BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

All details are in this link:

http://bike-pgh.org/blog/2011/07/07/critically-important-%E2%80%93-funding-for-biking-and-walking-under-attack-take-immediate-action/

done! only took me a few minutes to write to all three politicians.

i hereby command everyone reading this to do it too, and may endless cupcakes rain down on you for having done so!

Yep, did it.

The three emails took very little time. Please speak up!

Ugh, stupid representative democracy. How many bombs worth of bike lanes have we dropped on Libya in the past month? Not the route I took in my email, because of course the only thing worth spending money on is crap that creates jobs and lowers spending, so that's the route I took

@Pierce

done.

also

how bike lanes boost economy: http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/big-city/24250/how-bike-lanes-can-boost-economy

and i heard on the radio today that we are like the 13th most obese state? i might be wrong, i was half asleep.

and i heard on the radio today that we are like the 13th most obese state? i might be wrong, i was half asleep.

I thought I heard the same thing, but I was chewing too loudly to be sure.

For what it's worth, Pennsylvania is the 19th most obese state. 19, 13 ... neither one is great news.

In my emails I tried to make the point that bike/ped spending is a very small portion of the overall transportation budget, and it yields tremendous returns in health, clean air, and livability. Also that biking and walking ARE transportation, not just some frivolous add-ons.

Yeah, I said that it could help lower our entitlement costs by cutting down health care expenses

@ Caitlin, thanks for sharing that link!

@ Rachel, I think the weather misunderstood your reward system. I sent them in and it started raining water, not cupcakes!

@caitlin i heard on the radio today that we are like the 13th most obese state?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beaDhikrrjY

Note verse 3:

"Back in Pennsylvania; we eat scrapple on toast"

Bike improvements may help with obesity, but it's countered by the cupcakes.

I sent the messages, despite Rachel's threat of ceaseless sky-cupcake bombardment.

Report;

http://www.healthyamericans.org/reports/obesity2011/release.php?stateid=PA

The Delta across the board from 1995 to now is stunning.

DC made a notable move to the better, probably because teh Repubs left.

@ pierce How many bombs worth of bike lanes have we dropped on Libya in the past month? Not the route I took in my email,

I took thate track you avoided.

In part:

"In my opinion, supporting bicycle and walking infrastructure is one of the best and cheapest things the country can do to increase security by decreasing dependence on oil supplied by (among others) the bin Laden family."

Might as well try to scare the kids with the old bogeyman.

got a response already:

Dear Caitlin,

Thank you for contacting me about transportation funding. I appreciate hearing from you.

If done in a sensible manner, transportation infrastructure investments can be important for economic growth and ensure that we travel safely and efficiently. A number of Americans have expressed concern about the state of our transportation infrastructure, and I therefore understand your support for increased federal funding for this issue.

That said, our nation is facing a $1.5 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year, and the President's latest budget proposal continues this unsustainable path for years to come. All areas of government spending must be carefully examined so that we can put our nation on a path toward fiscal solvency. Inevitably, tough choices will have to be made, and making such choices is something that I have promised to the people of Pennsylvania.

You may also be interested to know that the Senate passed and President Obama signed into law the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2011 (Public Law 112-5) on March 4, 2011. Among its provisions, this new law extends the authority of the Highway Trust Fund for various transportation programs pending the enactment of a longer-term transportation reauthorization. Please be assured that I will keep your views about transportation funding in mind as work continues on the Fiscal Year 2012 budget process and a transportation reauthorization bill.

Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

sorry, that was from Pat Toomey

I got the same response from Pat Toomey. He could have just replied with "I don't want to fix the way we fund transportation so I am going to accept chairman Mica's proposal and just fund some highways."

Politicians have mastered the art of saying "fuck you" without the profanity. I like that it is always stuck within a "thank you sandwich".

my new band is now called 'thankyou sandwich"

I think a thankyou sandwich is two slices of white bread with a layer of santorum inbetween.

So..., that's three slices of white bread?

Depends on which definition of santorum you use.

Some excellent articles on streetsblog today... the one at the bottom that lists the costs of a few choice highway projects is pretty hard to fathom. And the absolute stupidity of not raising the gas tax is mindboggling. How anyone can argue that a fixed dollar amount that hasn't changed since 1993 and thus represents a 35% tax cut makes any sense is beyond me.

http://streetsblog.net/2011/07/08/micas-transpo-bill-would-spell-disaster-for-transit/

uggh, and my father-in-law has the audacity to complain about current gas taxes.

