Browse by Tags

By Jake Lynch Everyone agrees that getting more children walking or riding to school each day would be a great thing. The regular exercise would do them the world of good, not to speak of keeping all those parent-taxis off the road in a.m. and p.m. peak hours. In 1969, about 41 percent of kids walked or biked to school. Now, that number is down to about 13 percent. And in that same time period, the percentage of children who are overweight has more than tripled. This generation of young people is...

At Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's (RTC) 25th Anniversary celebration last October, we honored a group of men and women--the inaugural Doppelt Family Rail-Trail Champions--who have made a remarkable contribution to the rail-trail movement during the past quarter century. We will be posting a blog story on each of the honorees during the coming weeks. Today we recognize Greg Cox's enormous contribution to providing active transportation options to the people of California. The rail-trail movement is...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (right) yesterday filed a new version of the federal transportation reauthorization bill that is expected to secure enough votes to proceed to a floor debate. This new Senate bill includes a number of changes that are significant to supporters of Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) and our many partner organizations working to secure continued funding for walking and biking infrastructure. Most notably, the Reid draft includes the addition of a modified version of...

Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) has been very active of late, defending a number of legislative efforts to reduce or eliminate the federal Transportation Enhancements (TE) program, the largest dedicated source of funding for trails, biking and walking infrastructure. One of these efforts , which RTC and our partners were successful in preventing, sought to prohibit investment in, among other things, the rehabilitation of historical transportation buildings. U.S. Senator John McCain's (Ariz.) proposed...