>> give all three of our speakers a great hand. [applause] now bear with me. we're going to do a photo law. i'm going to ask the speaker to come back up and guess what? we got the t-shirt and a bag of chips. [laughter] come on up please. no, we don't have the bag of chips. i was just joking.

>> what are we going to do april 9? [applause] >> stand up. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> okay. we will hear more about transportation infrastructure in our next session. we've got that mayors transit roundtable starting probably at 10:30 right back in this room. we are adjourned. thank you for coming. [applause]

♪ ♪ ♪ >> coming up tonight on c-span2 the memorial service for former u.s. senator edward brooke of massachusetts. the first african-american popularly elected to the center. senate chaplain barry black will lead to the service and secretary john kerry and delegate eleanor holmes norton are expected to give eulogies. see the ceremony for the washington national cathedral at 8 p.m. eastern. >> this sunday onto a day director of the georgetown university medical center watchdog project on how pharmaceutical companies lobby congress and influence doctors in what medications to prescribe. >> or promotion of the drug starts seven to 10 years before a drug comes on the market.

while it's illegal for a company to market a drug before it's been approved by the fda come it's not illegal to market a disease. so drug companies have sometimes invented diseases or exaggerated the importance of certain conditions or exaggerated the importance of a particular mechanism of a drug for example, and then blanketed medical journals and medical meetings and other venues with these messages that are meant to prepare the minds of clinicians to accept a particular drug. and also to prepare the minds of consumers to accept a particular condition. condition. >> sunday night at eight eastern and pacific on c-span's q&a. >> the political landscape has changed with the 114th congress. not only are the 43 and republicans and 50 new democrats in the house and 12 new

republicans and one new democrat in the senate there's also 108 women in congress including the first african-american republican in the house on the first woman veteran in the senate. keep track of the numbers of congress using congressional chronicle on c-span.org. the congressional chronicle page has lots of useful information including voting results and statistics by each session. new congress, best access. >> now we return to the american public transportation association's annual transportation policy conference. this part of the daylong forum has three mayors discussing the impact transit systems on their local economies. it's one hour 20 minutes.

>> [inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everybody. hello. welcome. great to see you. i feel an air of enthusiasm in this crowd today. and you're not going to be disappointed. good morning. i michael allegra ceo of the utah transit authority and i'm honored to be able to host this medal today with three great mayors from three incredible cities. i've been in the business a long time, for decades, and i started my career here in virginia, and i appreciate the fact that c-span is here to frankly help spread the dialogue about investments in transportation. you know in utah we have benefited significantly by our partnerships with the federal agencies. our first full funding grant agreement came to us in 1997. subsequently to that, we've gotten six full funding grants,

about 140 miles of rail 14 years, perhaps the quickest in this nation. and we've been getting significantly by that investment. a decade or so ago our community, state and local government in partnership with the federal agencies decided and made a commitment to invest their tax resources in transportation, highways and transit. we now are one of the best economic states in the country. i will tell you that no one no elected official has lost their job because of that commitment that they made a decade ago. in fact, our governor is now the chairman of the national association of governors. our state senate is the chairman of the national league of legislators. our chamber of commerce, lane

beatty, has become on the national board of the chamber of commerce. and our mayor of salt lake city is not the president of the national league of cities. and so we are looked at, i believe, as a state that is well-run, knows how to get things done but recognizes that investment in infrastructure are one of the key pillars to economic growth and vitality. and so we're here today with three incredible mayors that are going to talk to you about their stories. but before i do that i wanted to read the president of the united states, i've been told, is competing with us today because he's at the national league of cities. so i very much appreciate these mayors being here but have a statement i want to read to you from mayor ralph becker was the president of the league of cities. and he says, quote the national league of cities in the american public transit association have enjoyed a close working

relationship for many decades. the results of which have been tremendous. transit progress for the cities we serve. our great transit accomplishments in the salt lake region is an important example of the benefit of this collaboration. as the nlc president and mayor of salt lake, i look forward to continuing to work with apta toward a long-term, well-funded transportation reauthorization this year. the president proposed grow america act is an important contribution to this must do reauthorization effort. so with that, those who participated yesterday in the legislative conference heard from a gentleman called jeff loving. there to represent america's infrastructure alliance. he made three key points that will be the focus of today's

conversation. number one come make it local. okay. you have local here. number two talk about economic benefits and commerce. talk about how transportation does what it's done in utah. talk about how it will affect your community. and lastly, perhaps most important, investment saves money. now is the time to make an investment because it will pay dividends in the future. you won't be borrowing. it will cost you last and i think the mayor of riverton will talk about that as which some local efforts in that regard. you were hearing from three strong conservative, fiscally responsible, energetic motivated, fast growing communities. each of which have a passion for transportation and transit. these mayors have a vitality of their own, and they are developing a sense of place in a

community like no others. i like to say that the cities that are surrounded them, salt lake and dallas and phoenix our suburbs to their cities there, okay? so let me have you buckle up your seatbelts because you're in for a ride here. i'm going to introduce the three mayors in the order that they're going to speak, and then pose three main topics today. first off i want to year and having share with you stories about their city and what their vision is. second, they're going to drill down a little bit and talk about transportation and the transit projects, and what they see as benefits to its community and with the future for transportation are. and then lastly we're going to do in a partnership with federal agencies and things that we can do together, and perhaps offer some recommendations to apta for things we can do to be great partners with local government. so the first mayor to my left here, on your right, is --

excuse me. mayor betsy price. she is the mayor of fort worth, texas. it's the 16th largest city in the united states. established in 1849 i think, mayor? was american outpost as part of the mexican-american war. but what if an interesting in looking it up online is there were three transformational times in fort worth's history. number one, they were part of the chisholm trail the cattle drive. and it initially established fort worth. then they became the crossroads of the texas and pacific railway. the second major boon to that city. and then in the early 1900s they had close to 400 miles of streetcar in the dallas-fort worth area. huge, huge investment. i think we will hear from the mayor today as a mover and shaker. she was elected in 2001 the

