> Social change is systemic and not declared through the Governor's > office or a Dane County activist group.
Actually, I think the following policy paper proves you quite wrong: http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/TransportPolicyArticle.pdf As I read this, it is in fact the State Government that is the bottleneck in the effort to help empower residents with mobility options. The Federal Money is there, the local demand for the money is there (In Madison and Dane County) - but it is the State that is choosing to under-utilize Federal dollars already earmarked for alternative forms of transportation. Something else I'd like to point out from the page 267 (the second page) of the above document: Oregon is the State with the highest bike share of work trips in the United States. Not coincidentally, back in the 1970's, Governor Tom McCall signed legislation requiring that 1% of highway funds be spent on bicycling. [ http://www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=269 ] Unfortunately in Wisconsin, 1.1% of the budget is split between bicycling and pedestrian facilities. [ http://www.americabikes.org/images/resource/stateinfo/wisconsinbike%20po ll.doc ] What this boils down to is this: The State of Wisconsin is choosing to dictate transportation options to its residents by under-funding motor-vehicle alternatives. Increasing this funding makes a demonstrable difference in the percentage of bike trips to work. There is no need to mandate a "European culture" in order to empower our transportation system users. The demand is there (as outlined in the America bikes article), we just have to create the infrastructure. And to do that, we have to knock some sense into our State Government. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
