The Register-Guard: Representatives gear up to protect cycling interests

Here are two clues about how seriously Rep. Peter DeFazio takes bicycling as a legitimate means of getting around: 1. His pre-politics résumé includes work as a bicycle mechanic. 2. Unlike all those politicians who end up with six-lane highways named after them, DeFazio has a bicycle and pedestrian bridge named in his honor.

Cycling advocates say the lawmaker will be packing some serious street cred next month when he’s promoted to his new assignment in the U.S. House of Representatives. “I don’t know that there are any other former bike mechanics in Congress who are so proud of their heritage and commitment to bicycling. So he will be great,” said Tim Blumenthal, the head of a Colorado-based cycling-industry lobby group called Bikes Belong.

DeFazio, a Democrat who lives in Springfield and represents Oregon’s 4th Congressional District, is expected to be named chairman of the Surface Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee. He said much of his work there will deal with roads, bridges and mass transit. But as one of two Oregon congressmen with national reputations as big-time cycling advocates, DeFazio said he’ll use his newfound power to make sure bicycles are considered along with cars, buses, trucks and trains.

DeFazio said he’d try to deal with cycling issues on several fronts, many of which reflect the agendas being formulated by bicycle advocacy groups. He plans to hold hearings on the recently passed Safe Routes for Schools bill to ensure that states properly direct federal dollars into roadway improvements so that children can pedal or walk to school without encountering traffic dangers. DeFazio also wants to explore ways to improve rural highway safety for cyclists. He said recent cyclist deaths in his district have keened his interest in such improvements.

One idea, which came up during a meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, was to use a plan in place in Peters’ home state of Arizona. The plan requires that when a rural route is resurfaced or rebuilt, its shoulders are widened and a rumble strip installed to warn motorists when their vehicles veer outside their lane. DeFazio noted that two fellow cycling enthusiasts will help keep an eye out for bicycle interests in the next session of Congress.

The lawmakers include Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., and Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat who was just named to the House’s tax policy-writing Ways & Means Committee. “I think the cycling world is pretty excited about that amount of advocacy,” said DeFazio, who owns both a carbon-fiber Trek road bike and a Fuji comfort, or hybrid, bike that he rides around the bike trails and side streets of Washington, D.C., when Congress is in session. Oberstar has been a champion of cycling since he and his late wife took it up while she was battling cancer.

Blumenauer founded the Congressional Bike Caucus shortly after his 1996 election to the House. DeFazio was a charter member of the group, which started out with a dozen members from both parties. Today, it counts 164 representatives from 43 states and Washington, D.C., as members. With both DeFazio and Blumenauer representing Oregon, the state provides “a disproportionate percentage of our support” in Congress, said Blumenthal, the cycling lobbyist.

Local cycling advocates share their national counterparts’ optimism about the possibilities with DeFazio and other veteran pro-bike members of Congress on the rise. advertisement One of them, Jim Wilcox of the Eugene Bicycle Coalition, said he would love to see DeFazio channel some federal money back home to take care of unsafe areas for cycling. One of them is along otherwise bike-friendly Willamette Street, which narrows once traffic moves south of downtown Eugene and crosses 18th Avenue.

Bikes there are forced to share space with cars or move onto sidewalks, reducing safety for pedestrians. Another leader of the Eugene Bicycle Coalition, Sue Wolling, said Territorial Road west of Cottage Grove was a strong candidate for wider shoulders to accommodate cyclists. That was the rural road on which Eugene resident Jane Higdon was struck and killed by a log truck in May. DeFazio said it was too early to start promising fixes for specific cycling hot spots in his district.

But he said the change in leadership and in the way cycling is regarded in Congress makes the chance better than ever that such help could eventually be on its way. DeFazio recalled having to convince fellow members of Congress 15 years ago that cycling was a legitimate form of transportation. In 1991, he and then-Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., teamed up to amend a highway bill to require states to spend some of their federal highway dollars on paths for pedestrians and bicyclists. “A lot of my colleagues at the time thought of bikes as toys for kids,” DeFazio recalled. “There’s been a sea change since then.”