- Biking advocates gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning to push for federal legislation.
- Rep. Earl Blumenauer has been a leading voice for bicycling in Washington for almost 30 years.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer hasn't had a car in DC for all 27 years he's served in Congress. Instead, the Oregon Democrat bicycles to work on the Hill and to his engagements around the city.
"It's healthier, it saves time, it saves a boatload of money, and I feel better," he told Insider of his biking habit on Thursday morning at a bicycling advocacy event in Washington.
The 74-year-old lawmaker has a short ride to work, but "on a nice morning, you just sometimes keep going," he added.
It was a nice morning — sunny and about 75 degrees — on Thursday when road safety advocates and elected officials gathered outside the Capitol to talk about federal legislation to improve bike infrastructure.
"I don't want to be simplistic here, but I really do believe the bicycle is the key to much of what ails us," Blumenauer told the group. "Burning calories instead of fossil fuel is how we will save the planet."
The group took about a 40-minute ride around downtown Washington to test out a few of the city's bike lanes. Blumenauer was partly responsible for making one of the lanes — a two-way protected path down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue — a reality.
While the mood on the ride was lighthearted, the event also featured speeches on the increasingly deadly consequences of unsafe infrastructure and reckless driving.
Jessica Hart talked about her five-year-old daughter Allison Hart, who was killed in 2021 while riding her bicycle a block from their home in DC, and two others — one a three-year-old and the other a 42-year-old dad of a toddler — who were also killed while cycling in Chicago and San Diego.
"DC has a great network of bike facilities, but it's nowhere near enough," Hart said. "Vision Zero is failing in DC and it is failing in too many communities across the country, in part because it lacks funding."
Biking advocates are pushing for a few pieces of federal legislation, including a bill that would unlock federal funds for biking and pedestrian infrastructure without requiring local governments to match the spending. The Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Active Transportation Act is named after a former US diplomat who was hit by a truck and killed last August as she was bicycling home from her sons' elementary school in Bethesda, Maryland.
Sarah Langenkamp's husband, Dan Langenkamp, joined advocates on the ride on Thursday and spoke about how the legislation could improve the infrastructure that failed his wife.
"She was actually going to take the route that I took today to get here, which was down the Capital Crescent trail," Langenkamp said of the day his wife was killed. "As we all know, it's just this beautiful piece of safe infrastructure. The problem is, of course, there's this gap between the Capital Crescent trail and most of the communities around it. Getting to that trail can be deadly."
The Act, which was introduced by Blumenauer and Rep. Jamie Raskin in the House in March, is designed to allow local governments to identify gaps in their biking and pedestrian infrastructure and request federal funding to address them. The legislation is expected to be introduced in the Senate by Maryland Democrats Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen in the next few weeks.
Langenkamp said he's confident the bill will get bipartisan support in the Senate. He noted that it appeals to conservatives because it gives local communities more control over federal money — and it's budget-neutral.
There are a smattering of Republican members of the so-called Congressional bike caucus, which Blumenauer leads. But, generally, Republicans haven't been supportive of legislation that would make biking safer and more accessible.
Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, recently told Insider that new bike lanes are "the height of stupidity," arguing that they increase carbon emissions by creating more congestion on roads. Romney's comments received significant backlash from biking advocates and others, who pointed out that there's plenty of evidence that better bike infrastructure gets more cyclists on the road, reduces driving, and cuts emissions."Every person on a bicycle is somebody who's not in a car in front of you," Blumenauer said.
He added, "I've been working with bike lane construction all my career, and I've heard the complaints and the arguments that they're concerned about congestion or damaged property. And then in a matter of months, people are putting in their real estate advertisements that it's next to a bike lane. These are extraordinarily popular."