Liz from Continental Bikes asked the question “What legislation did you discuss with the representatives?”

In looking over the previous entries, it seems we never really answered that question. So here’s the list.

Complete Streets

Actually this is one topic we did cover fairly well.

Active Transportation 2010

In the current federal transportation bill, four U.S. cities received $25 million each to get more people chosing biking and walking over driving.?

The hope is to expand that pilot program to 50 cities in the next transportation bill due later this year. Three Michigan cities have applied for this program: Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Detroit. We encouraged our legislators to include these Michigan cities in the future transportation bill.

Detroit’s Active Transportation proposal was briefly discussed earlier.

Transportation Enhancements

The current transportation bill (and recent stimulus package) funds Transportation Enhancements which is largely responsible for funding biking facilities and trails. We want to see this program continued and increased the next transportation budget.

This was an easy program to talk about since there many great examples of how this funding has been used within each congressional district.

Recreational Trail Program

This program captures a portion of the fuel tax used by off-road vehicles (e.g. snowmobiles) and directs to state trails, including non-motorized trails. We advocated for increased funding for this program.

Multi-Modal Commuter Credit

This legislation fixes the hastily passed bike commuter bill, which is another topic we previously discussed briefly.

Clean TEA

This legislation would take some of the funds generated through a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas program to pay for alternative transportation infrastructure, including biking and walking. Whether or not the greenhouse gas legislation makes it to the President’s desk remains to be seen, but if it does, we want to make sure it helps promote more non-polluting transportation choices.

There’s additional information on Clean TEA?at StreetsBlog.

Tags: Active Transportation 2010, Clean-TEA, commuting, complete streets, National Bike Summit, Recreational Trails Program, Transportation Enhancements

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.