The Last Straw: Duffy Asks Senate To ‘Restrict’ Funding For Bike Lanes

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is intensifying his war on bikes with a new missive to Congress asking legislators to eliminate federal grants for bike infrastructure.

In a letter to Republican and Democratic senators who lead the committees that will determine the fate of the stalled surface transportation reauthorization bill, Duffy asked the legislators to “Prioritize Motor Vehicle Travel Over Bicycle Lanes.”

The paragraph that follows the request is a companion piece to U.S. DOT’s recent erasure of long-established federal advice that bike lanes and road diets are street safety tools, a screed on how narrowing roads for bikes gives “preferential treatment of the few bicycle travelers over the many motor vehicles,” slows down traffic, makes it harder for people in wheelchairs to get around and slows down emergency response time (which is actually slowed down by putting more and more vehicles in the way of ambulances and fire trucks).

Duffy’s letter specifically asks that the Senate’s version of the surface transportation bill essentially end federal funding for bike lanes and make it easier for municipalities to remove them.

“We urge Congress to restrict competitive and formula grant funding for bicycle lanes and other bicycle infrastructure that reduce travel throughput [sic] for motor vehicles and support removal of existing bike lanes that contribute to congestion,” the secretary wrote.

If such language was added to the bill, it would represent a threat to efforts to install more traffic-calming bike lanes and encourage cycling across the country. Veteran planners criticized the inclusion of it along with the litany of anti-bike lane carping that Duffy included in the letter.

“This is brain dead, zombie ideology masquerading as national transportation policy,” said Jon Orcutt, a former top official with the New York City Department of Transportation under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Republican, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.

Cities can get federal funding for bike lane projects from the Congestion Mitigation Air Quality improvement program or from National Highway Safety grants. But Duffy’s choice to include this language could also simply be political messaging for a base that hates bike lanes, since the House version of the transportation bill that made it out of committee did not include any language trying to end federal funding for bike lanes.

“It’s weird he’s sending this letter now, it seems like it’s red meat for the base. The Republicans have already thrown down what they want in the bill in the House,” said Orcutt.

The further Duffy tries to pull this bill into ultra-conservative waters, the harder it may be for he and the White House to get it passed. The current surface transportation law expires on Sept. 30, and if a new bill is not signed into law by then lawmakers would have to pass an extension of the previous surface transportation law. According to multiple reports, the Senate has not begun work on its own version of the bill, and Congress is rapidly approaching its August recess.

Senate Democrats will likely seek to block the Republican-led effort to pass a new infrastructure bill, since polling indicates that the Democrats may take back the House — and maybe the Senate? — in this year’s midterm elections.