Dedicated Bike Funding Remains Minuscule

[The $1M Jefferson Avenue bicycle boulevard as it passes an elementary school. You're welcome to complain about bike lanes if your complaint is that they are not good enough. The only trace of the bike boulevard is the tiny green sign next to the stoplight.]

For some reason, bicycles and bike lanes cause drivers to lose their minds. There are a lot of reasons for this, most having to do with what I call the "windshield perspective", the way in which many people are unable to view a city street from outside an isolating motor vehicle. There are way too many examples to list -- see the latest Evan Ramstad column -- but the recent, welcome Minnpost piece about a Star Tribune op-ed is an attempt at a corrective that, if anything, actually understates its case! 

Cities and counties rarely have meaningful capital funding specifically dedicated to for bicycle projects. As Keefer points out, the amount of money is small: around $2.5 million a year in Minneapolis, which laps all other Metro area cities in this regard. For capital costs, bicycle project funding is often pitted against other worthy causes like playgrounds, rec centers, fire stations, or bridges in disrepair. (Despite being the smallest costs, bike rarely do well in those scenarios.) 

[Transit funding, here dwarfed by highway funding, is far larger than bicycle infrastructure funding (as it should be). The 'MPO' dot here is the "regional solicitation" step I refer to.]

One of the few bike-specific funding steams that exist is part of the regional solicitation, unallocated Federal transportation dollars that are directed to MPOs. (See the Northeast Hennepin / 1st project I wrote about today at streets.mn for an example of this money at work. Even there, the bike lanes are part of larger pedestrian and transit improvements.) 

In the Twin Cities, our leaders decide to use some of that Federal money for bike-specific projects, while many other metro area do not. Most recently, there was $40 million for a two-year period divided amongst 11 projects in the seven-county metro, chosen out of 50 applications. (The list of winners appears below.) Meanwhile, other countries spend a billion dollars a year on bicycle infrastructure; most notably the Netherlands, where their national and local budgets include spending $1.2 billion over 7 years.  

[Here's the Federal/State bike-specific funding for the entire metro area for 2023-2024.]

A  detail at the end of the short piece illustrates this very well. Keefer writes:

Minneapolis has a robust bike infrastructure built out through city, state and federal initiatives. The city was one of four communities that received funding through the 2008 Federal Highway Administration’s Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program – a total amount of $25 million that was spent in the region over a 10-year period.  

I wrote my dissertation on this project. That amount of money, dedicated to bike infrastructure, was impossibly rare back when it arrived in 2005. That’s what made it so special and important; because the money was specifically for bicycle infrastructure (and nothing else) it allowed Minneapolis and a few other cities to begin bicycle planning and develop new treatments and designs. If the money had just been part of a larger transportation pot, as it almost always was before that point, bike infrastructure could have been watered down or folded into a highway or road expansion. 

[Here's what that $25M (over eight years) bought you in "Minneapolis Area" and four other cities.]

Bike infrastructure funding is a rounding error compared to even a minor highway project, let alone a major one. To offer an extreme example: at the most recent TAB meeting, someone mentioned that a proposed interchange at Highways 65 and 10 in Blaine will cost $250,000,000. That’s likely a low estimate; the cost could grow immensely. That fact that commentators, angry drivers, or columnists focus on bicycles as examples of wasteful spending is laughable.  

One further note:

Here is some data about the NTPP money from a post-mortem study that came out in 2014, showing where the money went. 

[The map of “Minneapolis” is particularly funny: it shows a large “bicycle boulevard” infrastructure project in St. Paul, for example, which was funded here along Jefferson Avenue, pictured at the top of this post. If you go there today, you’ll see almost no sign of the >$1 million bike infrastructure investment. In some places, you’ll see no sign of bike infrastructure at all!]

[Different cities spent the money in different ways.]