2015 National Rural Assembly

Good morning, everyone. How are you? Billy, thank you so much for the wonderful introduction. You are a tireless advocate for people around this country. And I want you to know that, not that long ago we had an event over at our Department to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the cornerstone of which was access to transportation.

And one of the things we reflected on during our celebration was the fact that 25 years ago practically none of our buses had wheelchair lifts. They weren't accessible to folks with disabilities. Well, thanks to the work of advocates like Billy, we have almost completely reversed this. We are closing in on 100 percent of buses in the United States being wheelchair-accessible.

But as you all know our work is not over. You know this. And we certainly know this at DOT. Because the work you are doing is trying to connect communities that too often are disconnected from the 21st century global economy. And I'm here today to say to you that we as a nation cannot afford to have our rural communities disconnected. Because the fiber of this country is weaved together by every single community. And in fact, while rural communities have communities where population is small, America does not have any small communities. Every community matters in this country.

Now we also know if someone doesn't have access to a vehicle, they are going to have a tough time getting to work or to school or to a doctor's appointment or a pharmacy. They're going to do a lot of commuting that is going to realistically create challenges for them. Can we realistically expect folks to spend three hours a day getting to and from work, and to be able to do all the other things that go into quality of life, including raising children and living the American dream?

You know, this is how much commuting -- three hours -- folks will have to do to access the vast majority of positions in low- and middle-skill industries that are located in our major metro areas, and that three hours is the average time of a roundtrip by transit. So I think this really shows how you and I have work to do to ensure that folks who live in rural communities -- who tend to be traveling long distances to get to places already -- have pathways to the 21st century economy.

That's the basis of our philosophy at USDOT: it's that we can't afford to have people have this kind of challenge to connect to economic opportunities.

And let me just provide some additional context for why this is such a critical moment to have this conversation at this time in our country.

First, transportation is something that we do together. I have never seen a single-person road in this country, nor, frankly, have I seen a Democratic or Republican road. Transportation is a bit of the thread that ties this country together. And federal investment has traditionally held that partnership together. And right now, the funding for projects that has traditionally come out of Washington has never been more uncertain.

We also know for a fact that we are not investing enough. Not only do not exactly know if we are going to have a long-term transportation bill, we haven't had one passed in more than a decade. We know for a fact that the current funding levels are not adequate to the task.

I have been through parts of this country where the road networks don't have adequate drainage systems and so the roads just flood over if there's a heavy rain. I am sure that you have enjoyed some of America's potholes. And I have seen parts of America where the bridges are in such a state of disrepair that school buses have to reroute and in some cases go a half hour and 45 minutes longer to get kids safely to school, whereas if the bridge was in better shape they could have gotten there in a much shorter period of time.

These are not mere inconveniences, folks. These are constraints on our economy and on our quality of life, and it is time for America to put an end to it.

But in order to do that we need Congress to act. I'll talk about that in a little bit.

The second reason this is an important time is we just finished an assessment, a draft, of our needs over the next 30 years. We have a document called Beyond Traffic that lays out the trends and choices we face as a nation in our transportation infrastructure system over the next 30 years.

One of the top-line points is that we are woefully behind when it comes to the state of repair of our roads and bridges in our country. They're basically crumbling. This problem is compounded by the fact that our country is still growing. We're going to have net 70 million in this country more people over the next 30 years. We're going to have 65 percent more freight traveling by truck.

So unless we find the resolve to do more, at a certain point rural governments will be limited in their ability to maintain and replace the infrastructure that you depend on every single day. This rural portfolio, as you know, encompasses three million miles of roads and half-a-million bridges.

But it is deeper than this. Because something else we found is that poverty is increasing. We also know more people are moving into suburban and urban communities -- while the job growth right now is in the suburbs. And in fact there are parts of the country that used to be rural that are now suburban.

And if we continue to fund transportation the way we are funding it, then rural governments will increasingly be forced into a position where they have to prioritize getting basic repairs done, which means they won't be able to respond as adeptly to the changes that are happening overall.

And that means it'll be tougher for them to advance transportation plans that fit into larger development goals. And these limitations will inhibit the abilities of towns to connect to their regions and for their citizens to connect to where the jobs centers are.

I do want to mention some of the rural initiatives that we have advanced have shown us a different way.

Last year we wanted to measure the need communities have to provide good transit choices to folks who need it most. So we created something called a Ladders of Opportunity Bus Grant program. We put out a call for applications. And this program turned out to be one of the most oversubscribed grants programs we've ever had in the history of our department.

The question was basically, tell us, transportation agencies around the country, where people are most disconnected and give us a plan to connect them and we will try to help support those plans. And as you might imagine, there was urban demand, but there was also rural demand.

You look at a state like Oklahoma. When you think transit, you don't think about Oklahoma. But there are about three million transit trips taken in Oklahoma every year. And frankly, most of the riders would be cut off without these services.

So what we did was provide Oklahoma with $4 million to replace worn-out transit vehicles in 10 different rural communities. And these are areas where most folks are commuting more than an hour each way to get to work. And we invested in similar initiatives in four other states.

And that leads me to another point, which is that rural residents tend to have to travel longer distances. And we do know that most people will in fact want to drive if they can. And having said that, there is no reason in America that trips should be getting longer and more expensive because roads and bridges are deteriorating or they're even unsafe.

