Congressional Record: Transportation Equity Act - A Legacy for Users

TRANSPORTATION EQUITY ACT: A LEGACY FOR USERS

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Mr. President, I rise to join my able and distinguished colleague from Alabama, the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, in strong support of the Federal Public Transportation Act of 2005, which has been incorporated into the pending amendment which was offered yesterday by Senator Inhofe, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The Federal Public Transportation Act was reported out by the Banking Committee earlier this year, and, I might add, by a unanimous voice vote. Moreover, although the funding level provided in this bill is lower than in the one we passed last year, the program structure and policy decisions reflected in this bill are almost identical to those included in S. 1072, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Act, SAFETEA, which passed the Senate last year with overwhelming bipartisan support.

At the very outset, I express my appreciation to Chairman Shelby who worked tirelessly on the development of this legislation last year, reaching across the aisle in a cooperative manner to develop a transit bill that will begin to address the urgent needs faced by communities all across the country.

I also want to acknowledge the leadership of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairman INHOFE and Ranking Member JEFFORDS; and the Finance Committee Chairman GRASSLEY and Ranking Member BAUCUS, for their efforts to move this very important bill forward.

As has already been observed in this debate, SAFETEA did not emerge from conference last year, regrettably, due in large part to the unwillingness of the administration to support the kind of significant investment needed to meet our pressing transit and highway needs. As a result, we have had to pass six short-term extensions of the previous transportation legislation, TEA-21. The uncertainty inherent in these short-term extensions hinders our State and local partners in their efforts to meet the daily challenges of maintaining our transportation infrastructure and planning for improvements.

I want to express my appreciation to a number of colleagues who worked to provide additional resources for transportation beyond what was reported out by the various committees earlier this year. A higher level of investment is essential if we are to keep up with the increasing demand along our entire transportation network.

I want to say a few words about the transit title, which was supported by every member of the Banking Committee. Over the last several years, the Banking Committee and its Housing and Transportation Subcommittee, under the leadership first of Senator REED of Rhode Island and then more recently of Senator ALLARD of Colorado, has held a series of hearings on the Federal transit program and its contribution to reducing congestion, strengthening our national economy, and improving our quality of life.

Over the course of those hearings, we heard testimony from dozens of witnesses, including Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, Federal Transit Administrator Jenna Dorn, representatives of transit agencies from around the country, mayors, business and labor leaders, environmentalists, economic development experts, and transit riders themselves. Virtually all of the witnesses agreed that the investment that had been made under TEA-21 contributed to a renaissance for transit in this country. In fact, transit ridership is up 23 percent since 1995, and is still increasing, even faster than the growth in highway use.

Transit plays a critical role in our efforts to combat congestion. My able colleague, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator SHELBY, made reference to a study released just this week by the Texas Transportation Institute, talking about the tremendous cost to the Nation in lost time and wasted fuel because of congestion--people simply stuck in traffic.

We heard testimony at our hearings about many other important benefits of transit as well. For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce testified that $1 billion of capital investment in transit creates almost 50,000 jobs. Moreover, the economic development benefits of transit are becoming more and more apparent as new systems come into service. For example, we heard testimony from one of the county commissioners in Dallas that over $1 billion had been invested in private development along Dallas's existing and future light rail lines, raising nearby property values and supporting thousands of jobs.

We heard from a representative of BellSouth that his company had decided to relocate almost 10,000 employees from scattered sites in suburban Atlanta to three downtown buildings near the MARTA rail stations because, as he put it, transit ``saves employees time. It saves employees money. It saves wear and tear on the employees' spirit.''

Transit benefits the economy in other ways as well. For example, transit investments in one community can have repercussions in many areas around the country. The president of the American Public Transportation Association, Bill Millar, who has testified before the Senate on a number of occasions, pointed out that when one locality builds a rail system or develops its bus system, the manufacturing or the assembly of those rail cars and buses may well be done in a different jurisdiction. So one has to keep in mind when considering the economic benefits of transit, it is not only the area that is upgrading its transit system that benefits. That area will invariably spend its money on a whole range of supplies and services which are produced elsewhere in the country. As Mr. Millar said:

While the Federal money would appear to be going one place, the impact of that money tends to go very far and wide.

Of course, transit is about more than our economic life. It is also about our quality of life. During our hearings, we heard a great deal about the importance of transit to our senior citizens, our young people, the disabled, and others who rely on transit for their daily mobility needs. Several of our witnesses observed that the increased investment in transit and paratransit services under the previous bill provided the crucial link between home and a job, school, or a doctor's office, for millions of people who otherwise might not have been able to participate fully in the life of their community. Further, we saw after 9/11 how transit can be an important lifeline in other respects, as well. We had very moving testimony during our hearings about the efforts made by transit operators on that day to move tens of thousands of people quickly and safely out of our city centers.

