It seems to me looking through the available literature that most of this funding comes from gasoline taxes which is why it's restricted to auto travel type pro

It seems to me looking through the available literature that most of this funding comes from gasoline taxes which is why it's restricted to auto travel type projects, and there are separate smaller funds for other methods of travel. Your first example where you complain that it "still expands car capacity" is an odd one. Why wouldnt an interchange project focus on traffic capacity? Do you not think that's important? Why isn't that ok? In your second example the community wants to force a light rail project into a bridge project, which sounds like the community had no idea what anything costs and is just repeating something theyve been told is good. There are also rules about funding diversions to exactly stop municipalities from taking money from other levels of government and spending it on things outside of those programs. The community may decide it wants a lot of things - light rail is a whole different proposition than a bridge project. Portland's transport org doesn't spend billions of dollars and they do have leverage to spend tens of millions on bike projects if they were actually a priority to the city. But the majority of funding comes from gas taxes and car registration, and bikes aren't paying it, and represent a tiny fraction of the people and goods moved each day.