I was in Claiborne County, Mississippi. There really isn't any alternative to driving there. Yet many of their roads had potholes, they flood when it rains, and they have difficulty getting from one place to another. In Claiborne County they actually had sixty bridges rated "deficient." And some of these bridges were so weak that the school buses couldn't use them. So the kids riding those buses had to go on detours that would add a half hour to the trip.

County leaders there told us flat-out that they didn't have the resources to keep up with all the maintenance that needed to be completed. And to be honest with you, some of our programs, like the TIGER program, which has become a very popular discretionary grant program, actually reward communities that provided a financial match to the federal funding. And one of the things that I discovered upon coming into the Department of Transportation is that sometimes the people who are the poorest live in areas that are poor. [Laughs]. That was a real shock. And those poor people that live in poor towns and poor cities tend not to be able to match federal programs dollars for dollar or even close.

And so we started to see that we had some structural challenges to being able to help these communities. So we said let's take a more careful look at these applications and not penalize communities because the folks who live in those communities can't pay. Let's look at the needs they are trying to assess and their relative needs.

So we awarded Claiborne a grant through a TIGER program, upwards of $18 million, that's allowing them to move forward with what they're calling a "blitz" of critical repairs to their roads and bridges.

I wanted to mention this to say that the signal you should be getting from us is that we want to provide rural leaders with more resources. We want to help them both maintain and build towards the future. But in many ways it is even more important that the signal is sent to our leaders in Congress.

By the way, we have this problem. We're having troubles getting Congress to fund transportation. I don't know if you've heard of it. [Laughs]

But let me just get you the cliff notes. Back in 1956 we had this President, Dwight Eisenhower, who had this vision of creating an interconnected road system. And he was able to convince Congress to pay for it using a fuel tax. And so they developed a big plan; Congress approved the funding for it. And it took decades to build.

Well, a few things happened over the 60 years since the highway system was started, including those gas guzzlers we used to drive are not guzzling as much gas. The 57 Chevy has now become the Toyota Prius. And while we now have this vast road network that was built, we now have less gas taxes to support the maintenance and the construction of new parts of it.

So Congress in recent years has been falling roughly $15 billion short of providing year-to-year funding for the highway system. And what Congress has been doing is what my grandfather used to do when money was short. He might have $10 in his pocket and he would buy $3 of gas and hold the $7 for something else. And Congress is basically doing that because they've been passing short-term extensions. So since 2009 we've had 34 short-term extensions. The last three were three months, two months, and 10 months.

Now look, we are good as a country. You give us a project, we will get it done. But I don't know many game-changing 10-month projects out there in transportation, or two month, or three month. And so the end of the story is that right now Congress is debating whether to do a long-term bill.

Before this past recess the Senate passed the DRIVE Act, a bill that increases investment in the Highway Trust Fund by 5 percent. I've applauded this step by the Senate as a significant move towards doing a long-term bill.

But here's the thing. Back when President Eisenhower was establishing the highway system, the big vision was this idea of building this interconnected network. So there was this vision that was underlying the Highway Trust Fund. There is no galvanizing vision underlying the thought process in Congress right now other than passing a long-term bill.

So the question I've begun to ask is: what do we want to get from the money we invest? We've actually determined that even a 5 percent increase is not enough to improve the condition of our roads and rails and lower our commute times. We're undershooting this target.

So I know you have a lot on your agenda during this conference. But I hope that while you are in Washington you will talk to your peers up here about this incredible need, and you'll talk to them about actually solving problems: You know the Highway Trust Fund is a tool but isn't necessarily an outcome, so don't come to us, don't go out to America talking about you kept the Highway Trust Fund intact; tell us what it is that Highway Trust Fund is going to do to improve our communities, to stop those potholes, to fix those bridges, to stop those crumbling roads, to reduce traffic, and to shorten time it takes to get from A to B. That's what Americans want. That's the conversations they're having. And I think the more Congress hears this from you, the more we'll gain.

So I hope you will talk about the vision you have for your communities in which you come, but tell your members of Congress that investment in transportation is an essential component of quality of life, of commerce, and re-catalyzing your rural communities and keeping connected to the 21st century. And by the way, tell them if they support a long-term bill, that's not going to be a badge of dishonor. It's going to be a badge of courage and they're going to get rewarded for it later on.

That way commutes get shorter, not longer. That way owning a car is not a pre-requisite to achieving the American dream. This way our rural areas can continue to be vibrant in the 21st century.

I want to make another point as I close. One of the real myths about transportation that I am trying really hard to dispel is that transit is an urban phenomenon and that all rural communities care about are roads. And I have seen too much to believe that. People have told me I was unemployed for months and I'd still be unemployed if I couldn't take the bus or the van to get to work. Or, I have a relative that I care for who is bed-ridden and I can't get that person to the doctor without access to transit.

Transit is becoming in the dialogue up on the hill a little more like an extra. And it's not. It's vital. And so I think that we're going to have to have our rural communities speaking up about the vitality of transit. And you know, sometimes people will say, well, you've got New York; they're eating up all the money for transit. What does someone in North Dakota care about what's going on over there? Well even if one person has a job that depends on this transit system, why is that less important than anyone someplace else?

So I think we have a lot of work to do to make the point that our transportation system plays a role. The road networks we have, the transit systems we have, they all play a role in the life of every part of America. And I look forward to working with you all to make sure our rural communities are strong. Because the people are strong. And as long as we're doing what we can to help you, you are going to do it on your own.

Thank you very much.

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