March 13, 2002

First of all, I want to thank Secretary Mineta and our other witnesses for being here today. Mr. Millar, Mr. Marsico, Mr. Inglish, thank you.

As we begin considering reauthorization of our federal highway and transit programs, I hope that each of you will remember that many of us on the Banking Committee have a keen interest in helping to ensure that our transit programs contribute to a seamless and well-integrated multimodal transportation system that meets the needs of Americans, not only in our urban centers, but in communities large and small across the entire country. Our transportation system is an intricate web and federal policy must continue to be broad enough and flexible enough to sustain each part of the web.

We know that disruptions in one part of the transportation system can have far-reaching impacts across the entire system. In the aftermath of the attacks on 9-11, we discovered some of the weaknesses in our transportation system, but we also discovered some of the ways in which reliance can be built into our policies. When the commercial airlines were shut down on 9-11, travelers flocked to Amtrak stations. When people were forced to abandon their cars here in Washington, they were able to get home on Metro. In many ways, the system worked and 9-11 provided an extraordinary lesson on why it's so important for America to maintain a diverse transportation portfolio. Transit and highways, airlines and Amtrak; these are not competing modes of transportation, they are complementary services that contribute to the same goal: better, safer and more reliable mobility for all Americans.

Our nation's urban mass transit systems have historically served as both economic engines for our prosperous cities and economic lifelines for people stranded in neighborhoods where there are no jobs, no grocery stores, or no doctors' offices.

For more than a century, transit has been a means for moving huge numbers of people into and through some of the most productive urban centers in the country - New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Millions of Americans ride commuter trains, subways, and buses every morning because public transit offers the best, most hassle-free way to get downtown. But as traffic congestion clogs not only the arteries into our largest cities, but even the capillaries in our smaller towns, we need to ask whether there are new models for transit, not based on the what works in New York and Chicago, but what might work in Boise and Spokane, Stamford, Connecticut, and Biloxi, Mississippi. In my opinion, the jobs access program - which makes grants to local non-profit agencies to design and provide workplace oriented transit services - has been a tremendous success precisely because it has been flexible enough to adapt to local needs and local conditions.

I noted that in his prepared testimony Dale J. Marsico of the Community Transportation Association of America has proposed developing a method for allowing small communities to get waivers from some of the more restrictive FTA regulations. While I think we need to look very closely before enacting any general waiver program, I applaud CTAA for trying to offer innovative ideas to improve the relationship between fta and small community transportation providers. I look forward to hearing more from Mr. Marsico and others about how we can build a better partnership between transportation providers and the federal government.

Transit is part of the solution to our nation's transportation problems. Increasingly, transit is the mode of choice for millions of commuters. In my view, we have an obligation to ensure that transit is safe and reliable and to ensure that it works in conjunction, not competition, with other modes of transportation. I believe that we can only meet that obligation if we are willing maintain and improve our strong ties to state and local governments and private sector transportation providers.

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