As a result of transit's many benefits, the demand for transit is continuing to increase all across the Nation. Small towns, rural areas, suburban jurisdictions, and large cities, are all struggling to keep up with the need to provide safe and reliable transit service for their citizens. The Department of Transportation has estimated that very significant sums will be needed to maintain the condition and performance of transit systems across the country.

The transit title authorizes $53.8 billion in transit investment. I am frank to say I believe that the transit needs of the nation would justify even more, but I am pleased to say that under this bill transit will see a significant increase in funding over TEA-21. A strong transit program is essential to our efforts to improve our citizens' mobility and strengthen our national economy.

I want to take just a moment or two to highlight some of the most important features of the amendment before us with respect to transit.

The amendment provides for growth in both the urban and rural formula program, with added emphasis placed on the rural program. The committee was sensitive to the needs of the rural areas of our country, and the rural program will see significant growth in order to help States with large rural areas provide the services their residents need.

The bill also provides increased funding in the Fixed Guideway Modernization Program. This funding is very important to helping cities with older rail systems, which in some cases were built almost a century ago, make the investments needed to preserve those highly successful systems, which literally move millions of people every working day.

The New Starts program, which helps communities make their first major investment in transit as well as expand existing systems, also grows under this bill. The New Starts program will enable communities to address their mobility and development needs with transit investment and to gain the benefits of transit that exist elsewhere in the country.

Furthermore, the amendment maintains the existing 80 percent Federal match on new starts transit projects, and thus continues the parity that has existed between the local match requirement for highway and transit projects. This is a very important factor in ensuring that the investment decision at the local level is not weighted in one direction or the other because of a more favorable local match requirement. Mayor McCory of Charlotte, NC, made this point in one of our hearings when he observed that:

There's a strong need to keep the program 80-20, as we do for other forms of transportation, including roads. That does send a strong message that transit is as important as our road network.

The bill makes a significant change in the new starts program by allowing new starts funding to be used for the first time to fund transit projects that do not operate along a fixed guideway, as long as the project is seeking less than $75 million in Federal funds. There are only a few examples of such projects currently operating in the Nation, and I hope to work with the Federal Transit Administration to ensure that the FTA develops an appropriate quantitative methodology for evaluating the costs and benefits of such projects, particularly as they relate to land use and economic development impacts.

As we begin to experiment with different forms of transit service, we must be careful not to adversely impact FTA's highly competitive and successful process for moving projects through the New Starts Program.

While the bill preserves the general structure of TEA-21, several new formulas are included to target transit funds more directly to those States and cities with extraordinary transportation needs. The bill includes a new growth and density formula. The growth portion will distribute funds to all States based on their expected future population, and the density portion will provide funding to those States whose populations are above a certain density threshold.

The bill also includes an incentive tier to reward small transit-intensive cities, those cities with a population between 50,000 and 200,000 which provide higher than average amounts of transit service. The funds distributed under these new formulas will help communities address their unique transportation needs.

The bill includes a requirement that metropolitan planning organizations development a public participation plan to ensure that public transportation employees, affected community members, users of public transportation, freight shippers, private sector providers--all the interested parties concerned about the transportation infrastructure--have an opportunity to participate in the transportation plan approval process.

Transportation investments are among the most important decisions made at the local level. I firmly believe all interested parties should have an opportunity to contribute to this process. Our transportation infrastructure is central to making our economy and, indeed, our society work day to day. That is why this is such a critical and important piece of legislation.

Finally, I am pleased that the legislation includes a new Transit in Parks Program to help national parks and other public lands find alternative transportation solutions to the traffic problems they are now facing. This is a program the administration supports. It has very strong bipartisan support in the Senate. It is an effort to address the problem of overcrowding that has come with increased visitation to our national parks and other public lands. In some cases people must wait in long lines to get into a national park, or they get to the entrance and find they are turned back because the park's roads and parking lots are at capacity.

TEA-21 required the Department of Transportation to conduct a study of alternative transportation needs in our national parks and other public lands, and that study confirmed that the parks are ready and willing to develop transit alternatives. This legislation will help the parks make investments in traditional public transit, such as shuttle buses or trolleys, or other types of public transportation appropriate to the park setting, such as waterborne transportation or bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

In closing, let me note that there are a number of other provisions in the legislation that modify previous aspects of the transit programs, but for the most part the committee's intention was not to enact major changes to a program that has worked well.

The committee put a great deal of effort into developing a package that would recognize the various types of transit needs across the Nation. Of course, as with any program with limited resources, no one gets as much as they would like. But given the framework within which the committee had to work, I think we have responded fairly and rationally to the needs that have been expressed to us. All in all, I think this is a balanced package, which I am pleased to commend to my colleagues.

This bill provides essential support to our local and State partners in their efforts to combat congestion and pollution and to ensure that their citizens can access safe and reliable transit services. It is no exaggeration to say this is essential legislation for the future strength and vitality of our economy and of our society, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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