[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 4122-4123]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          CYCLING: A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO TRANSPORTATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Often, here on Capitol Hill, issues large and small 
get sort of lost in the fog, but it was a pleasure last week to watch 
some moments of clarity as hundreds of bicycle advocates flooded 
Capitol Hill delivering a simple, concise, powerful message that makes 
a difference in terms of how people live in their communities large and 
small. They were delivering a message that Congress ought to deal 
meaningfully, in a comprehensive fashion, with the transportation 
legislation that has been stalled. They were delivering a message of: 
Don't attack cycling. Embrace it as part of a comprehensive approach to 
transportation. It is, after all, the most efficient form of urban 
transportation ever designed.
  Burning calories instead of fossil fuel doesn't just save you money 
and make you feel better, it's good for our communities. It's the 
cheapest, fastest way to reduce congestion and air pollution. A very 
simple illustration is you can park eight to 10 bicycles where one 
automobile resides.
  It's good for the economy. Over $6 billion a year is involved with 
the cycling industry, employing over a million people. They brought 
very specific examples. A study from Wisconsin, $1.5 billion of 
economic impact and 13,200 jobs in an industry that too often does not 
get its attention. In my community of Portland, Oregon, a medium-sized 
city, it's $100 million a year in our economy and well over 1,000 jobs.
  Cycling is also very good for our children and our families. Being 
able to walk or bike safely to school helps kids actually perform 
better. Parents are less stressed. It could save some of the 6.5 
billion trips a year of over 30 billion miles just shuttling kids back 
and forth to school.
  People, frankly, were outraged that my Republican friends had 
targeted, in their transportation bill, elimination of the Safe Routes 
to School program. Other than them, I haven't met anybody in America 
who is against this program, that empowers our children and helps our 
families.
  Now is a golden opportunity as the transportation bill collapsed and 
we're back at the drawing board to look at how we leverage that $8 
billion that we have invested in Federal money over the last 20 years 
that has touched every State and hundreds of communities. Now is the 
time to celebrate that progress. Now is the time to commit ourselves to 
a comprehensive transportation bill that makes it safer

[[Page 4123]]

to cycle and walk. Now is the time to have a transportation bill that 
will make every one of our communities more livable and our families 
safer, healthier, and more economically secure.

                          ____________________