According to Senator McCain, Congress has wasted billions of dollars on low-priority projects like bike paths...Congress is frivolously spending the Highway Trust Fund for pet projects like walkways and bicycle paths, at the expense of our nation’s roads and bridges...
More than $2 billion has been obligated for 5,547 bike paths and pedestrian walkways
Particularly galling to McCain and Coburn is that Chairman of the House Transportation Committee Jim Oberstar (D-tk) is an "avid cyclist" who has a "zest for cycling that is as great as his enthusiasm for funding public infrastructure," the report spitefully reports, noting a news report that said the "passions often merge...
The most money--45 percent--has gone to off-road trails. Only 13 percent was spent on on-road bicycle infrastructure and only twelve percent on rails to trails projects. [see: http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID2429/images/Picture_2.png ]
The imbalance reflects a bias against bicycling as a form of transportation as opposed to a form of recreation. Fortunately, "Coburn and McCain's anti-cycling arguments apparently didn't sit well with their colleagues. Their efforts to strip 600 individual spending projects--many of them bicycle related--failed by a vote of 73 to 25, Reuters reports. The Senate will have to reconcile this bill with a similar one passed by the House in July before sending it to the President to sign into law."[see: http://www.examiner.com/x-2429-Bicycle-Transportation-Examiner~y2009m9d18-McCain-and-Coburn-launch-an-unsuccessful-fusillade-against-cyclists ]
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