Talking Headways Podcast: The Public Works Director for Democrats

This week on Talking Headways we’re joined by U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee.

We chat about U.S. DOT’s recent guidance for stripping sustainable projects of funding and why active transportation advocates should focus on safety.

Scroll down below the audio player for an edited excerpt of our conversation, or click here for an unedited, AI-generated transcript of the entire conversation.

Jeff Wood: So what’s the way to combat this? What is the way to push back? What would you say to the folks who are waiting for their grants to come in, who are frustrated by this and then they see what’s happening in other parts of the country and other subject matter where Congressional intent is being ignored and there’s a lot of fear out there about what’s going to actually happen with their money.

Rick Larsen: When we just think about competitive grants and bike and ped infrastructure, I think the focus should be on, sadly, the national epidemic of highway and roadway deaths. Over 40,000 people died in 2023 from roadway and highway deaths. Some of that is car-on-car, truck-on-car and so on.

But about 20 percent of those deaths are related to bike and pedestrian accidents as well. And so to address this issue of this national epidemic of highway deaths and preventable deaths, it would seem wise to invest in sidewalks to give people a safer place to walk, to invest in a separation to get bikers a safer place to bike — and cars the assurance that they don’t have to worry about sharing that road with the biker, because there is an investment to separate the two. It’s not about equity and it’s not about the environment and it’s not about green infrastructure. It’s about saving lives and preventing deaths.

That’s the first thing I would point out and I would point out to the administration — that taking this approach is actually going to result in infrastructure being built. That is not actually safe for people to use. That I hope is an argument that would work. If it doesn’t, I don’t know what’s going to work with these folks, but preventing deaths and saving lives by investing in sidewalks, by investing in bike separation, it seems to me a logical step to take.