BIKE: Bikes win CAMPO victory

[rcbaker]

Hey! It looks like the 15% for bikes and ped spending has been 
preserved by a nearly unanamous vote at the CAMPO meeting tonight. 

The CAMPO vote in support was total except for Todd Baxter, who 
abstained. There were a huge number (163) of articulate (according to 
Karen Sonleitner's comments) emails generated and sent to CAMPO. 

The bike supporters did their political homework, obviously, and my 
take is that CAMPO decided that giving bikes and ped projects their 
traditional cut is politically a wise move, because it is only a small share 
of the local total transpo money being spent, but it hits an important 
constituency. Fighting bicyclists isn't worth the effort. 

So the greater biking community and their political leaders preserved 
their piece of the pie and deserve a round of applause. 

But meanwhile, chronic problems with how the other 97% or so of total 
transpo money gets spent around Austin do need to be on everyone's 
radar screen. People should remain active and understand that the 
three percent (that would be my very rough guess) of bike and ped 
spending in this area cannot flourish if the other 97% of mostly road 
money is spent to initiate and promote car-centric toll roads to serve 
sprawl. That is the big threat to bike and ped alternatives. -- Roger