All the politicians at the national and state levels are saying we’re spending more money than we’re bringing in.  That is not sustainable or responsible.

  Cutting spending is what I do when I have a higher out-go than income, but I could also get a second job.  I don’t know what a “second job” for government would be so increasing revenue for the government follows 2 possible paths.  The method that’s easiest to understand is to raise taxes.  But before we do that, shouldn’t we at least look at what we are spending our money on?  Maybe there’s money going places we don’t want it to.  Politicians on both sides have groups that they favor for either funding or votes.  We need to take a look at that.   Raising tax rates slows business growth and we surely don’t want more lay-offs now.   The other side of raising tax rates is keeping them low to spur business.  JFK said that a rising tide lifts all boats and he cut taxes.   Lower taxes can stimulate business establishment and growth as well as consumer spending.  Those can increase tax revenues without raising anyone’s tax rate.  However, that won’t get us out of the bind we’re in right now.   Cutting spending looks like the best idea to me.  To the specific point about spending on cycling, we need to ask if it’s more financially sound than spending on cars?  That’s not a straightforward question because we’re not starting from zero.  Our cities are already built and they weren’t designed for pedestrians and bikes as primary transportation means.  In fact we’re still building with the car as the main design consideration and that continues to skew the whole situation in favor of cars beyond the obvious convenience advantages cars have.  We have spread out towns with wide streets and vast expanses covered in asphalt outside of every store.  The scale of our car centered cities works against cycling.  Denmark has a  high bicycle ridership because they implemented a high tax on car ownership, built a great bike lane system, and were blessed with flat terrain in a tiny place. We can’t shrink our cities or make hilly ones flat, and raising taxes on cars wouldn’t be politically acceptable here at this time.  Cars are here to stay, they’ll be electric cars in the future, but they’re not going away.  We’ve made incremental increases in bicycle ridership, but our numbers are still so small that our political power is tiny compared to the majority of car drivers.  What we do have is a sound product and I think cycling will grow and gain power over time.  Our situation in Tucson is better than many places, but we could improve our residential street connectivity.  That wouldn’t cost as much as dedicated bike lanes like they have in Denmark.  One thing that can be done without any funding is to require new residential and business developments to provide bike/ped routes thru the property when the property is so large it creates a barrier.
Right now tho, it seems that we need to make some deep cuts, and if things get better we can start spending more again later.  We might discover that we are better off without some programs.  Conversely, we might cut some that can’t be restarted easily if at all.  Argh.  I’m glad I’m not a politician.    

The picture on the cover of the report says it all:
Ignore all the alternatives, ignore the environment – WE WANT MORE HIGHWAYS! (and hence more trucks, cars, pavement etc.)

rynsa,

You didn’t say where the money would come from.  Are you suggesting that the industries you mentioned should pay the national debt?  We are in a serious bind and even our left leaning president has said we must make cuts. 

I am for business, even big business because they provide the goods and services at prices we can afford.  What would a bicycle cost if mom and pop companies mined the iron, milled the ore, made it into steel, made the tubing and welded them into a frame.  I can tell you a bike would cost more than a years wages for the average person.  Large industry brings costs down.

OK, I am for big business, little ones like mine too, but I am not for exploitation.  Companies who cheat need to be held accountable.    

This is a representative republic and nobody’s going to be taking our cars away.  Down the road, we will end up with electric cars powered by nuclear and renewable sources.

rynsa,
I didn’t say I like the bill, it’s just that I see the need for severe cuts.  In fact, I’d cut even deeper.  I wouldn’t be building any new roads for cars right now except in places where they show an absolute need.  I sure wouldn’t spend on rail.  I would spend on needed maintenance tho, and on new bike infrastructure.  Bike infrastructure is cheap compared to car roads.With that said, I don’t think we’re going to get enough people out of their internal combustion cars and onto bikes to make a noticeable difference to the air.  As New York and other cities are making their changes the benefits of bicycle infrastructure will be seen more widely and more people will petition their own towns for better infrastructure.  Bicycle ridership across the country will go up but I doubt it’ll make any difference to the air quality.  America is full of sprawling cities where tons of people made the choice to live ridiculously far from their workplace and most of them probably won’t ever ride a bike to work no matter how good the bike infrastructure is.  We will always have cars.  I hope we see electric cars get to the place where they are a viable alternative (plus new, safe, nuclear power plants) and then we will see an improvement in air quality.   

Mr. Jardee,

By the way…

“I don’t think we’re going to get enough people out of their internal combustion cars and onto bikes to make a noticeable difference to the air… We will always have cars.”

I sincerely hope that you are wrong.  The true horror of the car culture is how pervasive it is, seeping like a poisonous ooze into every corner of the human experience.  It’s not just an air quality issues (though that is certainly a problem) — CO2 from tailpipes, and so on.  It’s also accidents, long-term health costs from injury and a sedentary lifestyle, noise pollution, industrial manufacturing, and a massive percentage of the global economy that keeps burning oil, destroying natural areas, and heating the planet in an effort to keep cars on the road. 

Have you, for instance, pondered the life cycle of the ubiquitous dashboard cup holder?  Consider the carcinogenic plastics molded by teenage girls in urban China at slave-wage rates, and the toxic runoff from those plants.  Consider the shipment of those products thousands of miles across the Pacific by oil-burning ocean liners, then hauled across the land in diesel trucks to American main streets.  Consider the sugary drinks held in those cup holders, inevitably from crappy fast food restaurants that buy, cook and distribute beef (another huge source of greenhouse gas emissions).  Consider the landfills of America filled to the brim with last year’s model, and the thousands upon thousand of years it will take to reintegrate those substances into the earth. 

I mean, the environmental costs of perpetuating just this one tiny aspect of a much larger and inherently pathological system are absolutely immense.  The problem here is comprehensive, and I’m afraid we will come to sorely regret our addiction to the car culture.

rynsa