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The Public Policy
Biking With Bureaucrats
Flat tires for Obama’s transportation policy.
Bureaucrats are often characterized as faceless. But the modern bureaucrat is a political creature. He spends his time seeking to control the lives of those who pay his salary in ways his funders would find alternatively risible or riotable. Thus today’s civil servant must be tight-lipped about his work and adept at evading questions.
That’s why Ray LaHood, President Obama’s retiring transportation secretary, was so refreshing. LaHood, a former Republican congressman, never seemed comfortable with the requisite taciturnity of the bureaucrat. Asked in 2009 about his livability initiatives, LaHood responded, “It is a way to coerce people out of their cars.” Talk about transparency in government! If only all of Obama’s lieutenants were this forthright about their bullying.
LaHood came to power amidst much inside-the-Beltway flower-showering. He was a Republican in President Obama’s supposedly bipartisan cabinet. He was a moderate, one of only three Class of ’94 freshmen who never signed the Contract for America. And he was taking the helm of the Department of Transportation, for which the president had big plans. Joe Biden called LaHood, “the star of the Cabinet.”
LaHood himself summed up the administration’s transportation policy with more trademark frankness: “Today, I want to announce a sea change,” he wrote. “People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”
Republicans wondered if LaHood was on drugs. But he was serious, and under his stewardship the Department of Transportation became a case study for bureaucrats looking to pick winners and losers based on their own enlightened preferences.
The most blatant manifestation of this was LaHood’s pet project, the DOT’s TIGER grant program. Started in 2010, the government awarded hundreds of millions of dollars every year to infrastructure projects that it considered innovative and cutting-edge – like bike paths and walkways.
The DOT was particularly keen on “multimodal” initiatives, meaning those that combined different modes of transportation, be it car, train, or bike. One 2012 TIGER grant went to a multimodal facility in Pittsburgh that linked bus service with road improvements and a “bike and pedestrian access bridge.” Another grant was awarded to a multimodal project in Birmingham, Ala., which “is considered highly dangerous for bicyclists and pedestrians.”
Other grants were more explicit. Washington, DC got $10 million for bike paths around the Anacostia River. (Anyone familiar with Southeast DC knows the lack of cycling is the least of that area’s problems.) Another $5 million was assigned to build a commuter center in rural Jefferson County, W.Va., accommodating bus and rail, and surrounded by walking paths.
It’s not that none of the TIGER projects have merit. One of this year’s grants was to help restore the beleaguered I-95 Viaduct bridge in Providence, R.I. (although even there the DOT found a way to brag about benefitting cyclists). But TIGER is a quintessential example of the feds dictating policy, and inflicting people with products and services they don’t want.
This federalization of our transportation system started well before LaHood. The federal government spearheaded the construction of the interstate highway system in 1956. After its completion, the feds clung to their new powers, carrot-and-sticking the states with funding and the law to set a national transportation policy. Eventually highways fell out of vogue, and “intermodal” became the new buzzword.
Today states must set aside 10% of their federal highway funds for “enhancement” projects, which, as one DOT bureaucrat told the Huffington Post, means “almost exclusively bicycle and pedestrian projects.”
Into this bubbling federal laboratory stepped Ray LaHood. Armed with more than $48 billion in stimulus funds and billions more in TIGER grants, LaHood furthered the government’s obsession with antiquated forms of transportation, coercing — or at least nudging — people out of their cars by trying to flood them with other options.
But Americans, in all their wonderful stubbornness, just aren’t cooperating. According to the government’s own Census data, 86% of Americans drive to work, and 76% do so alone. Less than 3% walk to work, while only 0.6% ride a bicycle. The cities where Americans bike tend to be either wealthy or dominated by college life. Biking isn’t a godsend for a weary commuter. It’s a fitness ritual for the trendy and comfortable; a bit like yoga, except the government isn’t hurling money at meditation studios.
If Washington is going to dangle transportation dollars over the states’ heads like a leering cat lady, it should do it in a way that serves the 86% of motorists, rather than the 0.6% of cyclists. It’d be a nice gesture, especially since life for We the Drivers is growing more aggravating. By 2020, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute estimates that the average carbureting commuter will spend seven more hours stuck in traffic every year, and waste an additional six gallons of gas. If the federal government must control our transportation policy, shouldn’t its first priority be to meet the demand of today’s drivers?
All together now, gentlemen: We! Are! The Eighty-Six Percent! Not to start a riot in Oakland, but I don’t see myself trading my muffler for a bike chain any time soon. The car, perhaps more than any other invention, enables individual freedom, allowing us to go where we want when we please. That’s a fine thing and doesn’t require any enforced evolution by bureaucrats (though it does require funding).
