As Congress begins to draft transportation legislation next year, fiscal scarcity
may induce a fight between transit and highway advocates over federal funding,
rather than the cooperation of the last few years. And if highway advocates seek to tear down federal support
for other forms of transportation, they will probably rely heavily on
federalism considerations, arguing that highways are inherently an interstate
concern while transit and non-motorized forms of transportation are a
nonfederal concern. For example, Alan
Pisarski writes: “If sidewalks and bike paths are federal then everything
is federal.”
There are two flaws in this argument. First of all, highways are not always primarily an interstate concern
