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Entries tagged: Rails To Trails Conservancy

A new report from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy dispels the commonly held notion that only residents of big cities bike and walk. According to “Active Transportation Beyond the Urban Centers” folks in rural areas travel by bike and on foot as much — and in some cases, even more — than people in major population centers.

“It’s a widespread assumption in popular media and politics that people in small towns and rural areas do not walk or bike for transportation purposes,” says Tracy Hadden Loh, co-author of the report and research manager at RTC. “This report demonstrates that, in fact, rates for walking and bicycling in rural areas are close to, and sometimes higher than, the national average.”

Some key findings in the report include:

• In terms of total trips, rural Americans bike at a rate of between 74 percent and 104 percent of the overall national rate, depending on the type of community in which they live.

• The share of work trips made by bicycle in small towns is nearly double that of urban centers. Within small towns of 2,500 to 10,000 residents, people walk for work purposes at a rate similar to the urban core communities.

• Federal investment in biking and walking benefits rural areas as much or more than urban centers. Rural areas receive almost twice as much funding per capita as urban areas from the federal Transportation Enhancements program

• Among a list of travel priorities, rural Americans selected sidewalks more often than any other transportation need and nine out of 10 cited the importance of pedestrian friendly communities.

The report couldn’t come at a more pivotal moment. Congress is moving on the next federal transportation bill and the current House bill guts all funding for biking and walking projects and programs. This report proves that short-changing biking and walking by eliminating programs like Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School affects all communities across the U.S.

“Small communities need safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities just as much as big cities,” says Kevin Mills, report co-author and RTC’s VP of Policy and Trail Development. “To meet this need, Transportation Enhancements has provided twice the funding per capita in rural America than in big cities. This includes rehabilitating walkable main streets in small town that have been bypassed by interstates.”

According to RTC: “In coming years, active transportation can play an even bigger role in making small town America more attractive for young families and business investment — improving economic vitality, traffic safety and overall health in smaller communities in every region of the country.”

Read the full report and check out the interactive map here.

Last week, at the National Bike Summit, I was one of the hundreds of advocates who converged on Capitol Hill to tell our members of Congress to protect federal funding for biking and walking projects and programs. This week, when I returned to the office, the latest newsletter from the League of Illinois Bicyclists had arrived on my desk. And what was the leading headline? The LIB’s major role in directing more than $50 million federal dollars toward bikeways in the Prairie State.

Since 1991, the federally funded Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program has been the main source of money for active transportation projects and, in the 1990s, about half of ITEP dollars went to bike/ped facilities. But, as the LIB reports in the Illinois Bicyclist, that number plummeted to less than 30 percent under former governor Rod Blagojevich. Making matters worse, the state started raiding the ITEP program to deal with federal rescissions, too.

The LIB helped turn back that shortsighted trend.

During the last round of rescissions in August, Illinois advocates mobilized to protect bike/ped dollars. “LIB, the Active Transportation Alliance and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy urged IDOT and Gov. Pat Quinn to more fairly spread the cuts across transportation categories,” LIB reports in its newsletter. “Thankfully, no ITEP dollars were rescinded.”

But that was just the prelude to an even bigger win: The latest ITEP grant list that includes more than $50 million for bikeways.

“Each major issue advocated by LIB – especially selecting more bikeway applications – came true in a record way,” the League notes. “Gov. Quinn had often expressed his desire to fund more bike trails in Illinois. Three times in 2010, LIB personally spoke with him, suggesting an ITEP bicycling emphasis as a way to do so without impact on the state’s financial situation. Our thanks have gone out to the Governor and IDOT Secretary Gary Hannig.”

Read more about the League of Illinois Bicyclists here. And learn how you can mobilize for more federal, state and local dollars in your community by getting connected to Advocacy Advance — a partnership of the Alliance and League of American Bicyclists — here.

When Bob Searns left the White House Conference on America’s Great Outdoors this past April, he was all charged up. The chair of American Trails was excited about the high-level discussion about “a 21st century strategy” to conserve and celebrate our nation’s natural heritage. He was amped that the Obama administration saw critical value in trails and green space.

Then, just a few blocks from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, still riding the conference high, he ran smack into a Tea Party rally.

Many in the audience chuckled at the irony when Searns told that story at the American Trails National Symposium yesterday. But the anecdote illustrated a key point for the hundreds of trail advocates, engineering professionals and government officials meeting in Chattanooga this week.

“There’s a strong sentiment for less government and a real concern about the deficit,” Searns said. “We’re looking at a very real challenge and I think we need to figure out ways to make the case to preserve and provide this kind of infrastructure.”

That challenge was the central thrust of the conference’s General Session. Because of the political shift in the midterm election, federal programs that fund and promote trails are under threat. Already, a number of incoming lawmakers and soon-to-be power brokers have publicly labeled trails and greenways as wasteful spending or expendable beautification projects. “Make no mistake about it,” Marianne Fowler warned. “Trails are in the crosshairs.”

Fowler, the Senior Vice President for Federal Relations at the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, knows what she’s talking about. She’s been in the movement since 1988 and gave us all a little history lesson on the evolution of critical federal funding. The passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991, she said, was a turning point. That bill birthed two programs that have funded thousands of trail projects across the nation — the Recreational Trails Program and Transportation Enhancements.

“We had this blooming of available funds and the movement met the money,” Fowler said. “We’ve been on a roll ever since.”

The new Congress, though, could throw up a roadblock. To give us a preview of the new landscape and rumblings about the next transportation bill, Eric Beightel took the podium.

