(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)
It’s been a very long and winding road for the federal transportation bill. And while it looks like the end is finally in sight, there is still some nail-biting ahead.
The law that dictates how the federal government funds transportation expired over 900 days ago and has survived on extensions ever since. With the Highway Trust Fund facing bankruptcy by fall of 2013, and with idle construction workers waiting to build projects, the House and the Senate finally got their acts together and in over the past few months, both chambers have worked on their own versions of a new bill.
The bill that Republicans attempted to pass out of the House — but failed in doing so — was extremely bad. It scrapped decades of programs and funding for bicycling and walking and it included provisions to pay for new highways with domestic oil drilling. It was even too extreme for some Republicans. Fortunately, the Senate’s bill, which they passed, turned out to be much more palatable. While it wasn’t a slam dunk for biking, most prominent advocates considered it worth fighting for.
