As you might have heard, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was in Portland last week for a forum on global warming put together by Congressman Earl Blumenauer.
A bunch of energy wonks in a room full of politicos might not seem like a big deal to you, but Pelosi is not just another politician. She’s second in line to the U.S. presidency (behind Dick Cheney) and with Democrats controlling Congress, she is in a position to make things happen.
The big deal for bikes is that among the 40 or so people in the invite-only crowd at the forum on Wednesday was none other than former PDOT bike coordinator-turned consultant Mia Birk.
Ping of the Safe Routes to School
National Partnership.)
(Photo: Jonathan Maus)
Birk was one of several folks Blumenauer planted around the room who he then called on to give Pelosi (and others around the table including State Senate President Peter Courtney and Congresswoman Darlene Hooley) a short overview on how Portland is meeting environmental challenges.
After hearing from TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen, Birk shared a snapshot of Portland’s bike story with Pelosi. Birk says she told Pelosi that back in the ’90s, “Portland started a big experiment to see if we could retrofit a large, urban city and make it work for bikes.” After explaining how it has clearly worked so far, Birk also plugged Portland’s burgeoning Safe Routes to School program.
After Birk’s presentation, Blumenauer brought up how bikes have helped spur economic activity in Portland.
According to an aide for Blumenauer, the information resonated with Pelosi and she talked about what she heard the rest of the day.
Portland’s bike story is becoming more and more well-known in the halls of Congress these days. It makes me wonder if there will be an opportunity in the next Federal Transportation Bill to allocate a special set of funds to help us get to the next level of bike-friendliness. We’ve taken great strides already, but we’ve done it with relatively paltry amounts of spending on bicycle-specific infrastructure and it’s been several years since major improvements have been added to our bikeway network.
I’d say we’re definitely front-runners to be one of 40 communities that might be chosen to receive $50 million each to be spent on non-motorized transportation projects as part of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s 2010 Campaign for Active Transportation that will be written into the upcoming Transportation Bill.
Just imagine what we could do with that kind of money…