44th mayor of the city. she lets efforts and engaging in designing a healthy community. she talks a lot about alternative modes of transportation, particularly walking and cycling, and maybe she will talk to you about her walking and rolling town hall. she's an avid cyclist yet she gets time to spend with her family, her husband her children and her three grandchildren, and apparently she's a proud maverick with a bachelors degree from the university of texas at arlington. mayor john giles from mesa arizona. i looked up on wikipedia, when the -- what a wonderful thing. they call mesa, arizona,% of population for arizona. >> center of the universe. >> center of the universe, i'm sorry. >> don't cut us short. >> third largest city in arizona, the 38th rjc in the

united states, and its history as a goes back 2000 years ago and maybe we will hear about this with the tribes and they formed canals. is the 40th minute of mesa. he started his mayor will ship in 2014, but he's had a long history with governance being on the city council into many, many organizations, boards and committees. he has a degree from brigham young university so he is a cougar. has a law degree from arizona state and has managed and practiced and manages the law office of his own. born and raised in mesa. he's a marathon or. he's a triathlete. he has finished to full ironman, and this year he finished his 20th a marathon and his fourth boston marathon. so i think i hope we can keep up

with them. lastly i'm not least, the mayor of riverton city utah. from my community, mayor applegarth serves as the mayor. he's been there since 2006. this year they're celebrating their 150th birthday. it is a high energy, high growth community. its population has exploded, and he will tell you about that. it was listed by cnn as one of the top places to live in the united states. it also has a rich transit history. in 1913 it at the salt lake and utah railway and urban life that went right through its community there. sotomayor applegarth has been on city -- sotomayor applegarth has been a city council, these an educator. in law degree. excuse me a doctorate from byu.

he is a congressional committee spent his entire career in the educational system. he does have a children and 30 grandchildren. he is a leader in our community. he is a virtual every transportation community. our relationship as a transit opposition and the npo the best i know in the country and kudos to mayor applegarth and thinks it is there. so without i'm going to ask the mayors to talk old about their cities and what they're doing so they can paint the picture for you of what's going on indices ended will move on to even more transportation agenda. so we can start with either one of you. spent hopefully our mic swore not on on. we are a. talking. i've been caught doing that a few times. we are not capitol steps and we know you waiting to see capitol

steps, although mayor giles said he would tap dance for you. in addition to running marathons he's a tap dancing and i guess we'll stand behind them. i understand that you are coming to countdown, to fort worth in may. i hope each and everyone of you in this room will come. you absolutely going to love the. we are the 16th, the 17th the largest city now. we got beat out by 105 people in charlotte in the midterm care. i think that's a statistical error, but we one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation since the year 2000. about 1000 people a day come to texas, at about 350 of those people land in dallas or fort worth. so we are huge. we are 800,000 citizens now, and then the next 10 years we will be more than 1 million citizens. we always say we're a big, spread out city. fort worth is 352 square miles and 344 square miles of --

ultimate we will be a big, big land mass. texas heritage as you all know we are obviously behind on mass transit because we love our suburbans and would love our pickups and we're just now getting people to really think about public transit. we've always had it there. it's always served the working class. you mentioned she can't believe it or not we used of the largest light of streetcar, thousand fort worth. we don't have a single streetcar any longer. so really poured a lot of concrete, but we all know is leaders, we know that you'll never poured in of concrete to accommodate the growth. you're simply not. and our young leaders, our young millennials who are moving their for the high-tech jobs for the defense industry jobs, aviation, tourism, already want one car. we are seeing to move back in the inner-city, as well as our

suburban cities, but we have to rebuild of those indices and keep them strong. transit is the way. they want to be able to leave one car in the garage and not take it out, to take a speculator bust or to take a bus to the intermodal and really get around. and then they want that last mile connection on bicycles. and we've really got a strong museum district or quit 65 million tourists last year. we have redone our convention center and about to redo it again. part of the is department from our transit system, our intermodal that went in, made a big difference on what we have done. but we are the fourth fort worth and dallas together, gary thomas is here from dark summer, even though we like to us about our friends can we really are a huge region and like many of you in this room people tend to not able to separate dallas from fort worth. now what you, you'll be able able to separate easily edge of will only come back to fort

worth. we are the center of the universe. we have in the last two years, and for the next three years, we will have $34 billion of infrastructure construction going on. we say you get everybody in fort worth has orange cones center. they hate and. they're sick of it. they are just sick of it. but we've got to get our public transit better. with got to get it where these millennials come in and then more important than the millennials, the silver tsunami issue. the number of people who turned 65 a day and will for the next 10 years, if you haven't googled it, google it. it will blow your mind how many of us there are. i'm one of those. and they tell me all the time, we want transit because we want to age in place but were not going to drive much longer and hopefully they will but many of them won't. they want to be able to take transit but they want it to be technical savvy. they want to pull up the next

bus locator and see when the bus comes. texas is hot to fort worth is 100 in july and august. you don't want to stand on the corner looking for your bus. you want to be able to be in your office or in your home and say, oh, ma. here comes. all affected is walk down the street to catch a. we're beginning to get the. the federal government has helped with some of that but it's also got to be arrived at that appeals to people. they've got to be able to put their bicycle on the front, which they currently can't hop on the bus, go to work take the bike off and complete that last mile. and it really is a major reason for us. we're just not going to accommodate all the cars we have. my friends that are in the carpet is it hate it i say that because basic we're going to keep selling them. i say keep selling them come we're going to try to keep working that i put them on buses. gridlock with those. the growth we've seen already the major arterial from mexico across the u.s. interstate 35

runs through fort worth and it's the best parking lot in the nation. we are actively remodeling it. in the next four years it will be remodeling, not the proper term, but renovating it and there will be an express lane courtesy of a federal grant down the center lane. we have a development on the far north edge of fort worth that's and cared county and denton county both but it's called alliance town center and it sprung up from an old ranch property. it is now 35000 jobs and rapidly growing group of the largest retail centers we've got. part of our development incentive is that anywhere from five to 15% of employees there to get a tax incentive have to come from intercity. we've struggled with getting the up 35 to the townsend. 135 is redone our transit authority will run an express bus in the morning and reverse it and run it back down and

evening and then they'll have to develop a secular system to get there. that's already in the master plan. i will talk for just a second i let them -- the transit budget is funded by a half cent sales tax and city sales tax and in federal grants and writer fees. it's been very successful. i next big project is our light rail. we have one real project now. the first real project and it's a joint project with start the trinity rail express and it's about 8000 riders a day and it's a commuter line between dallas and fort worth. it's been successful because young people and all people really, they just don't see that boundary between the cities. and likability, go, go to dinner, go to shops come to fort worth to go to the stockyards, the museum, back and forth. our next big project will be all right little project. we are excited about that. no, see us.

