If you like trails, sidewalks and nicely landscaped road projects in your Alaska community, the U.S. House has good news for you. Members voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to restore the law guaranteeing that a portion of federal highway aid is spent on enhancements like landscaping, sidewalks and trails. The House Appropriations Committee had killed the set-aside for enhancements when it passed the spending bill to fund next year's transportation projects.
The guaranteed funding for enhancements has been a great success since it was first included in federal law in 1991. With the set-aside, Congress broke the road-building lobby's stranglehold on the rich vein of federal highway money. Instead of continuing to build nothing but roads, states and communities had to think more broadly about transportation. Instead of jamming the maximum amount of traffic through a particular area, planners were forced to consider ways of mitigating the impact on neighborhoods and communities.
In Alaska, the enhancement set-aside has helped fund bike paths and pullouts on the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm. It has funded the Chena River bike path in Fairbanks and the pathway on the Homer spit. It has funded a footbridge in McCarthy, a boardwalk in Akutan, winter trail staking in the Bush and restoration of Castle Hill in Sitka. It has funded sidewalks in downtown Ketchikan and handicap access improvements in several communities. If continued, the enhancement money will support a variety of projects planned throughout the state, such as coastal trails in Dillingham and Petersburg and safety upgrades to Front Street in Nome.
Alaska Congressman Don Young is chair of the House Transportation Committee, so he should have played a key role in this fight. The Appropriations Committee was poaching on his committee's turf when it started rewriting the law dealing with federal highway funds. But Rep. Young missed Thursday's House vote. He was (and still is) in Alaska. The day after the vote, his staff reported that he was in Fort Yukon. He traditionally heads to his hometown this time of year to go moose hunting.
Rep. Young was sympathetic to keeping the set-aside for enhancements and increasing money for public transit, according to Alaska transit and trail advocates who met with him last month. Multiple calls to Rep. Young's staff last week produced no official word about his position on those questions, though. Perhaps he helped restore the enhancement funds from a distance through proxies on the scene. Perhaps he was disengaged and all turned out well without his intervention.
Whatever Rep. Young's role was, there are still important steps along the road to final passage where the enhancement set-aside could be derailed. But Thursday's vote in the House vastly improves the odds that this valuable federal funding policy will continue, as it should.
BOTTOM LINE: Whether or not U.S. Rep. Don Young helped, the U.S. House did the right thing when it restored the funding guarantee for trails, sidewalks and landscaping.