Transportation Enhancement Funds on the chopping block again

A giant coffeepot about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh has taken center stage in a percolating debate over federal transportation dollars.

While states struggle to find money to maintain decaying roads and bridges, they must spend a portion of their federal transportation funding on projects such as bicycle and pedestrian trails, beautification efforts and roadside museums.

Pennsylvania’s Lincoln Highway 200-Mile Roadside Museum benefited from what is known as “transportation enhancement funding.” An 18-foot-tall building in Bedford shaped like a coffeepot is one of its main attractions. This fall, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., called a $300,000 allocation to the museum the nation’s most wasteful example of the grant program.

After he did, “our phones started ringing off the hook,” said Olga Herbert, executive director of the Latrobe-based Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor. “We’re not wasting money,” she said, adding that the group spent no federal dollars on the coffeepot.

The government set aside $927.6 million for enhancements during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, or roughly 2 percent of the nation’s transportation budget, Federal Highway Administration data show. The government committed $548.9 million to projects, including $18.1 million in Pennsylvania, but states cannot spend the money to repair roads and bridges.

“With nearly 25 percent of our nation’s bridges deemed either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, we need to make their reconstruction a priority over errant beautification projects,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a Pittsburgh native, said last month after his amendment to remove enhancement funding from this year’s highway budget failed.

“These aren’t wasteful bridges-to-nowhere-type projects,” said Scott Bricker, executive director of the advocacy group Bike Pittsburgh. “This funding is helping to improve the quality of life for people and making people safer.”

Read the rest of this article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

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