[I’ll assert that attention is focused where the money is. If the money is more readily available for mega projects then that’s what we get. Focus more on measurable results, and moving people and not just cars there might be some hope for a better tomorrow. This whole people are driving less so how are we going to fund increasing driving capacity has got to end now!]
By Ken Orski, Publisher, Innovation Briefs
he need for states to manage costly multi-year construction projects. Multi-year transportation bills and contract authority have helped state DOTs to avoid fluctuating year-to-year transportation program levels and have minimized the attendant uncertainty when planning for large construction projects. That justification was indeed valid when we were building the Interstate Highway system and planning other capacity expansion mega projects such as Boston’s “Big Dig” or Northern Virginia’s Springfield Interchange. But that age, if we correctly read the tea leaves, is over. Implementing walking and bicycling networks and other “non-motorized” and “livability” projects will not require much advance budgeting or a long planning-design-construction cycle. Routine road maintenance and preservation activities to keep the system in a state of good repair, likewise do not need multi-year planning and budgeting.
With “the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized,” and with state transportation agencies urged to give “the same priority to walking and bicycling as is given to other transportation modes” as Transportation Secretary LaHood announced, perhaps the time also has come to end multi-year transportation bills and embrace an annual appropriation cycle like the vast majority of other federal programs.
https://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2010/03/should-next-surface-transporta.php#1573556oldId.20100407094311501
Biking in Baltimore