Claire Thompson reports on new findings presented in the Alliance for Biking and Walking's 2012 Benchmarking Report demonstrating the rise in biking and walking, and the incongruity with recent attempts to defund bipedal infrastructure.
Thompson points to significant gains in bicycle commuting in the last decade, which is up 57% since 2000, and finds that "While biking and walking make up 12 percent of all trips in the U.S., they receive only 1.6 percent of federal transportation funding, according to the report. If House Speaker John Boehner & Co. get their way, that percentage would drop to zero."
Thompson also writes about the chicken-and-egg way in which increased biking and walking lead to increased funding and participation in non-motorized transportation. Perhaps more important are the safety implications of increased biking and walking. Cities and states with more biking and walking see far lower fatality rates than places with low levels of bipedalism.
With, "40 percent of all trips in the U.S....less than 2 miles. Clearly, we could be doing a lot more biking and walking, and a lot less driving."
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research