Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008--Continued

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--Continued

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I join my colleague from Missouri in opposing the amendment that has been offered by Senator Coburn.

Under the SAFETEA-LU authorization bill, that is the surface transportation authorization law, the bill that defines all of the transportation projects for the country, communities are required to prepare comprehensive transportation plans in order to receive Federal highway and transit grants. Those plans have to include the communities' plans for bike and pedestrian pathways. We set that policy because these plans are meant to be comprehensive, and our national policy has been to recognize bike and pedestrian pathways as one component of an entire, complete transportation system. They can't constitute the largest part of the system, but a plan that ignores that element is not complete.

Now, there are three reasons our national transportation policy has recognized the role of bike and pedestrian paths in the role of transportation authorization. There is safety, there is mobility, and there is our healthy communities about which we are all concerned. When we put in adequate bike paths and walkways, what we are essentially doing in many of our communities is protecting the safety of our families and our neighbors. In many of our communities, without those paths, many more bicyclists and pedestrians would be forced to commute with regular vehicle traffic.

Everyone on bicycle or on foot is vulnerable when they are mixed in with heavy traffic. But I contend our school-aged children are often the ones who are the most vulnerable, and that is why it is extremely important that we protect these kinds of pathways in our transportation bills.

When we put in place these bike paths and walkways, we also provide essential mobility to a lot of people who can't afford to drive a car, who don't have a car, or for disability reasons can't drive a car. These are people who sometimes can't afford the daily travel by car, but they have their bike. They might like to travel by bus or a transit vehicle, but perhaps there aren't any available and so they are on our bikeways, bike paths, and walkways, and they need a mode of transportation within our communities as well.

It wasn't very long ago I happened to read an article in the Washington Post about informal bike and pedestrian paths showing up all over northern Virginia. These are just foot paths now, apparently, and not much more than grassy areas where commuters come and go on a daily basis. From the story, it said most of the people walking along these paths can't afford to commute by train or by car. They are walking to their jobs every day. These jobs don't pay a lot. These families need to get to work to support their families, and so they are walking on these pathways all over northern Virginia, the story tells us. The unfortunate part of that story, as I read it, is that these bike and pathways crossed over four lanes of traffic, many times without any traffic signals to accommodate them. So those commuters who are walking on these paths scrambled every day to get across four lanes of traffic because the transportation system didn't protect them as bicyclists or as pedestrians.

So mobility is important and safety is important. But, finally, we all recognize that having healthy communities is an important part of our country today. In recent years, we have all become aware of how our physical infrastructure affects our daily lives, and too often people find themselves trapped in cars by a transportation network that will not allow them to walk or bike to work, which can be an important part of an exercise regime for many who choose that. So these bike paths and walkways provide an alternative to cars and help make our

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communities more healthy and more like neighborhoods.

When the Senate passed the last Transportation authorization bill, the so-called SAFETEA-LU, that bill recognized that bike and pedestrian pathways were one component of a complete transportation system for our communities. The President signed that bill into law. Today, if we choose to pick out this one mode of transportation and say we are not going to have bike paths or walkways, that we are excluding that from transportation funding, we would be making, on the floor of the Senate today and in the Transportation appropriations bill, a major shift in our transportation policy.

So I hope our colleagues will take a serious look at this amendment and realize that it will affect the safety of many of our citizens who commute to work, to school, and those who, in their daily lives, don't have a car or who choose to walk for their own personal health or ride a bike for their own personal health.

I hope the Senator from Oklahoma will wait to have this discussion when we are back on the floor during the reauthorization bill, which will be occurring during the next couple of years, and he will then have an opportunity to make his arguments at that time during the surface transportation debate. But today we are not considering an authorization bill. We are considering a transportation appropriations bill. And, yes, it does include an alternative for many people in this country, which is part of their transportation. It is part of their commute to work or to school or their daily lives, and it is an essential part of this bill.

So I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Coburn amendment, and we will be having that vote certainly after 7 o'clock.

AMENDMENT NO. 2796, AS MODIFIED

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set the current amendment aside and call up amendment No. 2796 and send a modification to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is so modified.

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