Here's a particularly specious snippet from the new site: http://www.bfw.org/advocacy/index.php?category_id=4026
"2a) In addition to seeking more money for the Bike Fund, the Bicycle Federation needs to take an aggressive stance against diverting those funds to other transportation needs. In particular, the process for awarding CMAQ funds appears to be dominated by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, which recently has shown signs of opposing bicycle and pedestrian projects, in favor of funding mass transit projects. The Bicycle Federation will gain an understanding of the CMAQ and TE funding processes, and influence those processes to make sure that bicycle and pedestrian projects are adequately funded." I _STRONGLY_ disagree with the concept of boosting bicycle funding by diverting money out of transit projects. One of the reasons that SE Wisconsin is so desperate for transit funding is that the state has historically forced SE Wisconsin to implement road projects (ala the Marquette Interchange) by denying the planners in the SE the ability to use federal money to study the feasibility of light rail. A great paper on the history of the Marquette Interchange fiasco can be found starting on page 12 from the following Brookings Institution publication: http://tinyurl.com/58cfwl Instead of fighting with other human-scaled modes of transportation in other parts of the state, the BFW should work with SE Wisconsin groups to help enact legislation that gives municipalities more control over how transportation dollars are spent. As it stands, 68% of local road funding in Wisconsin is coming from sources like property taxes. That means the gas tax dollars that drivers are paying when spending 88% of their driving time on local roads are being diverted into highways geared more toward facilitating commerce. This, coupled with state-imposed property tax limits is forcing municipalities to spend greater percentages of their tax dollars on roads. This may be one reason why the capital road budget in the city of Madison has been growing recently. It is time to end the State of Wisconsin's "Command and Control" over the mode share of transportation funding, not chip away at funding for transit, which by the way, indirectly benefits bicyclists in numerous ways. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
