State Will Leave Most Federal Bike and Ped Money Untouched, at Least This Year

Responding to Congress’s annual call to return uncommitted funds, the Washington State Department of Transportation will likely tap 85 percent of the $43.7 million it owes DC from a program to maintain interstate highways. That recommendation, made today by a committee of state finance managers to the DOT’s secretary, will come as a relief for bicycle advocates who lobbied heavily this week to preserve funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

As I reported Tuesday, the issue stems from so-called rescissions, which require states to return some un-obligated funds to balance the federal budget.

State officials say they received over 900 emails from Cascade Bicycle Club members this week, asking that money be taken proportionately from all pots of federal transportation money allocated to Washington State. Bike advocates were concerned they would see a repeat of 2010, when state authorities took nearly 80 percent of the money from two programs that fund bike and ped projects.

“We applaud WSDOT for signaling a change in business as usual,” says John Mauro, Cacade Bicycle Club’s director of government affairs. “Their proposed rescissions are not as startlingly unbalanced as the August 2010 rescissions.”

This afternoon, a committee of state transportation finance mangers recommended to Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond that the $43.7 million be tapped from these sources: $36.8 million (85 percent) from the interstate maintenance program, $3.7 million (8 percent) from the highway bridge replacement program, and $3.3 million (7 percent) from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program (CMAQ). Only the last program, the one tapped the least, is used to fund bike and ped programs.

“The department supports bicycle and pedestrian friendly communities,” says Rich Struna, a federal-aid planning manager for the state highway construction program, adding that committee members didn’t even know about the email lobbying effort underway.

In reaching its decision every year, Struna says, the state taps programs that can sacrifice federal money—again, uncommitted—without taking a hit to any projects. So some years the money comes from one pot, some years it comes from another. And next year the state could use money from the regional trails instead of highways, for instance. He acknowledges that tapping from the same source every year (just highway maintenance or just regional trails, for instance) could eventually result in projects that go unfunded. But despite the heavy cuts last year to three programs that find bike projects, he says, “there weren’t any projects that weren’t delivered.”