Earl Blumenauer

This week's National Bike Summit culminated in an ambitious new campaign to recruit a million bike advocates and the unveiling of a new Google Maps bike feature. But in a Wednesday session dedicated to the outlook for federal bike investments, cycling advocates hesitated to declare that they could secure new commitments from Washington.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), a longtime supporter of quick action on a new federal transportation bill, helped give Democrats a major victory this week when he voted for the Senate's jobs measure after securing a promise for transportation votes in the upper chamber this year.

Addressing a packed house in Washington last night, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, posed a Zen-like 'universalist cyclist question'.

On the issue of clean transportation, from transit to bike paths to clean water, few members of Congress are as knowledgeable or active as Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). Chief of the Congressional Bicycle Caucus and founder of the new Livable Communities Task Force, the Portland lawmaker is on the front lines of Washington's biggest infrastructure debates. Streetsblog Capitol Hill spoke with him yesterday about the prospects for transportation in the coming jobs bill, which he has said could be paid for in part with Wall Street bailout money. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

The war in Afghanistan and the health care bill are consuming much of Washington's oxygen today, but looming in the background is a high-stakes clash over what to do with an estimated $210 billion in unspent and returned cash from the government's rescue of Wall Street.

With much excitement, today we are launching the Livable Communities Task Force -- an official initiative of the House Democratic Caucus that will work to improve community livability and Americans’ quality of life.

The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define and clarify emerging urban transportation policies that embrace entire networks, rather than interdependent transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal transportation splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).

Having entertained legislators' own ideas about how best to fund future transportation spending, the House Ways and Means committee turned to representatives from the administration and key interest groups today to hear their thoughts on the matter.