you will love it. [applause] >> thanks for lending to be here. things are so crowded at the national city with the pressure can we counter the long straw and we were lucky to come over and avoid all the chaos. so thanks for giving us an out for that activity over there. i will respectfully disagree as to where whether location of the center of universe is i think. it's a dual edged sword there. if i'm a little bit grouchy that i'm here instead of there right now, it's because during march mesa literally is the center of the baseball universe. we are it training city. i would be watching you for the chicago cubs, we are a two state and city so we have you the cubs or the athletics and a be wearing short sleeves and

sipping a diet coke with my feet up having a great time. i invite everyone to come to mesa. march is a great time to be there because of all the spring training activity. the weather is perfect and where a lot of out of town guests. next time you're looking for something to do in march, but mesa arizona, on your map. mesa is a great place. we are one of the larger cities, maybe it's not a household word in your lexicon out here. we kind of anchor the east valley east part of the phoenix metropolitan area with about half a million people, 37th largest city in the country second largest city in the phoenix metro region. kind of big on our own still very much a part of the phoenix deprecation system, another regional transit authority. we are the beneficiary of a lot of our funding through them so with the beneficiary of having

asset direct retort these become so common to our west. but again on our own pretty advanced largest city. while those recently i think a few months ago i mentioned an article in forbes that little mesa the most conservative city in the united states. and as a large committee look out, there's not a large urban season of the conservative bent to them but you see probably three examples of the phenomenon up here right now. it's in an interesting location to analyze the popularity of transit systems. so i'm curious to hear my fellow panel members talked a little bit about that. we are a large city. where a growing city as well. economical were still trying to claw our way out of of the downturn but we got a lot of things going for. we have a large boeing facility in these they are quick announcement of a new $2 billion apple facility so we are right

in writing a good wave of economic development. but at the same time we have i grew up in mesa in the downtown area that my child is was part of the old route 66 and so we had modell's edit very vibrant, interesting downtown in mesa back in the '60s and the early 70s. of course with the advent of freeways being billed to the north and south of us are downtown just kind of wizard up and died and went to large big box malls but i think i see a lot of smiling faces. people recognize this new that has been duplicated all over the country so we're kind of a poster child for that whole, you become with a great downtown. we build malls and freeways downtown would up and die. i was on the city council back in the '90s and we would find every possible way to try to pump some life into our downtown. it was really a ghost town and we do a lot of money at it. nothing really seemed to stick

coming towards the end of my service on the council back in the '90s when i felt like i'd worked that out of my system one of the less votes i had was to we parts but in this regional transit program that will bring light rail to the edge of our city? i remember being more than skeptical about the merits of this proposal thinking this is kind of cute walt disneyland ride that will come into her city but i don't really see it being something that's going to help us from a transportation perspective, but i reluctantly agreed to go along with this con conspiracy upbringing a silly little cars to the edge of our community and thought i might live to regret that vote. i am so delighted to come back now to city government. no one has ever been happier to be entirely wrong than i am. light rail has been a huge boom to our economy. light rail has proven to be very successful as a transportation

system to mesa. millennials, seniors particularly, for reasons that you know better than i had a very attracted to that end we have succeeded -- exceeded ridership. where 10 years ahead. but as popular and as successful as has been as a transportation system id chili it's been more successful as an economic redevelopment system. that downtown urban core that i described to you earlier is motels and other businesses that were dying. the property values along that light rail route have just skyrocketed, and we're excited. this fall we're going to open light rail right to our downtown core. the construction is pretty much complete and we've seen all this economic develop an activity. we have another two miles going further to the east that will be opened in two more years. so through a variety of creative and aggressive financing models with the help of regional

dollars in federal dollars we've been able to pull this off, and it's really going to breathe life back into the core of my community that like i said, i and everybody i know of that pretty much given up on. so i'm here to tell the story and encourage everyone to use us as a place to look do when you want to get excited about light rail. mesa, like these other cities we are fairly spread out, we are about 150 square miles and so we are a spread out urban suburb community. so light rail has got a lot of excitement, but at the same time we'rewe are so spread out we have to figure out other ways. line train track going down the middle of our community is not good at a huge impact on all of our transit needs. we've tried to be sensitive about a lot of park-and-ride ever looked into this model, as we progress by the east, we're going to find this next two miles going forward is going

to take action out to where people live in our community. so think we'll see the commuter aspect of light rail become more and more relevant as we continue to push further east out into our neighborhoods. but like i said from a commercial perspective generating excitement about a part of our time the people looked to with some amount of disappointment and almost shame, this is the tremendous a successful and i encourage you to take another look at mesa. thank you. [applause] >> i'm the little dog city appear today. i want to make sure you understood one thing on what mike said in the introduction. we talked about it was our 150th anniversary. i hope you realize that was the city and not mine. with all this gray hair, i wouldn't want you to get confused in that way. but i come from riverton utah. i wasn't raised there. i was born and raised in

southern california and move to riverton in 1975. we are 20 miles south of salt lake city so we are in the metropolitan area. when i moved of their there were 3000 people in 1975. in 2015 we have 42000 people approximately, and by 2030 i believe we will be built out before then or by then at least we will have 60,000 people. we are 12 12.6 square miles. i didn't leave as you're out there. we are 12.6 square miles and we have the general fund budget of $9.2 million to give you a feel for our city. as i became mayor a little over nine years ago, i wrote down some goals i wanted to accomplish, some emphasis. i wrote down some of my philosophy and what it wanted to do that way. and one of the things i wrote down in my philosophy that

wasn't in my campaign but in my philosophy as i took office is my major job was to spend money. not to save money but to spend money, but to spend it in the right way. and then as i analyzed and had when i was on the council, and probably true in your area the very negative funding for us is property tax. if you raise property tax they want to hang you by the nearest tree. if there is not a treat they will just run you over with a pickup truck. doesn't matter, just whatever way. but you don't mess with the property tax. so i got our city out of the property tax business. we fund our city basically by two sources, sales tax and utility franchise tax. and when you do that people don't care where you spend money. as long as you don't raise their taxes, they are fine. and we raised taxes by good

economic growth that will talk about in a minute, and so that is where we we've come from and that has allowed me to do that in that way. philosophically for my goals my overarching goal or principle is, if it doesn't improve the quality of life for our citizens, why do it? my job is to spend money to improve the quality of life. i also inherited an area in this 12.6 square miles i inherited an area that was a lot of farmland. and then what permanent buildings we had and what i would call downtown riverton had been, most of those have been taken away through widening of roads. so we had a pretty clean clear campus that we could develop. and one i went on account of their was a senior city

councilmember, and his slogan was, which i adopted in my own mind as well you only have one time to build out the city. will do the right. so that became the overarching -- build it out right. we don't have a lot of economic redevelopment. we have economic development because of that which has been a blessing for us. these are not necessarily in the order of importance, but they are the goals i've had all the time. one is to have a develop open space. we started with parks. and in the nine years that i've been in as mayor, a little over nine years, we spent $28 million on parks. and that's not a lot of money for you folks in one way, but for us $9.2 million for a general fund we spent a lot of money on parks. our last project will be finished june 22.

we will be open. it was our old historic main park. it was falling apart. it had been built in the '50s by volunteers. the sewer didn't work. the power didn't work. the buildings were old. we are just completed a $70 million project where we took the part down to the dirt, and everything has been replaced except the dirt. and we even brought in more topsoil so in a way we replaced the dirt as well. so that project is being completed, and we have turned it into come instead of a baseball park, it has been turned into a passing part. we building 2010, we build a new ballpark, spent $7 million on that so that is just a baseball and football park for our young people to be involved in organized sports. and some soccer and some tournament with the girls

baseball. we have another park for girls baseball, but this was a passive partner or other perks janet our programmable parks for youth sports. because with a high percentage of youth in our area. we have a very young population because of the growth. so now we're taking and we are moving into the second part of that and that is we are now moving to trails. we have, because we were farmland, we have irrigation canals that bisect our city. we have five of those. into the canal if you're aware of the west and irrigating you have the road next to a, a path next to it for canal minus. we have the jordan river that is on our east bounty. the jordan river has a nice trail that has been put down the jordan river and completed in our area. we are now in the designing and working with canal companies to move ahead and put trails along the canals as well.

we're basically concerned with active transportation, which is we're moving and that is becoming our city engineers major focus in that regard. we will talk about our road transportation and but we are pretty well completed on that. we spent quite a bit of money on as well. we are moving to the trails. we get young people, old people who like to walk so we need bike trails, walking trust, running trails. and in part of our city, horse trails. there's part of our city that we are moving towards higher densities and we will be in high density so there's no horses out there, but in the traditional part of our city we have horse trails and our expanding those as well as we go along and do that in that way. the third goal we've had is economic development. it's critical to us to develop rides because were so dependent on sales tax and franchises. and so we are in the process right now of finishing a deal

that helped will bring about $400 million of construction into commercial construction into our area. principally a retail development with some office space a hotel and big boxes as well. during my administration we've had the opportunity to see big boxes moving to we have two wal-marts in our city. we have home depot. we have loads. we have goals. before that we had peterson's market and riverton drug. and so it's been fun to see those develop. development in our county comes from the north and east. so i learned easily and quickly that you have to wait your turn but i just didn't want to sit there. so my time was spent a lot of infrastructure improvements and that's what's going on now. we will finish out our infrastructure improvements in the next couple of years in that

way. so economic development is important to us. if you tonight with salt lake we are in the southwest part of salt lake. we say in a valley surrounded by mountains or the lake. we are very narrow. i'm not sure how wide we are. i would guess about 50 miles wide. in that regard. and so we have this corridor, and right now, when i moved of their, there was one road out of riverton because of the joint river was a barrier to us and the sensitivity that we all have in our area for the lands around, the environment around the jordan river and not to interfere with that very much. we now have two roads out of riverton, wrote a victory for 45 people a day and so we have widened our other roads so that we have roads, are of the road that we had out of riverton handles 30,000 people a day.

we had the highway which goes north and south and east and west. it circles because we are against the foothills where you can't go directly out. we've had those kinds of things and mobility going forward, and we'll talk about that a little weight or. but it's important for us to include all aspects of transportation. public transportation is an important part rail, a very important part which we can talk about a little later. as i mentioned i grew up in los angeles, california. grew up in the small care of grew up we couldn't see the beautiful mounts because they were hidden by what we called smog in those times. grew up with a healthy young man, but when you're too involved with athletics, your chest would hurt because the air pollution was in the area. moved to salt lake and saw the

big blue skies in the mountains, but have seen that deteriorate as population has. a major goal that i have is air quality. we don't have we have some pollution, but we live between the buttons and the winds move it out of our city a lot against the mountains. even though the bad pollution in the salt lake valley is not my direct responsibility geographically, it's my direct responsibility politically. that's another critical reason for rail as we develop it in our area. thank you for letting me be here as a little dog. nine years ago when i got involved my natural interest

would've been to be involved with homeless shelters and social programs. that's where i would normally like to move towards. we don't have any homeless in riverton. i still take part on boards and help finance homeless shelters and salt lake from our city. but i realized that as mayor, the important thing i got involved with was roads. i was the teacher. wanted to know about building roads and all of that? i was in my first elected office 13 years ago as a councilmember. what did i know about the political way to work? but what i soon found is i looked at grants that are coming our way and development coming our way as far as roads and so forth to i never saw riverton's

name on it that first year, and so i started asking, what do i need to do and what do i need to be involved with. and this name probably would not mean anything to but mayor tom dolan of a major city in our valley, he was gracious enough to go out to lunch with me, and i could pick his brain. and he said bill, get involved in the transportation community. so i've learned the language. i've learned the politics. i have the passion, and it's critical to our city the mobility part is a very, very critical issue and that's what i've gotten involved the thanks for letting me be here. [applause] >> thank you mayors. i very much appreciates it. i'm going to ask us to drill down just a little bit into the

transportation initiative that you have. as you've picked up on he of the city is that light rail under construction right now. you've got one that's right on the cusp, mayor, just about there. are happy to help you get over that line. and then mayor applegarth talked about future developments, planning and preparing the transportation investment. i was just in phoenix last month and wrote the line up to mesa through all the construction to the train in the middle of the day was full. and told me, but was with those silver tsunamis? >> silver tsunami's. >> they were packing a train and riding it around and loving it. it's there. ridership as you know is at its highest point in history. utah transit authority is at its highest. people are screaming. so we love to hear from you about a little more specific about your project. and if you can focus on the

benefit from the economic benefit, the committee benefits, perhaps environmental or energy benefits congestion, things that you think that transit will help in your communities. >> as i mentioned earlier our ridership has road exceeded our expectation. we are currently at a place where we had hoped to be 10 years from now. and right now light rail just comes to the edge of my community. we are at the end of the line for the phoenix transit line. this fall, probably the end of the summer will open three miles from the edge of our city through the heart of our downtown. through literally down the middle of main street. and that as i indicated earlier, an economic development standpoint has been a huge lesson for us. from a transportation point of view as well, it's a huge blessing. we are, with a fair amount of

seniors. arizona particularly the east valley and mesa is kind of viewed the stored as a retirement community. we have one of the amenities that we do have in our downtown area is a huge $100 billion plus performing arts center that is a magnet for seniors. so there is certainly its popular. we have a large senior population and its popular with the senior publisher statistically mesa is a younger than average community. so the millennials is what's been a surprise to me. obviously, we are in our culture has changed i think in ways that we didn't anticipate 20 or 30 years ago. folks now don't want to sit in cars. if they can find anyway to park a the car and get on transit and it works with her lifestyle, they are going to do that. more often than not. that's certainly been the case in mesa. so we have several large part

and right at the edge of our community with the system currently terminates. huge parking lot frankly, a part of the challenge that we're going to have as a community is once we move the terminals further and for these will go back and redevelop these parking lots that are not quite as big a deal as they need to be. and that's a great opportunity for us as well. it's going to have more economic develop opportunities along this very act of downtown light rail. so it's tremendously popular. as it goes further and further east it's going to continue to add thousands and thousands more people as we reach like i said ultimately four or five years from now we will be in the neighborhood that i lived, a very residential neighborhood. not, you know, a low-income neighborhood. i could very easily hop in my car, travel a block or two hop on the light will, go to downtown fitness, go to all the sporting events at arizona state

university downtown fitness, go to the airport. all like i say just a short car ride, a block or two to go to a light rail station. i think when that happens you'll see it in fact not just the millennials and the seniors people are trying to avoid getting into cars but you will get the average joe like myself that sees it as a viable transportation option as well. >> i think that's true. and we have a focus in fort worth now on healthy communities. we have a fit worth initiative and the blue zone and will be by far the largest city today that is the designated blue zone but it can get people out of their community come out of the car and back in their community and transit can do that. transit can't allow them to walk and stand and visit whether at all levels, whether it's the mobility impaired transit that allows those to get around on whether it's young folks with strollers, young families, or it's the silver tsunami's.

but getting that transit system expanded as to the valley and the vibrancy of your community. we started derailed express in 96 partnering with dallas. i mentioned earlier that is the first commuter line in the southwest with about 2 million passengers a year. and then it sat but people used it, and now we are back. we realized we got to get light rail again. if we are really going to succeed where we want to be in the city, you've got to start. our friends in dallas have seen. houston, austin, and so fort worth has been focused on her latest project that will help not only with vibrant, strong healthy communities and engaged communities that with our air quality. our buses are already on cng. like you in salt lake we started seeing the air each year in fort worth. there is a brown haze and all of

these will help, but extra will be direct to start out with. our goal is ultimately it will be networked out across all the city. by rachel is going to be at dfw airport. the airport is jointly owned by the city of fort worth and dallas. is the third busiest airport in the world. dallas has had dart at the airport. you can come out of the terminal, hop on a people mover and go to the dart link and be in dallas. if you are a traveling public comment on business for a convention or if you're coming just with your family for tourists and give got an option when you fly into the airport, you get a red car or $70 cab ride of fort worth or it is what, $8 bus ride on the light rail? to dallas. what are you going to do? >> i was on it last month. it's fantastic. >> it is fantastic. we really realized we have to return our focus on connecting

to the airport first. and not only will give us that competitive edge and we need to continue to grow and develop our convention trade, our tourism trade, but also allows, we've got so many people who live in fort worth and working dallas. if they can go to the intra- mobile center, hop on extra, go to the airport and hop over to the orange lamp on dart and be on dallas without congestion. everybody is married to the ipad or the iphone. so you're not driving. so what can you do? you can work or you can read the morning paper or if my daughter uses it, she put on her makeup and comb her hair when she took the rail because she didn't do it in the morning. our partner cities, the city of great minds, richland hills the part of what it is unduly funded with a sales tax and we have a request in for a full funding grant, 50 million has been put in one budget, and 100 million in this times budget at the federal level.

and the good news about the federal grants on this road project is that it allows us to leverage our sales tax dollars. it's that leveraging that we would lose if we don't get our federal funding. so we are really excited about what tex rail will offer. like y'all in salt lake with 54 miles of trails come and many people say, i want to take the train get on a trip and paddle back to fort worth or want to go to dallas and right the fort worth i want to patent details and then right back to fort worth. we even get runners as they were going to go in arlington, hop on the bus, go to singapore, get on the rail and go to dallas for the day. it's an interesting concept people are beginning to think very creatively and very innovatively about outside the box, at its economic development, it's mobility, better air quality. it's engaged in healthy cities. it makes a difference on light rail. >> my previous boss had sent them if you like to text, twitter our tweet take transit.

>> we're at an interesting time in our city. we have a culture. we'll talk about this later, but we have a culture of unify transportation effort. roads and transits are together. so we have that in our city or in our state. we also, i came from a background of riding transit. as i worked downtown, downtown salt lake, rather than drive, i drove over to sandy to get to the line by 19. i did express buses and just giveaways. so i had a natural feel for transit. i was in a position where i was working in-12 hours a day. as the mayor said it gave me time back. i could answer my e-mails. coming and going and that kind of thing. so i had an interest in the. but transit is really a local issue. is not locally financed in our area, nor could i that it's a local issue.

so i was sitting in a meeting and they're talking about transit and so forth and some of the new lines and the things that were happening in the projects going forward, and there was nothing coming my way at all. there was nothing coming my way close, you know to my way. and so as i sat there, it irritated me. and so when i was there i knew that i had to do something, that it was much. so i raise an objection to it, and that we needed to study the southwest quarter were there study, and i pledged $100,000 for that study. keep in mind that we are in $9.2 million general budget. when i went back to our city manager, and we were and tight budget and it was during the downturn. i said you've got to find the $100,000. his eyes just went like that. you've got to be kidding me. what have you done? and so we jumped into the study.

the study was a $2 million of study and it's going on now and we are finishing up in the next few months and it will be before the city council the four cities that are involved in this. we will be the city council for the third quarter. it into being a $2 million study. uta threw in for their source of $1 million to we pledged $500,000 they went knocking on doors in the other three cities and developers to get other my to round it off. so it really is that kind of a local issue. and then where we are now in addition to funding the study that's only the start. we've had to work on corridor preservation. so are planning director and i asked him so many times when you development was coming in, he just got sick of me, do you have the setbacks for enough so that a transit corridor can go through this commercial area? the last thing we want to do is

a building at a time for a house anytime. so we have some very sprouts to protect because of our geography there were only a couple ways you can go anyway so we had to protect those. so we moved in to corridor preservation in that regard and in our area for roads we got developers to donate land for roads. we have big developers coming in now. and my expectation, i've already talked to them my expectation is that we will get donated land for transit corridor. they are giving us farmland. right now the transit project can go through our city without tearing down one dwelling. now that's an accomplishment of corridor preservation. and a proud of what our people are been able to do with that. but that's only part of it in our area of study or our point of view. one is to educate our people. the foundation of our city is

farmland. farmland and transit don't necessarily mix. but we have it urbanizing and so we're trying through education bringing both groups together. we will do that so we have the people's support. the last thing that uta needs if they're going to build a life for our city is for political pressure to come against that line and protesters lining the board meetings and not wanting not wanting it. if that comes we will be dead in the water. and so that's a very, very important part to me as well. and then we'll talk about this later, too, but it's my job as the mayor and my colleagues job as mayors in our states to get involved in transportation funding. i don't believe that i should ask those in the state legislature and the county council in a congressional area

to fund any kind of transportation, roads and transit, but i'm not willing to stand out in front of the parade and take some arrows. i asked them and i'm willing to support them. and so we'll talk about that later, too. >> you raise an interesting point about planning. i think for 50 years, particularly in the high-growth urban areas, we tended to not do good on regional planning. probably 15, 20 years ago we started our regional transportation coalition, and it's made up of dallas and fort worth at all the surrounding seven pounds involving. and it really has been a major tool in helping connect. obviously, all to my in the region like ours, and given like yours, john large areas. you can't operate alone. it's too expensive for one city to run the whole system. you've got to leverage federal and state dollars, and you've got to leverage your regional

dollars. because if we can plan for the right-of-way and the corridors to try to get those through, and if we can partner with partners and have a master plan then we are all better serve. the city is updating our master plan and we recently had a city council meeting and invited people to come present a workshop on transit. it was very interesting and that's going on all over the metroplex and i think that will be much stronger by being able to say as a region where working together. dallas and fort worth used harley talk and now with weekly dialogue. paul and jerry and a lot of them meet because it doesn't make sense for us to run a line here and you got to get off and jumped onto another one. >> that's a perfect segue road to the next session. >> what the both of these mayors are saying really resonates with my experience as well. there's no better issue for regionalism and transportation

to and when you have one mayor that has an exciting transit project going on in the middle of these downtown, you become everybody else's new best friend. my mayors to both sides of me are clamoring, hey we need to go to lunch because i need you to part with the on some studies to get what you've got going spurred out into my community. so it's made from a personal popularity perspective, it's been a very great thing for me with my fellow mayors. and it just makes a tremendous amount of sense from regionally it can bring it together in ways that other issues just don't have the same sex appeal. >> there's a whole lot of friendly competition. mike rawlings is the mayor of dallas and i said is a friendly co-op. >> we get motivated when cities step up and decide they want to invest in this. that really is the best

motivator i know to say okay we're going to partner and that really is the segue to the next option, which is what can we do to partner this enthusiasm and commitment at the local level? we are seeing referendums pass 75 80% around the nation. conservative states are passing referendums to support public has protection. witnessing local governments step up and extend their budgets to the nth degree to try to invest in that planning that's so important. ..

. we passed a $294 million bond election, $220 million of that is dedicated to transportation streets and roads. and the state of texas passed proposition i which is constitutional and almost 80%. and to pass proposition i which is the cost of guaranteed constitutional, flowing into transportation projects. part of what we did was we got out and did town halls and advertising and talked in coalitions to pass this state guaranteed to get out of talks but we come up and lobby fairly

often. people tend to think and u.s. mayors understand you get an invitation to local elected officials. or house members for election to fund-raisers and don't give the money. they do want your money for the campaign. if people working on transit you got to go talk to them. catch some when they are here. give them the statistics on the ground, given the statistics on what is happening, taken for a ride through your library or wherever you live but keep them in the loop, education in d.c. because they developed a tremendous disconnect from that locally. and the mayor and council.

to do it, you got to advocate for citizens to help you because they are -- turn your local citizens to get d c interested in it. >> you have to have a regional funding, work with neighboring communities and i think there's a real appetite. all of us share the frustration of getting in the car getting from point a to point be. that is the common denominator through of the electorate and all our communities. we have that to draw upon and if we can rally regionally with our neighbors you can get an analyst of money to attract washington's attention. and a likelihood of success stories and washington's success stories love to come to ribbon

cuttings and tell positive stories and if you can paint a positive scenario, you get regional funding you stand a likelihood of attracting the money will need. it has to be a regional priority. in our community to expedite things happening we were able to ship the federal money and tax it in a way to prioritize and by doing that, we have used this in multiple dollars to expedite the funding. and federal and regional money will be there the next couple years wrappers and waiting five or ten years to make a project happen. people came to meet that this was our priority and we would put our money where our mouth does and get paid back hopefully in the years to come.

that commitment to success, the federal government loosening the regional dollars in ways the we can focus to use flexibility and don't need some of the street projects the we have on our budget are less a priority than the transit projects so let prioritize our money in a way the we can actually do a large significant project and get it done now rather than years from now. >> we have a regional in our area statewide in a lot of things because we are a small stake and we need to be working together and i had nothing to do with this but i am sure glad that others put it in place. we have a unified transportation plan so we are unified in our transit, our road our transportation so our legislature is in session right now.

we will finish session this thursday. we have some major transportation funding and beseech e l of the transit district, the n t o is there as well with staff. the city, league of cities in the state is there together. we also have the business community, the chamber of commerce is there with us. we realize that if we were united in what we wanted and we were fighting against each other, the roads and this and that, that we weren't going to get it. to save the least, utah is not all liberal legislature. some of our representatives i understand their position, are trying to help u.s. long as it

is and to tax increase. now what has happened in the state legislature, what is going on right now that will change some things and go forward from this but right now there are two types of financing that they are looking at for this. one is an increase in gas tax and one is the sales tax. there are different groups that all have a part of this high and we have to work together. our state roads run through our cities. in our city, we are finishing a project of $45 million road projects. i can't worry about city roads and say to the director you do what you want, i don't have any interest. he is united with transit as well in this so the state needs

money, and they need more money, the city needs more money for construction and maintenance terribly needs more money for roads. we have that as well. the county needs more money for their roads and public transportation needs more money so we have right now the bill, we have several bills but the bill that is more encompassing is a sales tax increase where you would get 0.1 for transit 0.1 for local roads and 0.05 for counties and in the rural part of our stage where you don't have transit authorities or transit needs, that 1.1 for transit goes to the county. it will have more roads than that. was accounting need roads? we have 30 miles of roads in salt lake city and some of our 7 communities have 4,000 miles of

roads. that is all there are, rural areas. we have that and we also have a gas tax, several bills on the gas tax, one is a straight increase of $0.10, gasoline, $0.05 on diesel, 70% of that goes to state roads, constitutionally protected roads, 30% for local roads the other part of it is to take our gas tax, zero.five cents per gallon and change it into a sales tax on fuel so it grows with inflation and has a ceiling and floor and ceiling but it is that uniting to get there each of us have our roles sell our flag in the legislature right now is between the senate and house. it is not about the need for more transportation money. a very conservative state keep

in mind. it is not that. it is about using it gas tax or sales tax or do you do both? isn't it kind of nice to have a mom and dad fighting over how to get the kids more money? i don't care if it is out of the left pocket or the right pocket but the way we have achieved that as mayors is we have said to the legislature with the sales tax we don't want you to raise sales tax. we want you to put it on the ballot. we are willing to stand with few and champion the cause. so what probably will come out is an authorization from the state to the county council or commission and have the county council or commission put it on the ballot and it will be then distributed in the county of

origin, it will be distributed that amount in a different way but we as mayors are all united on this. are willing to stand up. is not fair if i say to legislator give me money and i sit back and let him take the heat. that is my role. >> the other way to get their attention is to talk about jobs. they tend to forget how many jobs are involved in any transit and any transportation project and when you start construction you have additional jobs in construction and that is a big deal for any official to deal with. >> i am going to move that into the queue and a 40 audience. to be successful you have to have four major ingredients from

my vernacular good projects and good marriage added to the community. and a good team, whether they are construction or operations got to engender that trust in the community and put your money where your mouth is and come of with the local resources to show your commitment and have that community that underscore is what the mayor said that there are 85 cities and six counties that have gotten together along with the highway department of transit agency, and any of the decisionmaking body have endorsed a plan. we are not fighting about the plan. we are just in the weeds talking about how to pay for it. those four ingredients underscore the need in washington. we can do it, they can do it. i don't want to forget. the mayor touched on the fact the lot of the investment we are talking about is fair good

repair and preventive maintenance. the thing about a conservative state talking about shiny bells and whistles more about potholes and replacing street pavement and running more buses, the number one goal in our state. and amazing phenomena and coming to fruition and that is a story we can share. so success begets success and you have seen it in all of these communities and that is the message we take forward here in washington. let me open it up to the audience if you have any questions for these mayors and see if you can provoke them any more. i know you are not a shy crowd. >> one thing you can share with us as an organization that we can help carry forward from your

