Ultimately, this sort of thing should be paid for with local and state taxes.

That being said, I have used the Withlacoochee Trail, which is a Rails-to-Trails project, and that likely would never have happened if not for federal expenditures.

The US is in horrible financial shape. Not just broke, but massively indebted. Huge cuts in spending are necessary if we are to save ourselves. I don’t think that increased federal spending on infrastructure is going to be the magic bullet that saves us.

No, I’m certainly NOT assuming “union wages ensure quality.” Reread what I said: part of motives of the Davis Bacon Act is to ensure quality, it doesn’t matter WHAT the “prevailing wages” of a particular state are.

Let me give YOU an example. If you go into an auto repair shop, and have to pay the same hourly job rate for somebody to fix your car, no matter who that guy is, which guy would YOU choose: a mechanic, with 10 years of experience, who has gone to the school sponsored by the manufacturer of your brand of automobile, OR the high school kid the shop owner just hired that morning to WASH THE CARS? This is the way the Davis Bacon Act works: to give a disincentive to the hiring of cheap, unqualified labor on government projects; you hire THE MOST QUALIFIED, MOST SKILLFUL WORKMEN YOU CAN because you’re going to pay the same wage no matter what.

If the Feds were not in control of the Interstate system, and where it goes in the 48 contiguous fiefdoms we call “states,” it has been proven — by the experience of other countries — that the only highways we would have would be from rich-guy’s-house-to-rich-guy’s-house over on the East coast; and getting products to market across this nation would be a nightmare.

I don’t get your point about Feds needing to dictate where roads are going. Most road building, especially road building within cities, is a local issue and should be locally funded.

So, the question for GOPs (pronounced “gawps”; as in “I gawps mine, too bad if you don’t gawps yours”) is, basically, this:

Since the activity of bicycling to work in inclement weather can be so gnarly (RED ALERT! The proceeding was a possible HIPPIE TERM!), how can we accomplish it and still keep our Florsheims shined and our Brooks Brothers free of wrinkles?

(snicker) Good luck with that, dude!

Paul – Yeah, the problem with Gene’s congressman certainly isn’t an “at best” situation. He’s obviously following the Grand Old Pinhead party line of playing to their “base”: Big Oil and Big Auto. If it don’t benefit those two, it ain’t a “responsible” investment.

But he doesn’t go for all that “hippie crap.” He has commuted by bike in the past, but he did so in his military uniform. He has no use for a bearded guy in Birkenstock telling him how great it is that he’s saving the environment. In fact, I think he’d see such a pat on the back as a disincentive to ride.

Ok, I have a point in here somewhere. I see conservatives as actual and potential cyclists, but as a group that wants to be seen as distinctly different than liberals. I think they want different styles, different reasons and different identities. Much like they drive cars on the same roads as liberals, the actual cars they drive tend to look a lot different. And they like it that way.

So you notice Cantor didn’t go off about road cyclists having a ride on the weekend? Notice how he characterized the bike share program as “free” and as a “government program”, but didn’t actually call out the bike paths by name? That’s the wedge. He’s exploiting the liberalness of it all.

We just need to not let him use that wedge. We need to point out the commuters using Custis to get to their jobs. We need to point out that people “rent” bikes from a private entity for the bike share, much like people rent cars from Avis for business trips.

Conservatives cyclists can be a big ally on this subject, but probably wont be if they think it’s a liberal cause. Pointing out how this dovetails with conservative values, I think, is the way to get conservatives who are already cyclists to tell their congressmen how they feel.

On the other hand, you have the Mt Vernon Trail, the Custis Trail and the Capital Crescent Trail near where I live that see very heavy bike commuter traffic, even in the dead of winter. Here’s a nice link describing it. http://planitmetro.com/2011/05/13/learning-about-bicycle-commuters/ To put it simply and bluntly, you’d have to be a idiot to not support the tiny dollar cost of maintenance for the payback this kind of infrastructure brings.

The solution to the problem isn’t to defund bike infrastructure, it’s to be reasonably smart about where you put it and why. A blanket “bike infrastructure doesn’t work” attitude just demonstrates your congressman isn’t fully examining the issue. At best.

Here’s a crack at it:

It’s like giving one guy $100 to teach Swahili to immigrants from Kenya, and giving another guy $1 to teach them English. There’s a whole lot more benefit on both sides by teaching them English. But it’s going to be a whole lot easier to show instant results by teaching them Swahili, because they come from a society oriented to Swahili.

I dunno. Does that work? Got a better one.?