Bikes aren't transportation?

While perusing the news this morning, I came across an article in Salon criticizing Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters for saying that bike paths and trails are really not "transportation-related" and thus are unworthy of receiving federal dollars from the gas tax. Did she really say that? I wondered. Surely not!

So I went to the original transcript of Gwen Ifill's interview with the Secretary of Transportation on the Lehrer News Hour. Here is a direct quote:

MARY PETERS: Well, there's about probably some 10 percent to 20 percent of the current spending that is going to projects that really are not transportation, directly transportation-related. Some of that money is being spent on things, as I said earlier, like bike paths or trails.

Now, my son is a student at the University of Texas in Austin. His transportation is a bike. He not only uses his bike to get around campus, but he shops for groceries and runs other errands. He also uses public transportation. He does not own a car. He's probably spewing his morning tea as he reads this quote from our eminent Secretary of Transportation now. (Yes, I'm a graduate of TAMU, and my son is a t-sipper!) Since a bicyclist or two is killed in Austin every year by a drunk or distracted driver, you bet I'm a supporter of bicycle paths and any media attention directed to make automobile drivers more attentive to sharing the road with bicyclists.

My husband rides his bicycle to a nearby MARTA station every week day to catch a train to downtown Atlanta. Tell him that his bicycle isn't "directly transportation-related." And what about all those kids who bike to school?

Can our Secretary of Transportation be any less short sighted?