in fixing our crumbling 20th century bridges while building a 21st century transportation system that’s smarter, safer and provides access and opportunity for all Americans.

Here is a guest response from Scott Bricker, Executive Director of America Walks.

While it is true that bikes are at the center of this debate, this is issue is much larger. In looking at the total transportation picture, walking is a critical form of travel that needs to be elevated in the headlines and conversation. Walking occurs at 10 times the rate of bicycling and everyone walks; safe walking passage is critical for some aspect of virtually all trips and to the fundamental framework of our communities and economies. America Walks believes that the impacts of walking on society – economic, health, equity, environmental, etc. – needs to be highlighted in this discussion and that dedicated funding for both walking and bicycle transportation is critical to advance these societal outcomes.

To touch on one aspect, the economic impacts of walking, I want to highlight Main Street, USA. Large cities and small towns alike were built on the principle of conglomeration of merchants and activities in a central location, and often along one street. These Main Streets are universally accessible by foot so that people can travel from business to business easily. We find consistently that locations of highest real estate values are those where many uses – residential and commercial – are within close walking and transit distances. These locations have proven to be more recession-proof as well, with much lower foreclosure rates; one key reason being that people can more easily slash automobile transportation expenses as a belt-tightening measure.

Many small-town Main Streets have languished due to costly sprawling transportation investments that have enabled multinational mega big box store complexes to supplant many individual small homegrown American businesses. But today there is a strong desire to reclaim the Main Street storefronts and reenergize these critical micro enterprises. This debate needs to consider the U.S. government’s role in supporting the redevelopment of Main Street USA and the growth of American business to occupy it.

Bicyclists and highway users began their advocacy at the turn of the 20th Century in partnership for better roads as a public interest campaign. We could be allies again if we resolved tensions over divisive planning theories and funding. This week’s topic is a great opportunity to discuss the tension over funding.

There are two main arguments that hurt the bicyclists’ cause with the federal government. One is basically a federalist argument that bicycle paths are inherently local in nature and that building infrastructure for them should only be a local government function. The second argument is that funding bicycle paths from the Highway Trust Fund is a diversion of highway user fees, since the fund is made up of tax receipts from motor vehicle users.

I’ll leave the first concern to constitutional experts. As to the second argument, the bicycling community can solve this issue once and for all by embracing the creation of its own trust fund and its own user fee. Unlike some other transportation users seeking highway funds, bicyclists could easily get back much more in benefits than costs from a small investment. For 2010, the National Bicycle Dealers Association estimated 13.5 million adult bicycle sales per year. A relatively small user fee on these sales and on new tires could provide the dedicated funding that would keep bicycle infrastructure investments stable and growing, and eliminate the most persuasive objections from bicycling opponents.

The users who pay into trust funds – whether for highways, harbor maintenance, airports, inland waterways – have generally overcome internal concerns and opposition to the creation of their funds and the taxes associated with them. Yet once the trust funds have been established, their users become tremendous advocates and defenders of them.

As a recreational bicyclist who, by profession, advocates for pro-highway policies, robust highway funding, and against diversion; I strongly believe that the way forward for bicyclists is to take this idea seriously and at least study the benefits and costs a new BTF and lobby Congress to make it happen.

Once the funding issue is resolved, bicyclists and highway advocates should come together to figure out how best to establish pro-highway, pro-bicycle transportation planning policies that do not pit us against each other.

As a former State DOT Director, I found the transportation enhancement program extremely valuable in bringing community and environmental activists to the table to successfully negotiate approval for major highway and bridge projects that otherwise would have been stymied by endless lawsuits . Additionally, hiking, biking and other enhancements, that represent a small fraction of transportation program costs, can contribute significantly to quality of life.

Too often, the attacks on bike paths and walkways aren't about practical or financial matters, let alone a broad, forward-looking vision for our national transportation system. The attacks are about cultural politics.

There's a confused notion some people have that walking and biking are for the "liberal elite," while "real Americans" never set foot outside of their gas-guzzling SUVs. Politicians who score points by attacking everything associated with the "liberal elite" seem to take special joy in attacking biking and walking. The problem with biking and walking paths, they seem to suggest, isn't that they cost money, but that they're un-American. That's nonsense. For many folks, especially in smaller, rural, or suburban areas, biking and walking are their only way to get to the minimum-wage jobs they struggle to survive on. Not too long ago, I was talking to a friend of my teenage son named Mike Wilson. I told him about TEN and our fight to fully fund public transit. Then I said a foolish thing: "I bet that's not an issue for you." Mike then told me about his commute to the restaurant where he worked as a dishwasher. He rode the bus to the restaurant for his evening shifts, but when he got off work at around midnight, the bus was no longer running, so he made the dangerous six-mile trip home on foot every night -- and paid the price the next day at school. There are hundreds of thousands of Mikes across the country, be they high school students, working people without cars, people with disabilities, seniors, or college students who rely on transportation modes other than cars. For them, complete streets aren't a cultural issue, and they aren't a preference: they're the only way to live a full and decent life. The next time a politician wants to score points by playing politics with biking and walking, they should stop first to listen to some of the folks who use their feet every day to access education, health care, and opportunity. Then the real question will be whether those politicians still know how to listen.

In the last couple of years I worked with Paul Weyrich at the Free Congress Foundation, I cycled to work. I now regularly use the bike trails around Cleveland, Ohio, which are many. So why don’t other conservatives ride bikes, both for recreation and transportation?

Most conservatives are middle class and middle age. We have responsibilities. It is simply too dangerous for most of us to take a bike out on the road. It we get hit by a car, it gets scratched paint and we get scratched, as in dead. Remember, the automobile’s motto is “Drive or die.” It forces everything else off the road, if necessary by killing it.

More bike paths are one answer to this, but it is a chicken-and-egg problem. There won’t be a significant constituency for funding bike paths until more conservatives ride bikes. But they won’t do that until they have safe places to ride.

In one of my Car Stop columns on our Center’s website: ( www.theamericanconservative.com/cpt/2011/01/03/mainstreaming-bicycles/ ), I suggested a way to begin making it safer to ride bikes on roads, which is what you have to do to go anywhere, as opposed to just getting exercise. Let every city draw up a “Fuel Emergency Plan” for times when there is no gasoline (that will happen again). When a fuel emergency is declared, a grid of streets sufficient to make all important places accessible is made bicycle-only, except for residents of that street. Then, once they have the plan, cities could exercise it by putting it into effect on some holidays and Sundays. Middle class people could try riding a bike on the street in a safe situation.

Enough would like it to start building the grass-roots constituency for cycling without which conservative office-holders will remain anti-bicycle. So long as they think, “I don’t ride a bike, I don’t anyone who rides a bike,” they will continue to try to gut funding for bike paths.

My colleague, Glen Bottoms, has also taken a skeptical look at the movement to eliminate federal funding for “transportation enhancements” from an institutional perspective. His comments can be found on our website: www.theamericanconservative.com/cpt/2011/04/16/hitchhikers-indeed/ )

A final word of advice to liberal advocates of cycling: remember that conservatives do not share your demographics. You tend to be young, single and of more modest means. Many conservatives are middle age, married with kids and have enough in the bank they would rather not leave it until they have to. Like most young people (before their first accident), you think you’re immortal. We have no such illusion. If you want to sell conservatives on cycling, you have to speak to our demographic, not just your own. Any advertising agency will tell you that is true of whatever someone wants to sell. Learn to speak to our (large) market segment, or remain on the margin.