The fundamentally unserious nature of this administration, including Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, is illustrated by a new policy announced this week. Bicycles are are to treated equally with cars and freight trains in funding projects by the administration.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a “major policy revision” that aims to give bicycling and walking the same policy and economic consideration as driving.
“Today I want to announce a sea change,” he wrote on his blog last week. “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized.”
Now, motorized transportation includes more than cars. Are bicycles to be treated equally with airplanes, for example ? Chicago needs a second airport southwest of the city but perhaps we will spend that money on bike lanes ?
Transportation agencies are urged to take action on a number of fronts, including the creation of pathways for bike riders and pedestrians on bridges, and providing children with safe biking and walking routes to schools.
They are also encouraged to find ways to make such improvements in concert with road maintenance projects and to protect sidewalks and bike lanes in the same manner as roads (by clearing them of snow, for example).
Mr. LaHood also indicated the department is discouraging “transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians.”
Hmmm. So, if a new airport would make bike riders have to go around, it wouldn’t be funded ? Maybe an underground bike lane beneath the runways ? What do we do about ports? A suspension bridge for bikes ?
More looney leftist ideas. Now we know why Obama wanted pseudo-Republican LaHood in his cabinet and how wise Senator Gregg was to decline.
Tags: politics
While I respect everyone’s opinion, it helps if one has some familiarity of the topic in which they speak. I work in the transportation sector and like many transportation professionals, Mr. LaHood is not far off the mark. It is about moving “people” not “cars” that is the actual endgame. I don’t need to state the obvious but the “cars” you speak of contain “people”. I find your rants a little disingenuous. For example, our current transportation system plans dissuade planners from impeding automobile traffic whenever possible. Using your example, if an airport needs to be built in the middle of a current road network, than that is taken into consideration and the roads & traffic are routed appropriately. It’s not not built because of the current roadway. You also had disparaging remarks regarding plowing sidewalks and bike lanes/paths. I’m not sure where you live but in many urbanized areas, take Chicago for example; they need to have their sidewalks cleared ASAP because a large percentage of the system users travel by foot or a combination of transit and foot, that doesn’t sound that leftist to me, it just makes sense, but then again maybe that’s the problem. Furthermore, in Minneapolis/St Paul, many of the multi-use paths are plowed along with the roadways because 6-7% of the system users are cyclists that utilize these paths to get to work. 6-7% is quite a few people in a city that large. Again, you are entitled to your opinion but it really helps to know something about your topic before you begin writing.
Well, you started out well. My service on a Transportation commission certainly doesn’t equal yours, whatever it was. I live in California where looney left governor Jerry Brown stopped freeway construction under the theme of “Small is beautiful.” The state has continued largely in his spirit mandating such items as small volume toilets that have to be flushed twice. His halt in the freeway planning process has left us with impenetrable congestion and heavy urban development on former planned routes for additional transportation links.
In Chicago, where I grew up, I am well aware of the need for plowing sidewalks. When I was young, in the late 1940s, everyone on our block paid a man with a jeep and a plow the width of the sidewalk to plow after every snowfall. Private enterprise at work.
I have no objections to bike lanes and favor them. As a transportation commissioner, I joined the local bike path advocacy group and helped them get some projects funded. I am in favor of mass transit, which has been a boon to Chicago for over a century, but here it has become the focus of local empire builders. For example, Los Angeles’ light rail system bypasses the LAX airport due to the influence of the taxi lobby. My concern was grounded in my suspicion of most Illinois Republicans who are as corrupt as the Democrats. Transportation is, or should be, concerned with, as you put it, moving people. Putting bicycles first sounds like global warming “green” programs that ignore efficiency for political correctness or AGW delusions.
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