Beightel, an Environmental Protection Specialist at the U.S. Department of Transportation, said his agency understands the efficacy of trails and other bicycle and pedestrian projects. By now, we all know and love Secretary Ray LaHood’s new policy that puts biking and walking on equal footing with motorized transportation. We know the DOT has embraced livability and walkable communities as a central goal of the transportation system, not a nebulous fringe concept concocted by treehuggers. Beightel highlighted the ways trails enhance our quality of life, but also pointed to a key selling point for fiscal conservatives. “The cheapest form of transportation is a pair of sneakers,” Beightel said. “The second is a bike.”

And the DOT has numbers to prove it. Beightel would know; he’s the leader of the TIGER Grant evaluation team. “And TIGER revealed a promising trend,” he said.

The two rounds of funding gave millions to traditional road projects, but the evaluation team looked at the applications through the lens of livability, sustainability and cost effectiveness. Bike-ped projects and trail systems were big winners in all three criteria, Beightel said. It’s no surprise that trail projects make cities more livable and projects that get people out of their cars are more sustainable. But the key point advocates and officials need to drive home is that trails and bike-ped projects are incredibly cost effective.

Each project had to include a cost-benefit analysis in its application. Because trails are relatively cheap to build, Beightel said, those projects provided serious bang for the taxpayer buck. “The benefits almost always outweigh the cost,” he said. “That’s an argument that can help in Congress.”

The DOT, he said, will try to carry that emphasis on livability, sustainability and cost-effectiveness into the next federal transportation bill. But there are red flags already. For instance: “There is some concern that Congress may strike out TIGER,” Beightel said.

Programs like Recreational Trails and Transportation Enhancements — which dedicate tens of millions of dollars for trails and bike-ped projects — could be reconfigured, he added. “Some of those programs could be consolidated,” Beightel said. “CMAQ [Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program] could be consolidated with Recreational Trails and Transportation Enhancement to be one bundle of money… We’re introducing that as a possibility so people can be prepared to lobby their state DOTs and members of congress so they recognize the importance of these programs.”

Fowler, for one, said she’s concerned about possible program consolidation. She’s concerned that trails get caught up in political gamesmanship, even though the health, economic and environmental benefits are clear. “Staff members of the incoming majority have publicly said that one of the first things they want to eliminate in transportation funding is Transportation Enhancements and trail funding,” Fowler said. “That’s us, guys. Let’s get real here. We’ve got a fight on our hands and we need to get prepared for that fight.”

Plenty of leaders in Washington — like Ray Lahood — are proponents and defenders of trails and bike-ped projects, she added. But they’ll need a grassroots uprising to defend our interests in the next transportation bill. “We’ve got good friends everywhere, but we have to do our part, too,” she said. And we started that effort right there in the banquet hall. Everyone was already sitting at a table bearing their state name and for the final half-hour of the General Session we all learned about our new “Congressional Buddies.” We drafted resolutions asking those members of Congress to support trails.

But that was just the beginning — we need your help, too. With the help of RTC and other national partners, we’ll make sure you have useful templates to communicate the importance of bike-ped funding programs to your members of Congress, too. Stay tuned.

The incredible hypocrisy made a crowd of hundreds gasp in disbelief.

Last week, at the Pro Walk Pro Bike conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Keith Laughlin took the podium during lunch to tell a quick story.

A few weeks ago, Laughlin, the president of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, was flipping through his latest issue of the magazine published by the American Automobile Association. One article stopped him in his tracks. The July/August edition carried an ugly editorial from the director of AAA Mid-Atlantic, who argued that biking and walking projects, like multi-use trails, shouldn’t get a red cent from the Federal Highway Trust Fund.

Laughlin, a AAA member himself, immediately shot off a letter to the ill-informed — or willfully ignorant — company. He pointed out that millions of Americans are cyclists, pedestrians and trail-lovers, in addition to being motorists. He noted that more than 19,000 miles of trails have been funded through the Trust Fund and, at just one billion dollars per year, eliminating bike-ped projects would barely make a dent in the $89 billion annual shortfall the AAA proposed to fill by picking the pockets of non-motorized projects.

Robert Darbelnet, president of AAA, was quick to respond to Laughlin’s letter, but didn’t address Laughlin’s concerns. Darbelnet didn’t disavow the editorial’s statements.

So last week, at Pro Walk Pro Bike, Laughlin sounded the alarm.

“Our goal is that by 2020 90 percent of American live within three miles of a trail system,” he said. “If we’re going to do it, we have to have sustained federal investment in building safe places to walk and bike. And we have to be aware that those sources of funds are currently endangered.”

“The Federal Highway Trust Fund is close to insolvency and there’s no political consensus on a long-term fix,” he continued. “What it comes down to is the highway funding pie is not growing, so the highway lobby wants to eat our slice. They get about 80 cents on the dollar. We get a penny-and-a-half. But that 80 cents isn’t enough. They’re greedy enough that they want our penny-and-a-half, as well.”

“At this point,” he added, “I don’t think we can sit and do nothing. We really have to turn this threat into an opportunity.”

Before the conference participants had finished their dessert, RTC had flipped the switch on a new petition campaign, asking AAA to disavow its stated intent to rob trails of critical federal dollars. To get the crowd fired up to add their names to the campaign, Laughlin held up a AAA postcard that arrived in his colleague’s mailbox just the day before.

“What it says is ‘Double your opportunity to save money at AAA,”” Laughlin said, reading from the back of the card. “It’s an ad to get people to sign up for AAA auto insurance and get them to sign up for their credit card. And what graphic did they use to highlight this ability to double your opportunity? Two people on a tandem bicycle!”

You guessed it: The whole room gasped.

“This is the organization that is adopting anti-bicycle policies and, at the same time, they have the audacity to use a picture of people on a bicycle to market their automobile products,” Laughlin said. “If that’s not enough to get people motivated to raise their voices, I’m not sure what it would take.”

If you’re ready to sign the RTC’s petition, click here.