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Why it’s not books vs. bikes, environment vs. economy, etc.

Filed Under Streets for All 

As we noted earlier this week, despite a tough budget cycle, the Streets for All Seattle coalition has eked out a modest but hard-won piece of good news in the Mayor’s proposed budget. Our ambitions are for Seattle to become America’s most walkable city, a place where car ownership is not a prerequisite for gainful employment, where cyclists and transit riders never feel like second class citizens.  (Now; it is time to go to work preserving the forward-thinking alternative transportation improvements we need to have a city that works for our future.)

With the proposed budget working its way through the public’s consciousness, all kinds of false dichotomies and other noise threaten to distract us. Today, we want to highlight an excellent piece of commentary from the Seattle Bike Blog, which clearly illustrates why now is the time to get serious about making Seattle’s a transportation system for all.

Should city cyclists feel bad about bike funding in the mayor’s budget?

from Seattle Bike Blog by Tom Fucoloro

Super short answer: No.

I have heard (and felt) some uneasiness about the inclusion of so-called alternative transportation funding in the mayor’s proposed budget, which slashes just about every department in the city. Bike Intelligencer posted an interesting reflection after attending the first budget hearing the other night, saying, “With everyone else hurting, we cannot feel too good about getting ours.”

I understand where this comes from. The library is cutting librarians from smaller branches, community centers are losing tons of hours, city employees are getting fired or are not getting raises, and on and on (pick up a copy of Real Change to read a short breakdown of the budget cuts I wrote this week). What’s a new bike lane in the face of all these other programs? More…

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Comments

One Response to “Why it’s not books vs. bikes, environment vs. economy, etc.”

  1. Mickymse on October 1st, 2010 4:38 pm

    I don’t think you understand the problem some of us walk, bike, and transit activists have…

    “Community centers and libraries getting their budgets slashed is a separate issue from rearranging roads funding. The mayor’s budget is not taking the library’s money and giving it to bikes. He is proposing a smart pay structure improvement so that car users pay a little closer to what they cost the city while encouraging people to get out of their cars, which would save the city money.”

    I know this, and you know this. Other wonky folks know that we aren’t going to pay for library hours with parking meter revenues…

    BUT the average citizen simply does not get that. What citizens see is us paying for bike lanes and rechannelization projects while their local community center gets reduced hours, or building little sidewalk projects with the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund while shutting Neighborhood Service Centers.

    That makes citizens generally less trusting of the government and less willing to pay more in taxes.

    It’s not that bike funding is a bad thing, or that these are the wrong ways to fund it; it’s that now is simply not the right time to fund these projects if we want long-term support for bike, pedestrian, and transit causes.

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