Monday Afternoon Commute - Mixing

Good afternoon

• MoveDC workshops start this week.
• Debate begins happened on funding Long Branch Bridge Park Phase II. Phase II includes an lengthened esplanade, and - one would suppose - brings Phase IIIB and the connection to Mount Vernon Trail closer to completion. [There are many errors in this bullet]
• People can bike while pregnant.
• Comparing mixing zones in DC and NYC
• AAA opposes Maryland Transportation funding plan
• Denver rolls out bike sharing

Comments

[Chris Slatt]

Long Bridge Park Phase II is funded. The bond passed; that link is from June. The Mt Vernon Trail connection is much more hung up on NPS approval / 14th Street Bridge EIS than it is on funding.

[Wayne Phyillaier]

Every month AAA gives me yet another reason to be glad I dropped them.

[Michael H.]

FYI - It's Long Bridge Park (not Long Branch Park).

In addition, the adjacent Long Bridge Drive is supposed to have bike lanes, once it has been renovated and repaired. That road leads to Boundary Channel Drive. Renovation of that road is more than a year behind schedule, because of delays associated with undergrounding utility lines. I'm not sure what the problem is but I haven't seen any work crews over there in months.

(If the Pentagon ever approves, then the existing trail from the Humpback Bridge could be extended to Boundary Channel Drive, creating another route between the park and the Mt. Vernon Trail. But so far, the Pentagon has not been willing to approve that trail extension.)

[Kolohe]

I was in Denver last summer, I could have sworn that the bike sharing stations were not only around but already operating.

[washcycle]

Kolohe, it's their 4th season. But these were expansion bikes.

[Richard Hoye]

Wayne Phyillaier is rightly critical of the AAA. So why does the League of American Bicyclists give the Keynote presentation to a AAA representative at the LAB Legislative conference?

[T]

AAA's perspective isn't entirely faulty. O'Malley's plan will raise the gas tax and refocus that money toward his mass transit goals (Red Line in Baltimore and Purple Line in Montgomery and Prince Georges). Every person you take away from driving and put into mass transit is a double loss for the system (loss of gas tax and increased share of state contribution needed for mass transit).

Everyone is welcome to put their faith in the governor's plan, but show me where bikes are going to be able to get through underneath Bethesda. Oh, right, they don't have enough funding because they're trying for a Red and Purple Line simultaneously. The most we have gotten is cycling signs in bizarre places like the one on New Hampshire Avenue right by the FDA.

And I 100% agree with AAA on stopping raids into the TTF. It hurts us too when they divert capital bonding away for ongoing operating expenses. We should be in full support of locking the TTF away. Instead it's been a piggy bank for every governor over the last quarter century. That has to stop.

[JimT]

The so-called raids on the Transportation Trust Fund have been repaid. But more important, they pale in comparison with the annual subsidy of the Maryland Transportation Trust Fund by the state's general fund. That has been going on so long that it has just about become an entitlement.

Until the state adds a 6% sales tax to gas and new automobiles, and sends none of that money to the transportation trust fund, it is not accurate to say that the transportation trust fund is being raided.

[T]

What subsidy? The GF isn't funding the TTF and never has except to pay back portions of money they're legally required pay. You do realize that parts of the sales and corporate income tax are already supposed to go to the TTF, right? Similarly taxes on certain items like tires.

The TTF raids occur in a variety of ways beyond literal raids. (This has also happened to Project Open Space, but that's another tale for another day). For instance, bonding used to buy MSP helicopters came out of transportation dollars. You can't repay the bonding, but slated projects are cancelled or pushed back.

My point is that supporting any tax hike tied to the TTF without Constitutionally locking it (as the Blue Ribbon Commission called for) is absolutely absurd. If you think the legislature will do the responsible thing then I would point to exhibit A, the unfunded Thornton mandate that eventually led to more raids and more taxes.