Last Year’s Cuts to Active Transportation Now the Norm in State Budget

During the years of surpluses and “Climate Budgets” California made a serious effort to fund its Active Transportation Program (ATP), which funds bicycle and pedestrian projects throughout the state. The popular program is oversubscribed – in even the best of times it can only grant a small fraction of the applications it receives from communities throughout the state.

These are not the best of times. Last year’s ATP funded just 13 projects across California.

While the budget proposed by the legislature may have saved transit operators from careening over the fiscal cliff, it failed to restore Active Transportation Program funding to 2022 and 2023 levels. 

In 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed completely defunding the program, but the legislature stepped in and restored it to $600 million (the same as it had been in 2022).

Last year, the budget slashed $400 million from the program, which was promised to be a one-time deal. Now the remaining $200 million seems to be the allocation going forward.

“The Active Transportation Program is the victim of its own success, continuously oversubscribed. Yet the governor and some of our lawmakers fail to recognize its value,” says CalBike Policy Director Jared Sanchez. 

“The disregard for biking and walking at the state level undercuts state climate policy and makes it harder for local governments to meet residents’ demands for safer streets.”

Naturally, the attitude towards walking and bicycling has not been applied universally to transportation. The total transportation budget offered by the legislature is $20 billion, only down slightly from the $21 billion of last year.