Pave First Ask Questions Later

Every few years, Congress rewrites the federal transportation bill, the quiet piece of legislation that decides what kinds of communities we get to live in. It is a profoundly revealing document that tells us what the country values, who it chooses to protect, and which futures it’s willing to fund.

And right now, that future is being written by someone who believes bicycling and walking don’t belong in it. Representative Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said this month that the next bill should only fund what he calls “traditional” infrastructure.

His words weren’t vague; they were precise:

“It’s gonna be a traditional highway bill — that means building roads and bridges, laying asphalt, pouring concrete… We’re not gonna be spending money on murals and train stations or bike paths or walking paths. We’re going to spend money on traditional infrastructure, that’s roads and bridges.”

When the person writing the bill says outright that safety infrastructure for people outside cars doesn’t count, we should take him at his word. This isn’t a debate about the artistic merit of murals. It’s about defining everything except driving as outside the federal mission. A move that would undo decades of progress on safe streets across the country.

Car-brain at its logical endpoint

This is the same lethal thinking that brought us the deadliest roads in the world and the dangerous fantasy that building more lanes will someday produce different results.

Calling bike lanes and sidewalks “not real infrastructure” is more than a rhetorical tic. It reflects a worldview in which the safety of people walking, biking, rolling, or taking transit is simply not part of the equation. In that worldview, mobility begins and ends with the automobile. Anything else is ornamental, a garnish, a local curiosity to be handled with whatever scraps happen to fall from the highway table.

A different choice is possible, and another country proved it

A half century ago, the Netherlands looked a lot like the United States. Their per capita roadway deaths were nearly identical to ours. They, too, were losing children, parents, workers, and older adults on roads built for speed rather than safety. Their fatality rates for people on foot and bike were staggering.

But then the Dutch made a political choice. They chose to value human life over vehicle speed. They chose to treat safe streets as national infrastructure, not a boutique local project. And in doing so, they realized something fundamental: if they wanted people to shift modes, the alternative had to be irresistibly better than the car. So they built bikeways that weren’t just safer; they were first class: direct, protected, intuitive, and designed so well that choosing a bike over a car became the obvious decision for millions of people.

The lesson is simple: make the safer choice the easier one.

Today, their fatality rate is 70% lower than ours. And the risk of dying while biking or walking is so low that people inside cars and people outside cars enjoy nearly identical levels of safety.

Back to the Future

We’ve been here before, watching Congress widen roads, raise speeds, and call the rising death toll an unavoidable cost of doing business. The familiar idea that pouring more concrete will somehow deliver a safer future. Now Congress is poised to make that the national strategy, treating safety, mobility, and basic human life like optional add-ons.

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