About the Author
Matt Purple is The American Spectator’s assistant managing editor.
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Robbins Mitchell| 2.13.13 @ 6:10AM
I don't call it "refreshing" when a Chicago Combine prick like LaHood says he thinks the government needs to find a way to "coerce people out of their cars"....I call it arrogant and clownish
GobBluthe| 2.13.13 @ 9:14AM
He's from Peoria.
spike59| 2.13.13 @ 6:34AM
a bit like yoga, except the government isn’t hurling money at meditation studios.
==========================
in Chicago, that's part of Dead Fish's plans
Pecos Pete| 2.13.13 @ 6:56AM
But, but, but ... when King O's target of $10 per gallon of gas is reached, more people will be walking and riding bikes to work, to movies, to restaurants, to the grocery store, to the local National Health and Fitness Center (required by Executive Order to reduce medical costs and to prevent death by bullet) and to visit their relatives. Can't you see your grandparents cycling across town to visit the new grandbaby?
We will enjoy "public" transportation with electrically powered comfortable buses and trains with pickup and delivery points within easy walking distance of the user's destination.
The trucking industry will also enjoy the benefits of our future with smaller, lighter engines and space-age light-weight trailers fueled by biodiesel and/or hydrogen.
Airplanes will be powered by rubber bands.
No more oil based internal combustion engines polluting the air.
Forward to Nirvana.
CJW| 2.13.13 @ 9:02AM
Senor Pete
Here in Pgh they just completed the last section of a bike trail from Pgh to Washington DC, about 330 miles. Most of it is old unused railroad rights of way. How many will bike from Pgh to DC?
Mike G| 2.13.13 @ 9:27AM
It's not that people will bike 330 miles, it's that the THOUGHT of it will make them feel good about themselves.
CJW| 2.13.13 @ 10:07AM
I feel better already.
Moe Blotz| 2.13.13 @ 10:32AM
The last time Pennsylvania used an old railroad right of way to build a road from Pittsburgh, yins (or you'uns) wound up with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I may be wrong, it could have been a road going to Pittsburgh.
CJW| 2.13.13 @ 11:41AM
You are correct, Moe, on the road. On the y'all or you all, it is yunz, and yinz to some. How are you familiar with pghspeak?
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.13.13 @ 8:34PM
Okay CJW, time to test your knowledge of old TV and music trivia. If you remember the TV series "Route 66", and the song of the same name, which was done by Nat King Cole, Asleep at The Wheel, and the Rolling Stones (and is the name of a club in the Roppongi District of Tokyo, but that's another story for another day), as a motivator for a contest this week, I threw together this ditty to the tune of the old song:
If you ever plan to pedal west
Travel my way not the sky way that’s the best
Get yours kicks
On a Schwinn 26
You could run from Chicago to LA
Like young Gump did but it’s a long long way
Get your kicks
On a Schwinn 26
Steal one in St. Louie
Then the tire goes BLEWIE
With a helmet on your head
You might not be dead
Take a trip to the ER
Wish you still had your car
Lay there in a coma
With your hematoma
Think fast
Body cast
Obamacare insurance
So you get hip to this timely tip
If you want to take an ambulance trip
Get your kicks
On a Schwinn 26
Get your kicks
On a Schwinn 26
Get your kicks
On a Schwinn 26
CJW| 2.13.13 @ 9:45PM
Albert,
You is a genius.
Route 66 by Nelson Riddle.
We watched that show and always drew corvettes in grade school art class. We all wanted to drop out of school at 16 and ride around the country in a corvette meeting beautiful women and saving people.
Martin Milner and George Maharis. Glenn Corbett replaced George. Great show.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.13.13 @ 9:56PM
If you get ME TV (Memory Entertainment TV, Channel 69.3 out of Allentown area), Mondays at 3 a.m. you can get your kicks there (most of the rest of the week, they show Combat! in that time slot) checking out the rerun (or setting the DVR, 11 am is when they run Rockford).
CJW| 2.13.13 @ 10:56PM
Thanks.
The Shapiro book is interesting. The 1950's Sid Caesar "Your Show of Shows" (before our time) had as young writers: Larry Gelbart (MASH), Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Mel Tolkin (All in the Family), Neil Simon, Sheldon Keller (Dick Van Dyke Show an Odd Couple), and others. That is an incredibly talented writing staff.
Petronius| 2.13.13 @ 1:08PM
Rubber bands are Not rubber. They are petrochemical composition.
Brother John| 2.13.13 @ 7:21AM
Yet another clown who doesn't understand what he's talking about. Screw these people who think you ought to live tightly packed against one another in hi-rises in cities. I live where I do because I like it, and I enjoy my commutes.
There is no reason for a department of transportation.
