1st Steet's new look and bicycle warfare begins!

Man, work has been kicking my butt this week.  Tons of bikey stuff is going on though so a quick post is a must.  First up the good news.  More bike lanes in Reno!!  First street is the latest recipient of the road diet treatment and I must say she is looking good!

Nice wide bike lanes all the way!

Even a pedestrian bump out to allow for easier crossings.

Ok, now some scary news.  The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee just released the draft of the transportation reauthorization bill.  To jog your memory, this is the bill that Rand Paul and many other Republicans wanted to strip all bicycle, pedestrian, and "enhancement" dollar out of.  Fortunately, each of their efforts to do so was soundly defeated!  However, the bipartisan committee has seen fit to release a bill where all the funding for bikes, pedestrians, and enhancements has NO dedicated funding source.  The language leaves all the good types of projects in the bill, just no money!

So to reiterate....  The bill would also no longer provide dedicated funding to key pots of money like Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School, and the Recreational Trails Program.  In 2010, those three programs got a total of $1.146 billion dollars. (Note that all those programs would still be eligible for funding, they just wouldn't have a guaranteed source.)

Oh, and for the record the bikey funding is less than 1 percent of the total budget in this bill....the largest portion is already for dedicated "vehicle" projects.  So basically this is a total anti-Robin Hood type scenario.  It's a rob from the poor and give to the rich move.  So if you have any questions about who the bad guys are, this analogy should do it for you!

There are other egregious portions of the bill as well like this:

"(d) BICYCLE SAFETY.—The Secretary of the appropriate Federal land management agency shall prohibit the use of bicycles on each federally owned road that has a speed limit of 30 miles per hour or greater and an adjacent paved path for use by bicycles within 100 yards of the road."

Basically, stripping cyclist the right to the road if their happens to be a path and the speed limit is over 30 mph.  The league of American bicyclists and many others are already working to get this language removed form the bill so at least we have advocates on our side!  However, if you care about riding your bicycle on touring routes you should think about writing your senators and congressional representative.