Staring down a highway trust fund that he described as "teetering toward insolvency" by August or September, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Monday that better bike infrastructure projects are part of the solution.
"When you have a swelling population like the USA has and will have for the next 35 years, one of the most cost-effective ways to better fit that population is to better use the existing grid," Foxx said.
Foxx made his comments to a gathering in Indianapolis of urban transportation experts from around the country, welcoming six new cities into the PeopleForBikes Green Lane Project, a two-year program kicking off Tuesday that will help the cities — Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Seattle — add modern protected bike lanes to their streets.
"I know you are the vanguard in many was of these issues, and we at U.S. DOT want to do everything we can to be supportive," Foxx told the crowd.
PeopleForBikes Vice President for Local Innovation Martha Roskowski singled out Indianapolis, the host city, as a particularly bright light in the constellation of towns using using curbs, planters, parked cars or posts to create low-stress streets by separating bike and auto traffic.
"This city is on fire," Roskowski said. "You look at the Cultural Trail, you look at the other projects in the works. ... You don't really know that you're at a tipping point until later."
Roskowski praised Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, a Republican, for six years at the front of an Indianapolis transformation that has seen the city use better bike infrastructure "to be resilient, to be sustainable, to be competitive and to beautiful."
"Five years from now we're going to look back and say, we really changed how we thought about transportation in America," Roskowski said. "Yes, we're all going to drive cars still. But there are other elements to transportation."
