If you weren't paying attention, you may have missed the brief remarks U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters made to Gwen Ifill on PBS's Newshour regarding government spending on bike paths and trails. But her comments, which seem to insinuate that biking is not a form of transportation to be invested in, have bike proponents up in arms.

Here's part of the interview:

MARY PETERS: ... the level of earmarking has increased substantially over the last couple of decades in terms of the highway bill. The last highway bill that was passed, in the summer of 2005, contained over 6,000 of those marks, those specially designated projects. And the cost of those projects just in that bill alone was $24 billion, almost a tenth of the bill.

GWEN IFILL: Aren't many of those projects, even though they're special interest projects, aren't they roads and bridges, often?

MARY PETERS: Gwen, some of them are, but many of them are not. There are museums that are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure.

The interview was a follow up to the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis. And as we posted here, that city's major daily paper penned an editorial on the need to rethink the region's transportation strategy to reduce wear and tear on roads through investments in transit.

Wouldn't encouraging people to bike to work also help with that problem?

Seems Mary Peters hasn't thought of it that way.

You can read the transcript from the full interview or watch it by clicking here.

Robin, August 24, 2007

While I don't claim to know what Ms. Peter's opinion of cycling for transportation is, as a bike commuter I agree that transportation funds should not be used for bike trails. Bike paths and trails are not for transportation, but are instead recreational and should be funded by Parks and rec departments. I would rather that funding for road infrastructure be used to improve bike access to roads eliminating everything from potholes to improperly installed sewer grates. These funds should also be used to bike education and as well as driver ed to increase awareness of the proper venue for bicycles, the road.

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