U.S. Transportation Secretary Blames Spending on Bike Paths for Part of Infrastructure Problem
United States Transportation Secretary appeared on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer last week to discuss the deteriorating transportation infrastructure in the United States that is leading to problems like the bridge collapse in Minnesota. As part of her interview, Ms. Peters blamed, in part, spending money on the wrong projects such as routes to facilitate bicycles. Secretary Peters says:
”I think we have to examine where we’re spending money today. And if we think that we’re spending money today in the highest and best use, then perhaps we would need to make that discussion, but I don’t believe we are. There are…bike paths [being built with that money], trails, repairing lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure.”
It is obvious that our executive branch sees “our” transportation infrastructure as automobiles only. This is especially surprising since President Bush is an avid cyclist.
Many other lawmakers in Washington and in local municipalities disagree with the outlook of Secretary Peters. Jim Oberstar, is a congressman from Minnesota that travels almost everywhere by bicycle and has fought for many of the cycling related infrastructure expenditures. Another big advocate is Mayor Jerry Abramson of Louisville, Kentucky. While Mayor Abramson wouldn’t comment on Secretary Peters’ comments directly, he did say the following in an email:
“In Louisville, Kentucky, we believe biking is very important– and that’s why we are adding new bike lanes across our city. The best cities…are those that have multiple forms of transportation–from highways, roads and bridges to mass transit to bike lanes to good pedestrian access. There are many ways, and many methods, people choose to travel.”
Of Ms. Peters’ complaints about our current transportation system, top on her list is that there are congestion problems. Her evaluation is that these congestions can be reduced by building more or bigger roadways instead of providing a more varied transportation system that would create multiple methods of traveling to and from work. Places like Louisville KY, Madison WI, and Portland OR are proving that a multiple method transportation system is workable and is very valuable. It only makes sense that creating alternatives to traveling by car would take motorists off the road and in turn reduce traffic.
I don’t want people to get the wrong idea….I am smart enough to know that the majority of people in the United States travel by car. I drive to work every day myself. I get mad all the time that our roads are total junk. In fact, one of our local highways was just repaved, and for what I can only gather to be cost cutting efforts, no new stripes were painted to delineate the different lanes. Trust me when I say that I realize that our highways are in bad shape. It just seems foolish to me to spend all of our money on one thing and ignore everything else. Eliminating spending on everything except roads, just because one bridge collapsed, seems to be a bit extreme. It is just as extreme as creating an entire bureaucracy to search bags at the airport just because the most recent terrorist attack happened by plane. There is a pattern of bad thought process in our government that needs to be examined.
If you believe that our government should focus on real transportation solutions, please let them know. As everyone found out during the recent immigration debate, public opinion counts. Let your voice be heard.
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