Saturday, September 24, 2011
By Larry Walsh, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As a physician specializing in family medicine, Dr. Tom Coburn encourages his patients to exercise to the best of their abilities, including bicycling and walking.

As a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, he doesn’t want the federal government to contribute anything to the cost of building and maintaining bicycle and walking trails.

Bike Pittsburgh would like the Republican lawmaker to reconsider. But it knows it’s an uphill battle, much steeper than pedaling up East Sycamore Street to Mount Washington.

Is it ever.

Sen. Coburn wants to change the highway portion of the stopgap transportation bill that the U.S. House of Representatives passed Tuesday. Specifically, he wants to eliminate a provision that requires states to spend 10 percent of their highway program money on “transportation enhancements” such as bike and walking trails.

Coburn’s objections and a procedural obstacle could force another partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, a move that could put thousands of workers out of jobs and deprive the government of $30 million a day in uncollected airline ticket taxes.

Senate rules don’t permit lawmakers to put aside a bill they’re working on — a disaster aid bill — to take up a temporary funding measure for the FAA and highway programs without the consent of all the senators.

If Coburn gets his way, Bike Pittsburgh said the approximately $700 million that was spent on bicycling and walking trails this year — less than 2 percent of the total transportation budget — could be reduced to “a big fat zero” in 2012.

It pointed out that the federal transportation enhancements program has provided for bike trails, bike lanes, bike racks on buses, bike education, etc., in the past 20 years.

Read the rest of this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette