Secretary Anthony Foxx

Transportation and Opportunity for All
Detroit, MI • September 25, 2014
Remarks as prepared for delivery

Last year, I came to Detroit with former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Attorney General Eric Holder to let this city know that the Obama Administration is committed to moving Detroit forward. 

At that time, we announced the release of $24 million to repair broken-down buses and to put new security cameras on buses. 

Last week, I announced a $12.2 million TIGER grant to the M-1 Rail Project that is part of a downtown renaissance and a longstanding effort to grow jobs and improve transportation access in Detroit.

And today, I am here to put another stake in the ground of a new foundation for this city and its people.  Today, I am announcing an award of $25 million to the City of Detroit to purchase 50 new buses as part of an effort to put safer, reliable transit in place in this great city.  This grant is a part of a $100 million announcement that includes 24 similar projects across America.

All of this is part of an effort that the U.S. Department of Transportation is making to open up the door of opportunity to more Americans, wherever they live, whatever their background, whatever their economic circumstances. 

It is fitting that we should be here at a high school today.  I come from a family of teachers.  My grandparents, both of whom were school teachers, helped raise me.  I grew up in their home on Charlotte's west side – not exactly the right side of the tracks. 

My mother was nineteen when I was born.  My father was absent.  My grandmother never had a driver's license, and on Saturdays, I would ride with her into town to shop on the city bus.  I took the bus to apply for my first job.  I know personally what a lifeline it is for so many people. 

My grandfather was a high school principal during the forties, fifties, and sixties in the south.  He worked with people from all walks of life – rich and poor, the powerful and the disenfranchised. 

When the music teacher was sick, he had to teach the class.  When the buses were late, he had to stay late to ensure the day's lesson could be taught.  Like so many teachers and administrators here, he did more than his job description required because he understood that he was paving the way for a new generation to go farther. 

Although he passed away in 2001, even from the grave he taught me what public service means. 

When I was running for public office for the first time, I ran across somebody – he was about a sixty-year-old man – who told me he had a great story about my grandfather.

And the story began like this: This older man had once been a kid in the school where my grandfather was principal.

He’d done reasonably well in school. No one in his family had gone to college before. But he’d applied and gotten into several. The only problem was: He couldn’t afford to go.

So, he went to my grandfather for advice, and my grandfather said, “I’ll help you fill out the financial aid forms.”

It turns out, though, that in order to complete the forms, the kid had to go to Raleigh, which was about a three-hour trip from their town.

The kid told my grandfather, “I don’t have a way to get there.”

And it was at that point that my grandfather pulled his hand out of his pocket – and tossed that kid his car keys.

The postscript to that story was this: The guy shook my hand and said, “Without your grandfather, I never would have become a surgeon.” 

By handing over his keys, my grandfather was saying to that young man, “Follow your dreams.  Stay encouraged.  Go farther.  You can do it!” 

It breaks my heart when our transportation fails anyone in America because I know how much people depend on it. 

It's hard to get to work without good transportation access. 

It's hard to get to school and learn without good transportation access. 

Part of how we measure a good, safe, decent place to live has to do with access to transportation.  

Two weeks ago, I heard about a woman here in Detroit who cleans houses and takes care of children. 

She works five miles from her home but has no driver's license and no car.  She wakes up two hours early to catch a bus for what should be a thirty-minute trip.  She puts that ninety-minute "cushion" on her trip to account for the bus being chronically late.   Some days, the bus never shows up, and she calls a cab, raising the cost of her trip to work and taking a larger chunk of her savings.  

She is not alone.                           

In rural Mississippi, bridges are so worn out that school buses have to take another route, which extends the trip by 30 minutes or more. 

Four years ago in Atlanta, Raquel Nelson was taking the bus home with her three children. She had taken them grocery shopping at Wal-Mart and missed their transfer bus on the way home, which meant that she and the three kids – ages nine, four, and three – had to wait an hour-and-a-half for the next bus.

When they finally boarded – and, then, got to their stop – the bus dropped them off on the other side of a five-lane highway, which they had to cross to get home.

Raquel lost control of her four-year-old. He was struck and killed. And she was charged with vehicular homicide.

Or even look here at Cass Tech.

Who knows Darius Young and his brother David?

Well, I’ve heard a little bit about them. They’re both impressive guys. Darius and David are on their way to being Eagle Scouts. Darius had a summer job working for my friend, Congressman Conyers.

(By the way: Darius and David, your mom, Stephanie, wanted everyone here to know that she’s very proud of you.)

But I mention Darius and David because I also know they take the city bus. They take it home from school every day. In the summer, they take it to football practice and their jobs.

And they’ve been affected by a bus system that has not worked well for them.

Because he’s the one that often shows up at the bus stop, and spends hours waiting for a bus that never comes.

Darius’ mom used to go to Cass Tech, too. And she says that, back then, it used to take her 20 minutes to get home on the city bus.

The Young family lives about the same distance from the school now. But instead of 20 minutes, it sometimes takes Darius and his brother two hours to get home.

Sometimes, Darius says, he’s lucky if he gets in the door before 8.

That doesn’t leave much time for homework, or college applications, or job searching.

Darius and David – and all of Detroit – I am here to say that you deserve a bus system that keeps its promises, gets you there on time and enables you to achieve all that your talents and ambitions will allow.  That's why we're here today.

With so many families being squeezed from so many directions, we will have to work harder to expand and sustain a vibrant middle-class.  And we cannot do it effectively when people face so many barriers to entry, and transportation should never be one of those barriers.

For six years and counting, President Obama has been working to open more doors of opportunity in more parts of America than ever before. 

He's taken us from a recession to a growing recovery. 

He saved the American auto industry and helped stabilize the financial system.

He's overseeing the longest streak of private-sector job creation in American history.

And he's provided access to affordable healthcare for millions of Americans. 

And yet there is still more to do. 

When I was a mayor, occasionally I would bump into someone who would ask, in essence, “Where is the President?” 

Here’s what I tell them. 

Go to Los Angeles and ask LeDaya Epps.  LeDaya was raised in the LA foster care system. Nothing was handed to her. After school, she jumped from job to job. But she couldn’t find secure work to provide for her three kids.

That is, until the U.S. Department of Transportation helped fund a new Light Rail Line in Crenshaw and she signed up for one of the apprenticeship programs that the President Obama’s Labor Department supports.

Today, LeDaya has a good job helping to build a rail line out in Crenshaw in L.A “I always liked building stuff,” she told Secretary Tom Perez, “but being a woman, I thought this was something I couldn’t do.” Well, now LeDaya is wearing a hard hat and doing the job just as well as any man can.

“I’m so blessed,” she says, “I don’t have to worry about the little things as much [anymore] – I can even take my kids out for dinner once in a while.”

So you want to know where the President is?

Go look at what his Education Department is doing to give all children, no matter what zip code they were from, access to pre-school, 21st century standards for K-12 and relief from crushing student loan debt. 

Or go look at what his housing department is doing in places like Chicago and Boston and New Orleans: They’re replacing 3,600 old homes with 8,000 new affordable ones – that are also close to transit!

Where is the President?  Go look at how he’s building an initiative called My Brother's Keeper to lift young men of color up and help them realize their potential. 

Where is the President?  Look today at the more than $100 million dollars that will connect the disconnected and restore pieces of the fabric of the American Dream for millions of Americans.    

Fifty years ago, my grandfather lent his car to a kid – and because he did, that kid became a doctor.

Our Department cannot give a real key to everyone who needs a way to get to work or school or the doctor's office or a school play.  But working together, we can be a key to success for so many people here in Detroit and across America. 

Every day, folks are waking up here, those hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people who are hungry to get the day going, who work their fingers to the bone so their children and grandchildren can have a better life. 

They want to go farther.  They are the keepers of the America Dream. 

And when they go farther, so does America.

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