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Advocacy:

Paseo Bridge Bike/Ped Access: MoDOT is building a new quarter billion dollar bridge in the heart of Kansas City. It could provide the first safe bicycle/pedestrian crossing of the Missouri River near downtown Kansas City. We've been working on this for years and now it's going to move or die forever in the next month or so.

Advocacy:

Hwy 45 Bike/Ped Access: MoDOT is building a new highway through Parkville, Missouri. Guess what--their plans for accommodating bicycling and walking are inadequate, plus they forgot to include any funding for them.

Advocacy:

Bicycling License Plate: Many other states have 'Share the Road with Bicycles' license plates. Why not Missouri, too? In 1 minute you can show your support.

Missouri's Senator Kit Bond will become chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety when congress re-convenes. He will be in a key position to influence the funding priorities for transportation bills coming down the line, including the TEA-3 re-authorization slated for next year.

Bond's press release says:

Senator Kit Bond will begin the reauthorization of the federal highway bill with a series of meetings around Missouri towards the end of this week. The meetings will provide Bond the opportunity to hear directly from state and local leaders. And they will allow state and local leaders and Bond to begin working closely together on a unified strategy to improve Missouri's transportation infrastructure.
. . .
Bond will meet with state and local leaders in St. Joseph this Thursday and St. Louis and Cape Girardeau this Friday. Additional meetings will be held next week in Joplin, Springfield and Kansas City. Bond will be accompanied by representatives from the Missouri Department of Transportation. While Bond's goal is to increase Missouri's share of federal transportation funds, it is the state's jobs to identify and budget for specific projects.

Note: Here are the specific meeting times, as far as we know. Meeting should be open to the public, although you might call ahead to find out details.

• Thursday, December 5, 11:30 am, St. Joseph City Council Office 1100
  Frederick
  
• Friday, December 6, 12 noon, St. Louis, Comfort Inn Hotel, Page and 270
  
• Friday, December 6, Cape Girardeau, evening, details to be announced
  
• Kansas City, Springfield and mid-MO to be announced
  

Along with Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, chairman of the full Environment and Public Works Committee, Bond will help write the law that, in large part, governs how and where tens of billions of federal dollars are spent to improve the nation's highways. The rewriting of this bill occurs only once every six years.

The new law builds upon previous reauthorizations, including the 1992 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and the 1998 Transportation Equity Act, which expires September 30, 2003.

Visit Senator Bond's website for his complete statement.

The News Tribune's report on Bond's meeting in St. Louis.

The KC Star covered Bond's new committee assignment. The good news for Missouri highways, according to the Star, is that Bond has a knack for increasing Missouri's share of funding, for whatever projects he has worked on in the past . . .


If you support funding of cycling and pedestrian accomodations in the new law, it will be well worth your time to write, call, or email Senator Bond periodically over the next several months to let him know of your support. permanent link to article: "Senator Kit Bond to tour Missouri discussing transportation issues"
posted by Brent Hugh at 12/04/2002 06:08:00 PM |comment on this article