Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Congress Keeps Trail Funds

Last week we mentioned that the House of Representatives had millions of dollars for Transportation Enhancements -- the largest federal funding source for trails as well as bike-ped improvements -- in the stimulus bill, but that the Senate version did not. We suggested that you could contact your elected officials to help protect the TE funding if you wanted.

Apparently a lot of people did. And Congress listened. Click here to see a news release from the Rails to Trails Conservancy on the bill.

Congress allocated $825 million to TE. While this is less than 2 percent of transportation funding in the whole bill, it is twice as much TE spending for communities like ours than ever before.

These hundreds of millions of dollars for TE will allow communities across the country to create jobs by building trails and other infrastructure immediately, while simultaneously addressing congestion, environmental concerns, the obesity epidemic and economic challenges in the long-term.

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