Hopefully no one was thinking of moving down under to escape the cult of driving...

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/drivers-smash-the-illusion-that-were-a-rational-society/2221294.aspx?storypage=0

When people complain about the PA Turnpike needing work or expansion but then complain about the tolls rising in price I just scratch my head. You can't have nice things for free.

Then you have people who think that roads are too expensive because the government or PENNDOT is wasting the money—so to them the transportation funding issue can be fixed by "fixing" PENNDOT. Politicians won't tell them the truth because they'll lose their jobs.

Tolling should be a conservative idea!

I'm all for tolling and I agree that it should be a conservative idea(l). At the same time, the PA turnpike pricing is crazy high compared to Ohio and Indiana which angers me to the point of avoiding the PA turnpike... thus they lose revenue.

People are just stupid hypocrites when it comes to gas taxes, but I blame over fifty years of political pandering.

Wow, this is a laughable story, and even sounds illegal - isn't it a public road?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11193/1159895-100.stm

I guess it is proof that even suburbanites hate cars - you know, *other* cars. I'm sure no one who lives in there has ever cut through someone else's neighborhood at 45mph.

It's funny, when I lived in the suburbs I lived on a dead end street and i still saw cars speeding and running the stop signs in front of my house on a regular basis.

salty - I was totally shocked when I got to Australia a few years ago. It's the first place where it struck me as being almost like American culture but with different accents. Their car (truck/SUV) commercials are exactly the same (well, fewer American Flags). There are differences (a legitimate Green party, the benefits of a parliamentary system, etc) but the similarities astonished me more.

rsprake - don't confuse conservatism and Conservatism. conservatism (little c) more than likely includes the idea that paying the true price for amenities results in respect and, predictably enough, conservation of those amenities. Conservatism (big C) seems more to encourage privatising profits but moving losses to the public sector (including the credit/blame game). It's the main reason I'm as uncomfortable accurately labeling myself a conservative as I am being around Conservatives.

(Apologies to conservatives or Conservatives if you feel I've pigeon-holed you incorrectly, I know pigeon holes are too small for people and ideas are bigger than a chat board allows.)

salty - that story is hilarious. In Monroeville they solved that issue on one road by putting in a huge number of speed humps. I see speed humps (unavoidable physical barriers to speeding) as being more effective than adding the word "only" to signs that people already ignore. But I'm a fan of speed humps in general.

'By adding the word "only" to the sign, it should be clear that the streets are only for residents, she said.'

An argument impervious to logic! If the speed limit signs (backed by an actual law) and slow kids signs (hah!) didn't work, adding yet another sign with no teeth behind it is sure to work!

I wonder how those people drive in city neighborhoods like Shadyside or Point Breeze.

ejwme, perhaps I should have said "Republican" idea since their rhetoric is always that they are "conservatives" but their actions are not.

In my community, we hear complaints from one street

or another every month about cars speeding, cars going the wrong way down a one-way, cars demonstrating a reckless disregard, etc.

Its a thorny issue for municipalities - especially small ones like ours (about 3000 residents). Putting up signs is low-fruit. It is how the municipality can look like they are doing something, whether it is effective or not.

Placing traffic calming measures gets to be a big deal, as Gas-Tax revenues come in to play. If you want to receive gas tax funds, you have to play by PennDot's rules. You have to commission traffic studies, you have to apply the specified solution, provided it meets PennDot requirements, etc.

IMHO, there is no practical solution for smaller municipalities to control speed on their streets/roads. Increased or targeted enforcement only works for so long - and you cant have a cruiser at every corner. You can't put speed bumps on every street.

So you have Council members or commissioners or whatever facing a roomful of angry residents. If the residents are going to be satisfied with useless road signs, of course they're going to give them useless road signs.

