The funding of a federal program that has paid for bike lanes and trails, sidewalks, roadway beautification and historic preservation projects faces a challenge this September.

Last month, a House appropriations subcommittee approved the 2004 transportation budget. The $33.3 billion package would eliminate road "enhancement" projects, for which $620 million had been earmarked.

The full House is expected to take up the transportation budget in September.

Locally, the 11-year-old program has funded an array of projects, including bike lanes on James Island and Johns Island, bike and pedestrian trails in West Ashley, Goose Creek and Summerville and sidewalks along Lockwood Boulevard in Charleston and the Isle of Palms connector in Mount Pleasant.

"All the jurisdictions have gotten involved with it and benefited from it," said Dan Hatley, planning director for the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments.

Under the program, local governments submit roadway enhancement projects to the regional transportation authority, the Charleston Area Transportation Study committee, each year. Local governments must provide matches of 20 percent in funding and in-kind services. The authority selects projects for funding, and the state Transportation Department parcels out the money.

The money has been allocated through the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, and more recently, through the Transportation Efficiency Act for the 21st Century.

Hatley said under ISTEA, the Charleston area received between $400,000 and $500,000 a year. TEA-21 was even more generous, bringing in between $800,000 to $1 million annually.

"Hopefully, this cut will just be a temporary proposal," Hatley said. "There's a lot of retrofitting of roads to be done and that's what the enhancement programs were doing. You can't build much of a bike path with $20,000, but if you can leverage $80,000 more, you can go a long way."

According to a government-sponsored information clearinghouse, ISTEA and TEA-21 have provided a total of $2.42 billion to states and communities for 16,699 enhancement projects. About 45 percent of the funds have been spent on bike and pedestrian ways and about 9 percent have been spent on converting former railroad corridors into trails.

Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., chairman of the Transportation Appropriations Sub-committee, has led the attack on enhancement funding, even though the Bush administration has recommended full funding for 2004.

"It is essential to focus the nation's limited transportation funding on critical transportation projects and not divert funds for projects that are nice to have but do not contribute in a meaningful way to solving our highway congestion problems," says the report from Istook's subcommittee.

Part of the subcommittee's proposal calls on state transportation departments to decide on funding enhancements from money each one gets.

National bicycle advocacy groups, such as America Bikes and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, are working to get the full House to restore the funding for the 2004 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.