Ngchen, to the first part of your question re: stimulus... my organization, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, ran a
petition encouraging the incoming administration and Congress to explicitly fund bike/ped. We also collected ready-to-go bike/pedestrian projects from communities nationally to demonstrate to Congress that there's demand for these projects (more than $3 billion that we collected in a very short time frame). More
here.
I encourage everyone to sign the petition; this also serves to keep you in the loop about upcoming actions on this in the next few weeks. It's possible that the authority of how to spend stimulus funds may fall solely on states, which forces the advocacy world into a difficult place by decentralizing our efforts.