(BTW, I honestly have no good solution to speeding through small municipalities. It is a real problem. There are a lot of really smart people here. If anyone had real ideas, please tell me, because we really do hear the stories every month, and I would love to be able to suggest a meaningful solution.)

for what it's worth, developing a reputation for strict enforcement discourages using side streets as speedways/shortcuts, in my experience. this is merely anecdotal, but where i grew up, some neighborhoods had reputations for pulling people over, and from what i understood, people just decided it was easier to go elsewhere.

obviously this isn't a tenable solution for everyone, especially with budgets as tight as they are these days. and especially especially when you can't record someone's speed with radar if you're not a state police officer. but i don't think you have to catch everyone, or defend every ticket in order to discourage people (especially non-residents) from using your side streets as highway alternatives.

If it were up to me, I'd say, "we're going to hire some cops dedicated to traffic enforcement at a cost of $Y/mo". Then if you write X tickets that month, each ticket costs $X/Y dollars. It pays for itself, there's no "quota", and the less people that break the law the more expensive it gets for the ones who persist. But, I understand that will never happen.

Man, I'd love to hear the arguments in a case where a non-local is charged with using a "locals-only" road. It's totally subjective and probably susceptible to attack either on vagueness or equal protection grounds.

I honestly have no good solution to speeding through small municipalities.

Is it that different for larger municipalities? Also, I thought gas tax funds went exclusively to highway construction, not local roads. (That's our counter to the specious "bicyclists need to register and pay taxes if they want to use the roads" argument, right?)

I think "speeding" and "speeding through" are both problems that are not unique to smaller municipalities. However, our capacities for dealing with those problems are diminished by our stature.

Also, by "speeding through" I was particularly referring to the situation in Ross. It is also a situation in our community, as one of our primary streets provides a pass-through to a neighboring community. I agree, however, that the notion of "residents only" not only fails the sniff test, but is impractical and indefensible.

However, our municipality also is home to a residential street that Google Maps tells truck drivers leaving the nearby shopping plaza to take to return to Route 28 South. The weight of the trucks has crushed the 100 year old bed beneath the brick street, vehicles are at risk by semi-tractors attempting to navigate a narrow residential street - all because the Google directs them there, instead of a few more lights down Freeport Road. So, "speeding through," or maybe we call it "passing through" causes many problems.

Hiring police to only enforce speeding or to cite over-weight trucks - even in a 1 square mile municipality like ours is impractical (believe it or not). And traffic calming measures are very costly due to PennDot regulations.

But even without PennDot, speed bumps and humps aren't free. And you can't put them on every street.

well, it took a lot longer but i got a much better response from Casey today:

---

Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding active transportation. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.

Our Nation’s transportation programs are currently authorized under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), which was enacted in 2005. SAFETEA-LU expired in 2009 and has been extended by a series of short-term measures. The current extension will expire on September 30, 2011. Long-term reauthorization has become increasingly difficult during the last ten years, primarily due to the controversy over how to fund our Nation’s transportation programs. Nevertheless, I believe that consideration of a comprehensive multi-year year bill to reauthorize our Nation's transportation programs is long overdue.

On July 19, 2011, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released an outline that would reauthorize our Nation’s transportation programs for two years. This legislation, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), has bi-partisan support and codifies the Senate’s opposition to the 34 percent funding cut in the House proposal. I have expressed my support for robust funding for our Nation’s surface transportation programs and will continue to work for a solution in the Senate. It is my hope that the Senate will consider a reauthorization bill this fall.

I believe we need to invest in making our Nation’s infrastructure more sustainable and promote smart growth. In order to do this, we must support efforts to integrate active transportation with pre-existing structures. In the past, I have worked to support pedestrian and bike improvements and will continue to advocate for support for these initiatives.

As always, I appreciate your views, thoughts and concerns as they assist me in understanding what is important to the people of Pennsylvania. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.

If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to visit my web site, http://casey.senate.gov. I invite you to use this online office as a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.

Sincerely,

Bob Casey

United States Senator

P.S. If you would like to respond to this message, please use the contact form on my website: http://casey.senate.gov/contact/

Casey left out the urgency to enact new legislation before September 30th, as it is also the day the federal gas tax expires at the current rate. Without legislation, the gas tax drops down from ~18¢ to ~4¢.

As we saw with the aviation tax reauthorization, losses add up fast.

@ sloaps September 30th, ... the day the federal gas tax expires at the current rate

Bad news.

In today's politcal climate it strikes me as unlikely that this tax will be renewed.

The tax is, in my opinion, far too low as it is.

I wonder if the oil companies will raise prices to fill in the gap like the airlines did.