Senate Transportation bill is bad for cyclists, bans biking where trail exists
{B' Spokes: This is not good. For me the whole issue on why we need bike/ped money in the first place is because a lot of road engineers thought it would be good to save a penny or two on the dollar and build roads for cars only. And now they are trying to build more car only roads... as I said, not good.]
Excerpt from Washcycle:
But if the effective loss of federal funding isn't enough, there's also the loss of access to federal roads (page 226 ):
(d) BICYCLE SAFETY.—The Secretary of the appropriate Federal land management agency shall prohibit the use of bicycles on each federally owned road that has a speed limit of 30 miles per hour or greater and an adjacent paved path for use by bicycles within 100 yards of the road.
Even if the trail is in very bad shape, and the road is perfectly safe, the Secretary will have no leeway to allow cyclists to continue to use the road if a trail is available. This is very bad policy. Among other things it would end biking on portions of the Rock Creek Parkway where the speed limit is 35 mph.
Not that I think this rule is needed, but it's especially bad to set the limit at 30mph - which is far too low for banning cycling. And 100 yards is a very wide net. A trail that far away serves a very different purpose than a trail just off the road.