Tell Gov. Newsom to Preserve Funding for Healthy Streets
The Active Transportation Program (ATP), a state program created to encourage active modes of transportation like walking and biking, is under threat. Each two-year funding cycle, the ATP divvies up roughly $500 million to worthwhile transit projects, but without continued pressure from concerned Californians, money that could go to climate-friendly transit solutions will instead, once again, get pumped into highways.
In January, Governor Newsom proposed cutting $200 million from the ATP — a number that leapt to $600 million in his May revised budget. A $600 million cut to the ATP “could delay and jeopardize projects … and would likely eliminate a full future cycle of ATP grants,” according to the California Bike Coalition.
The ATP, run by the California Department of Transmission, funds things like bike lanes and pedestrian safety improvements. “Cities are desperate for resources to make their streets safer and more suited to biking and walking,” Streets For All founder Michael Schneider wrote in the LA Times, “but local alternatives to driving increasingly have to compete with each other for resources from the state.”
The Executive Director of Streets Are For Everyone, Damian Kevitt, said, “The Governor of California has set some very ambitious goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases across the state. Yet transportation, primarily vehicles on roads, is the leading cause of GHG emissions. While electric vehicles will eventually help, there also has to be a shift in how people travel. That means improving public transportation and creating safer ways for pedestrians and cyclists to travel. ATP is vital for funding the projects that reduce GHG and save lives.”
We must also maintain funding for ATP to continue the vital work of building safer streets in California. Last year, Los Angeles suffered one of the highest rates of pedestrian deaths in the nation, and, for the first time in nine years, the city saw more traffic-related deaths than homicides.
Thanks to concerted pressure from thousands of constituents, state legislators restored full ATP funding in the Assembly and Senate’s joint proposed budget.
But the work isn’t done yet, and this is where we at SAFE need you: tell Governor Newsom that he must keep the ATP funding in his final budget, which is set to be released on June 15.
Use CalBike’s form (on the right side of the page) to email the governor and let him know that we want our tax dollars to go toward safe, walkable, and bikeable neighborhoods — not more congestion, pollution, and pedestrian deaths.
