SB669 Maintenance Funding & Road Diet Bill Clears Transpo Committee, Now Up for House Vote

SB 669/the highway maintenance reimbursement for bike lanes bill was heard just after 8:30 in the House Transportation Committee this morning. Sen. Alexander of Norfolk did a good job of presenting it, and a number of witnesses including Nick Donohue (Deputy Secy of Transportation), Thelma Drake for the City of Norfolk, Trip Pollard of Partnership for Smarter Growth, a representative of the city of Portsmouth, and me, spoke in support . Del. Greg Habeeb of Salem gave some background regarding how the bill (and his opinion of it) had changed since it was first introduced and how he was now solidly in support of it. Surprisingly, Del. Scott Garrett of Lynchburg chimed in with similar sentiments, as did Del. Randy Minchew of Loudoun.

After some favorable comments from others on the Committee, it was moved to report and the vote on the screen appeared to be 16-1, although I have not seen it posted yet on the Legislative website. (The official vote was 18-1.) Not sure who the one opposing vote was, but it was not Del. Garrett, who clearly broke his streak of never voting for one of our bicycling bills. Now the bill goes on to the Full House, for final passage, for which we appear to have very good prospects (although it is never over until its over down here) perhaps by the end of this week.

Thanks are certainly due to Nick Donohue on behalf of the Administration, former Congresswoman Thelma Drake, and Champe Burnley, who made numerous stops around the GAB over a number of days, in promoting support for the bill.

Now we will learn tomorrow, at 1/2 hour after adjournment of the House (usually between 1:15 & 2:00) how SB117/the Dooring Bill fares, and hopefully we will have 2 bills going to the House Floor for the first time in a long while, if ever.

As soon as we see how we do tomorrow, I’ll be asking EVERYONE to contact their delegates to ask them to support either one, or hopefully both, of our bills on the floor.

If you haven’t done so already, please write to your delegate now.  To make it easy, you can use WABA’s automated message.

Related Articles:

• 2016 Legislative Wrap-Up: Dooring Bill Passes, Bike Lane Bill Fails
• ‘Maintenance Funding for Bike Lanes’ to Full House Transpo Committee; ‘Dooring’ to Courts of Justice Committee
• ‘Dooring’ Reports Out of Subcommittee; Maintenance Funding for Bike Lanes in Subcommittee Thurs.
• Dooring Bill Passes Senate; Bike Lane Maintenance Funding Clears Senate Committee
• Bike-Related Bills in the 2016 Virginia General Assembly