Remember how the prospect of federal stimulus funding posed such good possibilities for installing more bicycle lanes and creating more bike and pedestrian trails when it was approved in February?
Well, a group named Smart Growth America has analyzed the requests from states for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding and found that only 2.8 percent ($605.4 million) will go toward non-motorized projects.
An even lesser amount 0.9 percent (or $189.4 million) will go toward public transportation projects. The report is summarized at the Smart Growth America blog:
“While some states proved excellent at investing wisely and making progress, most states failed to fulfill pressing transportation needs. Nearly one-third of the money, $6.6 billion, went towards building new road capacity.”
” … Other states and communities missed this golden opportunity to create jobs while making progress on their most pressing transportation needs. These states spent their precious funds on building new roads rather than repairing existing roads, and ignored the chance to spend the money flexibly on the kinds of options that their residents really want — like public transportation or streets safe for walking and biking — leaving their communities stuck in traffic and stuck in the past.”
“The States and the Stimulus” examines how states are spending that federal stimulus money. Some chapters chart how well the allocations will create jobs, others look at the good to the community.
In the reports' charts, public transportation and non-motorized projects (such as sidewalks, bike paths, etc) are lumped together. Even so, 14 states did not have one project in either category.
In the meantime, the District of Columbia allocated 41.5 percent of its money to public transportation and non-motorized projects.
In the Pacific Coast, Oregon allocated 16.7 percent to those projects, Washington 4.2 percent, and California 2.5 percent. See below for the full list.
You can search for individual projects at the US Department of Transportation's ARRA Certifications website. The states are listed in the left column.
Among the projects for Washington state are installation of a 10-foot wide path along Whitman Drive in College Place, a 3,600-foot paved path on an old railroad right-of-way in Jamestown, restoring and reconstructing the old railroad grade on north side of Lake Crescent as part of Olympic Discovery Trail,
Smart Growth America is a coalition of national, state and local organizations that want to improve the ways communites are planned and built. The Adventure Cycling Association, Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Greenbelt Alliance are among the 50 or so groups listed as members.
Update: Georgia counties are seeking stimulus money to build 161-mile bike trail along coast.
1 District of Columbia 41.5%
2 Delaware 27.9%
3 Massachusetts 19.0%
4 Oregon 16.7%
5 Iowa 16.5%
6 Colorado 11.3%
7 Hawaii 10.9%
8 Georgia 9.3%
9 Rhode Island 7.5%
10 Maryland 6.1%
11 Arizona 5.2%
12 Virginia 5.2%
13 Idaho 4.7%
14 Florida 4.4%
15 New Jersey 4.2%
16 North Carolina 4.2%
17 Washington 4.2%
18 Michigan 3.9%
19 Montana 3.9%
20 Louisiana 3.8%
21 Pennsylvania 3.7%
22 Utah 3.5%
23 Ohio 2.8%
24 South Carolina 2.8%
25 California 2.5%
26 New York 2.5%
27 Alaska 2.4%
28 New Hampshire 1.7%
29 Maine 1.4%
30 Kentucky 1.2%
31 Nebraska 1.1%
32 Kansas 1.0%
33 Wisconsin 1.0%
34 Alabama 0.7%
35 Mississippi 0.5%
36 Texas 0.5%
37 Nevada 0.2%
38 Arkansas 0.0%
39 Connecticut 0.0%
40 Illinois 0.0%
41 Indiana 0.0%
42 Minnesota 0.0%
43 Missouri 0.0%
44 New Mexico 0.0%
45 North Dakota 0.0%
46 Oklahoma 0.0%
47 South Dakota 0.0%
48 Tennessee 0.0%
49 Vermont 0.0%
50 West Virginia 0.0%
51 Wyoming 0.0%
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