In his latest effort, the bow-tied Oregon Democrat is offering a short and simple bill to ensure that federal regulators keep bicyclists and pedestrians in mind when setting safety standards for road projects. Blumenauer’s bill has two Republican co-sponsors who aren’t exactly known for working on bike issues: Rep. Howard Coble of North Carolina, a senior member of the Transportation Committee who is retiring after next year, and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul of Texas.

The bipartisan support for the pro-biking, pro-walking measure stretches into the Senate, too. A version in the upper chamber attracted New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte, who co-sponsored the bill along with Democrats Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Brian Schatz of Hawaii when it was introduced last week.

As with other transportation bills this year both big and small, Blumenauer hopes that a good bipartisan showing will help his measure cut through Congress’s usual legislative gridlock and partisan warfare.

( PHOTOS: Politicians riding bikes)

His hope isn’t unfounded — there’s been a lot of precedent lately.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) worked with Democrats to secure strong support for an $8 billion water-projects bill that sailed through the House in a lopsided 417-3 vote in late October. That victory came despite the opposition of conservative groups as well as Congress’s ban on earmarks, which in past years could have helped secure votes from reluctant members.

Also in October, President Barack Obama signed a bill involving sleep apnea testing for truck drivers just a month after a bipartisan pair of Transportation Committee lawmakers had introduced the legislation.

Those successes came on the heels of a minor miracle last year: In an election year, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass both aviation and surface transportation bills that cost tens of billions of dollars and involved several sticky policy issues, such as how high the subsidies for small airports should be and how much money from gasoline taxes the government should spend on projects that aren’t for roads.

“Most of all, the initiatives that I’m a part of are or should be bipartisan,” Blumenauer said in an interview in the speaker’s lobby. The bespectacled Democrat, known for wearing colorful bike pins and bringing fruitcake to reporters over the holiday season, joked that he’s a big fan of “bike-partisanship.”

“Life’s too short, and I think infrastructure is a natural bipartisan platform,” he said.

Blumenauer is one of the more active members during House votes, one of his aides said. Even though votes are pretty much the only time all House members gather in the same room, many lawmakers spend the time checking their phones or chatting casually with colleagues. But not Blumenauer — he talks up issues and legislation with fellow members.

In the case of his bike bill, his outreach paid off.

Coble, who announced recently amid health problems that he won’t run for reelection next year, admitted he’s only “vaguely familiar” with Blumenauer’s bill.

So why is he a co-sponsor?

His reason points to just how much personal relationships matter on the Hill and the lasting power of transportation’s bipartisan tradition: “I’m really not that familiar with the bill. I just signed on because Earl asked me to, told me he was promoting it,” Coble said.

The North Carolina lawmaker, at 82 years old, said he “wouldn’t think about riding a bike to work in a rural area like my district, much less up here” in Washington.

The bill is in response to concerns in the bike community that the Department of Transportation will ignore bikers and walkers when it sets the performance standards to measure how effective road projects are at meeting goals like reducing congestion and improving safety. Advocates point to what they call a stunning misalignment of the needs and the resources: While bikers and pedestrians account for 15 percent of all highway deaths, they get only 1 percent of the safety-related funding.

“DOT has taken a very narrow definition of what they can include in the performance measures,” said Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists. Several bike advocacy sources who are working with DOT on the issue said bureaucrats at the Federal Highway Administration, used to working on road projects that focus almost entirely on cars and trucks, have been the biggest obstacle in getting the agency to address biker and pedestrian concerns.

A DOT spokeswoman wouldn’t address the standards directly but said the agency has done a lot for biking and walking.

DOT “is deeply committed to ensuring public safety by reducing traffic-related injuries and fatalities on our roadways, including bicycle and pedestrian safety,” the spokeswoman said, noting the $154 million from a discretionary grant program that has gone to bike and pedestrian projects over the years. “DOT will continue its commitment to improving safety across all modes of transportation, whether people choose to travel by car, plane, train, bike or foot,” the official said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), also a co-sponsor of Blumenauer’s bill, said it’s hard for road engineers to change their mind-set to think of walkers and bikers when designing a highway even though doing so “makes an infinite amount of sense.”

“Highway engineers, it wasn’t part of their education,” DeFazio said. “It’s not part of their daily experience. They’re just thinking about throughput and congestion and all those sorts of things.”

Blumenauer’s bill would address the issue by forcing DOT to issue separate performance standards for motorized and nonmotorized transportation that would be used in the Highway Safety Improvement Program.

The bill is likely to get lost in the year-end shuffle as Congress turns to some major legislative fights in early 2014. But with the deadline for a new surface transportation bill looming Sept. 30, 2014, Blumenauer can try to push for its inclusion in the broader highway and transit package — while still leaving time for a bike ride with a reluctant GOP lawmaker.