Staffing:
There can be little question that the treatment of bicycling
and walking issues within the Department of Transportation has
advanced considerably since the start of the 1990s. When Congress
commissioned the National Bicycling and Walking Study (NBWS) in
1990, there were no more than one or two Department headquarters
staff working full-time on bicycle and pedestrian issues, and
fewer than five with any part-time responsibility for them. Today
there are approximately ten full-time and ten part-time personnel
within the Department with responsibility for bicycling and walking,
as well as a dozen or more staff who are regularly involved in
bicycle and pedestrian issues. A monthly meeting of Department
staff in this area regularly attracts people from the Office of
the Secretary, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit
Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and Federal Railroad Administration.
The bicycle and pedestrian responsibilities of these personnel
range from programmatic activities to research, technology transfer,
surveys, and policy development.
The impressive work of the Department in implementing an ambitious
Federal Action Plan, as documented in the Appendices of this report,
has been achieved with limited staff and resources in relation
to the size of the task. Mainstreaming of pedestrian and bicyclist
consideration throughout the USDOT is clearly improving, but is
not always achieved.
Safety:
The downward trends in pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and
injuries during the past decade are certainly encouraging signs,
as is the renewed commitment to traffic safety within the Department
in general and FHWA and NHTSA in particular. Safety is one of
the top stated priorities of the Department.
However, without reliable data on levels of bicycle and pedestrian
activity and exposure, the enthusiasm for reported crash reductions
involving bicyclists and pedestrians must be tempered by the possibility
that the relative danger of the two modes may still be increasing
even though fatality and injury numbers are falling.
Nevertheless, successes in improving bicycling and walking can
be identified. With recent attention on health aspects of transportation,
the Department has joined with the health community to promote
bicycling and walking as a means of easily achievable exercise
for individuals whose health is threatened by weight and inactivity.
In partnership with the Centers for Disease Control, NHTSA and
FHWA have developed the National Strategies for Advancing Bicycle
Safety - A Call To Action. Released in May 2001, the National
Strategies seeks to change the cycling environment in significant
ways by addressing five key goals:
* Motorists will share the road
* Bicyclists will ride safely
* Bicyclists will wear helmets
* The legal system will support safe bicycling
* Roads and paths will safely accommodate bicyclists.
Under each goal is a series of strategies and action steps. Different
member agencies, and a number of outside agencies, have taken
on each of these goals and are making real progress toward implementation.
Partnerships like the National Strategies are an innovation unforeseen
at the time when the National Bicycling and Walking Study was
released in 1994, yet are proving to be a crucial technique for
improving walking and bicycling conditions.
Funding:
Clearly there has been a major increase in funding opportunities
for bicycling and walking improvements. Spending on independent
bicycle and pedestrian projects has grown from approximately $6
million in 1990 to more than $422.7 million in 2003. [16]
Spending on the bicycle and pedestrian components of larger surface
transportation projects cannot currently be be tracked. Thus,
these figures are conservative estimates of the amount of funding
being devoted to bicycle and pedestrian improvements. In 2004,
under current Federal transportation laws, virtually all the major
transportation funding programs can be used for bicycle and pedestrian
activities without any limit on the amount of available funds.
By contrast, in 1990, many of the Federal-aid funding programs
were not used for bicycle and pedestrian improvements and no State
was allowed to spend more than $4.5 million in any one year on
bicycle and pedestrian projects that were not part of a larger
highway project.
Despite this remarkable change, expenditures on independent bicycling
and walking projects are still less than two percent of total
surface transportation spending.
Under TEA-21 (and expected under new legislation) States and
localities choose how much to spend on bicycle and pedestrian
safety and facilities. As directed by current legislation, decisions
on spending on transportation infrastructure projects should take
into account the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists, particularly
through the planning processes at the State and MPO levels of
government. Increased attention to the needs of nonmotorized modes
of travel during the planning process, could result in greater
amounts of funding for these projects and programs in the future.
Overall Status:
The Department is supportive of bicycling and walking and has
made great progress in addressing the needs of the two modes of
transportation. There is certainly a much greater awareness of
bicycling and walking issues compared to a decade ago. However,
there is still much progress to be made in making the nonmotorized
modes a routine part of the everyday activities of the Department.
The final chapter of this report presents some conclusions and
identifies a number of key action items that merit further study.
Their role in elevating bicycling and walking to the point that
they become a more visible, mainstream part of the policy, programs,
and projects of the Department will be investigated.