Generating and Prioritizing Funding for Active Transportation

report cover woman bikingA new fact sheet, Generating and Prioritizing Funding for Active Transportation, lays out success stories, best practices, and resources for advocates looking to secure sustainable funding for active transportation and transit at the regional level.

This November, residents of the greater Portland Metro region will vote on a proposed transportation funding measure called Get Moving 2020. If passed, Measure 26-218 will make long-overdue safety investments on 17 of the most dangerous and congested regional roadways in the greater Portland region. The measure will build crosswalks, sidewalks, bike lanes; provide annual resources for safety improvements and Safe Routes to School projects; create a new, regional Youth Transit Access Pass that provides free transit passes to youth aged 14-18 across the region; and more. The Safe Routes Partnership in the Pacific Northwest strongly endorses this measure and is actively working with partners in the Getting There Together Coalition to galvanize community support.

How do progressive, transformative regional transportation measures like Get Moving 2020 come together? Who decides which specific projects will make it into the package that ultimately gets referred to voters? Ultimately, these decisions are made by metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), which allocate millions of dollars from the federal government for transportation for things like roads, bridges, biking and walking infrastructure, and air quality improvements. Depending on state law, MPOs can also work with state legislatures or local partners to develop regional funding packages through bonds or tax measures. And in the process, there is ripe opportunity for advocates to lock in new funding for active transportation and transit. 

A new fact sheet, Generating and Prioritizing Funding for Active Transportation, lays out success stories, best practices, and resources for advocates looking to secure sustainable funding for active transportation and transit at the regional level. The fact sheet also explains how advocates can work with regional transit authorities to influence how transit funds are invested, either by sitting on transit agency committees or running campaigns to support better transit projects.

This is the third in a series of fact sheets for active transportation advocates working at the regional level. Over the past ten years, the Safe Routes Partnership has focused on policy work at the regional level in targeted metropolitan areas that are part of the Regional Network Project, an initiative supported by Kaiser Permanente in Washington, DC, regions of Northern and Southern California, and the Pacific Northwest. Through this project, we advocated for healthy transportation options at the regional level by influencing policy, plans, and funding for large populations. 

Read the other fact sheets in this series: