Pedestrian Infrastructure

People tend to identify most strongly with things that set them apart. If everyone’s doing something, it hardly seems worth calling attention to the fact that you do it too.

Via the League of American Bicyclists, new information is out about how much the feds are spending on bike-ped  projects. While federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects is down a bit from last year's all-time high, it still comes in at more than a billion dollars. A third of the money is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which begs the question of what will happen to bike-ped funding once the stimulus funds dry up. We got some somber foreshadowing last week of what could happen to bike-ped funding if Republicans cut the transportation bill to the "core program."

We reported recently that the federal government was demanding $2.2 billion back from state DOTs in rescissions -- money that was already allocated to states that they were then asked to give back. Bike and pedestrian advocates were worried that states would disproportionately target active transportation projects for cuts, instead of carving into car-centric programs. They were right.

Several dozen cyclists rode to U.S. DOT headquarters today to present Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with a letter signed by hundreds of local bike-ped groups, hailing the former GOP congressman's support for their cause during his first 16 months on the job.

The White House's inter-agency task force on childhood obesity, developed under the stewardship of First Lady Michelle Obama, today released a 124-page report recommending dozens of policy shifts in health care, community development, and transportation that it estimates can bring down obesity rates among kids by 5 percent over the next 20 years.

The connection between transportation and public health has slowly edged into the mainstream since Streetsblog Capitol Hill began covering it last year, first through a billion-dollar grant program added to Congress' sprawling health care bill and now in a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) brief that connects existing U.S. infrastructure with chronic disease, obesity, and premature deaths.

After 14 months of drama, deal-making, and declarations of its demise, the health care legislation envisioned by President Obama and congressional Democrats finally cleared its biggest hurdle last night, with the House approving the Senate-passed measure on a 219-212 vote.

First Lady Michelle Obama took to the mikes this afternoon to kick off a national campaign to combat childhood obesity, emphasizing new initiatives to promote biking and walking alongside a strong focus on healthier food options in schools.

In New York City, Mayor Mike Bloomberg is expected to announce his verdict on Times Square's new pedestrian spaces very soon. Will the changes be permanent? This morning Bloomberg told radio host John Gambling that we'll find out sometime next week. In the meantime, the media has focused on rumors that Midtown traffic speeds may not have increased across the board, without paying much attention to the tremendous difference this project has made for hundreds of thousands of pedestrians every day.