Aside from all the great inspiration and connections at the National Bike Summit in Washington DC, most of why bicycle advocates from all over the county come to Washington is to secure more funding for bicycle projects across the country. While the President has unveiled his long-term transportation strategy, there is not a major transportation bill in front of Congress this legislative session. There are however several key bills that we were all lobbying our representatives for – see the League of American Bicyclist’s website here for more information on the bills we were asking our congresspeople to sponsor.
Ironically my focus in DC this year was on building support for local county-level funding by asking our Alameda County representatives to endorse and promote the reauthorization of the Measure B1 transportation revenue measure coming to the ballot box this November.
In November 2012 you may remember that we had a razor thin defeat on Measure B1, falling only 721 votes, or one eighth of one percent, short of the two-thirds margin we needed for victory. This measure returns this November and we are already working with our partners to make sure of a solid win this time around.
At the Bike Summit itself I presented to a group of our colleagues on the lessons we learned from the 2012 Measure B1 campaign. Our campaign in 2012 was funded in part by national funders and companies like Advocacy Advance, Planet Bike, Specialized, Performance Bicycle, Clif Bar, and more. The reason we were presenting at the summit, and the reason we were funded at the national level, is because we are leading the way here in Alameda County on local funding.
Alameda County is a “self-help” county when I comes to transportation. Currently a significant portion of local transportation funding comes from our current transportation sales tax measure, a half cent on every retail dollar spent in Alameda County. The reauthorization measure coming to the ballot this November, like the one on the ballot in 2012, will increase to a full cent for transportation, and increases the allocation for bicycle and pedestrian projects will increase from 5% to 11%.
What does it mean to have 11% of our $7.8 billion transportation measure, or $1 billion, allocated to bicycle and pedestrian projects? This translates to $33 million per year, over 30 years. Or we could say it is $20 per resident of Alameda County per year. This post from Portland from a few years ago shows a range of $40 per capita spending in Amsterdam vs. $2 per capita in Portland. By spending $20 per resident here in Alameda County I believe we will be leading the nation in terms of our investment in bicycling, and will be at levels approaching Northern European countries.
With this as our goal we had a strong ask to our representatives. I met with transportation staffers for Barbara Lee, Eric Swalwell, Mike Honda and George Miller. We are fortunate here in the East Bay to have representatives who get how important biking is to their districts, and who we have good relationships with here at home. These meetings are a great chance to thank our reps for their support.
Another thing about our Bike Summit lobby day that is inspiring is to see so many people walking the halls of congress with their bike pins on. There were probably about 800 advocates from around the country meeting with their reps on this one day. This gives us a very visible presence on the Capital. It is an inspiring event to be a part of, and brings me back to our work for better biking here in the East Bay charged up for real change!
Click here to read Part 1 of my report from DC, on women’s leadership in our bicycling movement.