GET RID OF IT.
John Navratil| 2.13.13 @ 8:27AM
Brother John,
While we are at it, is there any reason any departments other than State, Treasury, Defence, Justice and Interior? Can we not do commerce without a government agency. Would we not be able to grow crops without the Dept. of Agriculture. It seems we could probably do a better job of education without Washington's "help." I'm all for supporting veterans, but do we really need a separate department for that? The President has twenty-two "direct reports." That's a lot.
CJW| 2.13.13 @ 10:14AM
John
The Dept of Defense was originally the Dept of War. More descriptive, and better to scare the enemy. We should go back to Secretary of War. Obama will probably change it to Secretary of Appeasement.
All we need is Dept of Defense, State, Treasury.
Thank Jimmy Carter for Dept of Education and Energy. Those really helped education and energy.
Thank LBJ for HEW. That has really helped housing.
Le Cracquere| 2.13.13 @ 12:14PM
I don't think anyone OUGHT to live in dense cities, but I do think it should be OK to build or serve them for people who want to--which is exactly what U.S. transportation, banking, and appropriations policy has worked against for a long time. TRY creating an urban high-rise area somewhere new--go ahead; I'll watch. You'll never get to see whether or not the market goes for it, because it's all but certain that wherever you are, it'll be illegal to try.
The funny thing is, despite Ray LaHood's ill-chosen words, nobody has yet been coerced out of his car or suburban home, and nobody's likely to be. Me, I don't particularly like messing with cars, and would bike/walk nearly everywhere if I could. And yet decades of decisions at every level of government have been--coercively, mind you--designed to make such preferences difficult or impossible to carry out. Both the U.S. and state DoTs have been pretty up-front about their aims to *socially engineer* citizens and places into a one-size-fits-all, car-dependent mold. That's not big government? That's not statist? Or is a big-gov't nanny state okay when it meddles with the freedom and living decisions of the sort of people you think you'd dislike? Coercive bureaucrats were okay back when they were goring the oxen of the Fahrvergnügen-impaired?
I'd be semi-okay with eliminating DoTs across the board; letting the free market work would be a fine idea. But it'd certainly be a first; let's not pretend otherwise.
TLP| 2.13.13 @ 9:18AM
Don't you mean: D.C. Got $10 Million for a STOLEN Bike Path?
If you read what Tyrrell's Grandson has written here it doesn't take All Day to figure out that this has nothing to do with Transportation and everything to do with making life more livable for Democrat Voters. Those in New York and L.A. Those in Martha's Vineyard and Chappaqua. Cambridge and Nantucket.
Maybe, if they can ride their bikes, they'll be too tired to worry about whether they still have a Job tomorrow. A Healthcare Plan they can afford. Their House. Money for College. Their Retirement.
Maybe, if we build that Stolen Bike Path in D.C. Eric Holder's People won't otherwise spend that time wondering why they have the Highest Unemployment Rates in the Country, or remembering that one of the first things Obama did when he got into Office was to Eliminate the Private School Vouchers for the Poor Black Kiids, in D.C. even as he was shipping HIS KIDS off to Super Private School because "The D.C. Public Schools don't meet MY DAUGHTERS' Standards".
Everything Liberals demand, is evidence of their Dementia.
You can't pay off your Debts by Borrowing Money. You can't pay off your Debts by Printing Money and Buying it back from yourself.
You can't keep repeating the same disasterous policies of Marxism/Soialism/Communism. We can't be 18th on the List of Countries that are easiest to do business. We can't keep Spending $1,000,000,000,000 MORE, Than we take in. We can't have Half the Country on Public Assistance.
Petronius| 2.13.13 @ 1:13PM
And the big losers on this are the former property owners who had their land taken from them without ANY compensation. Can you say KATY Trail? When the RR tracks were taken up, the right of way was supposed to revert to the former owners who were just plain screwed by Washington and Jeff City.
cicero| 2.13.13 @ 3:32PM
Petronius - The biggest losers will be those same folks who voted these guys for another 4 years. The rise in the price of a gallon of gas hits the lower middle class the hardest. They still have to get to work, andd most don't have jobs walking distance from home, or the end of the public trans line. But they voted for them in droves. The money spent on bike paths and jogging paths for thee idle wealthy will have to be paid for by someone. Guess who will be hit when the currency is inflated to pay for the borrowed money? Certainly not the bearucrat who makes in escess of $100k. The great thing about a democracy is that the majority get what they ask for, The tragedy of a demoracy is that the majority get what they vote for.
Petronius| 2.13.13 @ 5:32PM
Cic
Are you telling me the cross we bear is being to intelligent, and knowing better but not being "in the club" of those who decide who makes it and who doesn't?