comments today? >> i would love to stand up for transportation. taking the message back, how critical it is this country rebuild its infrastructure is that we continue to offer modern, innovative ways to attract people because it helps us at every level from air quality, it congestion, productivity, in the healthier community. it is a great message and this group can be a great vehicle for helping pass that along. >> april mind, don't forget. >> best lesson you can learn from what happened in our community is flexibility and looking at the money you have and trying to figure out how to focus the resources you do have on the most important projects to prioritize our ways you can shift the federal and/or regional money to address top needs, and we all have budgets

with a variety of projects on them and if some of the projects you have funding for are not the most important projects you need to figure out how to make that problem not be a problem anymore so that is one of the things we have done locally that i would suggest you take a look at. >> from my perspective do what you do best, and build and operate public transportation. i wish i could tell you you don't have to worry about your funding but you do, but as mayors, how we can help you with the funding, i have no idea how to build anything i need your help telling me what i need to do and where i need to support and what buttons i need to push because my job is to get the funding for you but i can't do it on my own.

>> sorry for being little late. to your funding question you talked a lot about sales tax and other pots of money. have any of you use tax increment financing, special assessment districts and could you give us a little flavor of how to get businesses that are taxed in those areas on board with those funding streams. >> it came in in 96. following that, it comes to the texas and pacific terminal and we had very little downtown living. it is in a tax increment financing zone and that money was able to come back in and help renovate what the terminal along with several city moneys and the law in this bill lost residential lots and sold out in

less than a year but it is not around it is an incredible asset and helps with landscaping and upkeep. there is another area coming in for transit oriented development that i believe is also in that, it extends over to that side. it is an incredible full for us for investment around these developments. and the same thing with developments comes in. >> that hasn't been part of our formula. we rely on regional transit tax and i think that was passed several years ago based in large part on the angst we were feeling about building highways and wrapped up in that very popular notion of building more highways was a component for transit and the beneficiaries of

the transit money is that was sold to the public as part of a more aggravating concern about highways. the phoenix system now is well filled out when it comes to highways as a result of this regional tax and the smaller component we are talking about now has been the transit money that allowed us to do other portions i have been talking about. >> 35, the major renovation for this fear of air across the state was said the not getting funding. we couldn't seem to get it across the finish line until we revamped and get a transit line up the middle. and said we would fund it. >> in our community regional and federal funding has taken care of the actual building in this 600 acre development we are involved in now. i believe my role is to get that land given to the city so we can give it to the transit authority

and we are using part of that, we can put in other infrastructure and pay for that. i don't believe we can do that with paper transfer out of the cd a money. not sure of the law there. we can pay for other infrastructure and get land donated as a result of that and requiring 20% open space and that will be transit in the opening space definition so that is the way we are trying to help it. >> there is an international lesson learned here in the asian properties. they are seeing 40, 50% of their resources from their land development and european properties, 20%, 30%. we are having a hard time reaching that. a long way to go as part of the cultural infrastructure a lot of reasons but there is great

progress being made, we need to keep the pressure on. as the mayor talked about community development and value capture and those kinds of things it is a resource that isn't going to be the primary resources for our business but it is one of the leveraging options you talked about today. any other questions? i am going to say thanks to these majors. it has been an incredible phenomenal. [applause] >> want to show our appreciation by giving them each -- stand up for america t-shirt. thank you very much, appreciate it. there is that tee shirt for each of you. the right size so enjoy it. thank you for coming. appreciate it. ♪

>> coming up on our companion network c-span the senate foreign relations committee hears from state treasury and defense department officials on the ukraine russia conflict. among the witnesses assistant secretary of state victoria muller his that russia's actions in ukraine signal an invasion. live coverage gets underway at 10:00 a.m. eastern. >> the political landscape has changed within 114th congress. not only are there 43 new republicans and 15 new democrats in the house and 12 new republicans and one new democrat in the senate there are also 108 women in congress including the first african-american republican in the house and the first woman veteran in the senate. keep track of members of congress using congressional chronicle on c-span.org. the congressional critical change has lots of useful

information including voting results and statistics about each session of congress. new congress, best access on c-span, c-span2, c-span radio and c-span.org. >> now the conclusion of the american public transportation association's annual transportation policy conference. we return for an update from transportation department officials on rail and transit initiatives. this runs an hour and 25 minutes. >> please take your seats. good afternoon, everyone. good afternoon. thank you for joining us this afternoon. the capitol steps were outstanding where they not?

this afternoon we are going to hear from our readers from the department of transportation. this is one of my favorite sessions. we get to beat up on fta. the first is administrator teresa macmillan, representing secretary of transportation and then the fox who could not be with us. she will speak about fta's initiatives for 2015. she joined fta std administrator on july 9th, 2009, she has assisted the administrator in leading a staff of more than 500 in the washington d.c. headquarters office and ten regional offices throughout the united states. with the passage of 21 she assumed a key role in guiding

implementation of transformation provisions in the law and overseeing the development of critical guidance. she has played a leadership role in advancing several critical priorities to improve the quality and delivery of transit services in the american public including assisting in the development of a streamlined process for the new and small start program in securing new funding opportunities for transit assets. she took the lead in working with staff across the country to ensure the timely and accurate allocation of $8.78 billion for 1,072 recovery act grants. she also represented federal transit interests in the partnership for sustainable communities which fellow colleagues, epa and hud.

welcome acting administrator macmillan. [applause] >> thank you. it is great to be with you again. as you know secretary fox plans on being here today and the only reason he didn't is because he is having surgery on his knee. i am sure he would be the first to point out the irony that the infrastructure all of us are getting older in the need of repair from time to time. there was one very important message. he wanted to be with you today to share and that is to faint each of you for coming to washington to visit with your members of congress. he has been to the hill many times over the past year and has worked hard to share with lawmakers the sense of urgency. and explained how we are investing much less than we

should be in transportation and warned that because of that, we have fallen behind, something we have to address even as we plan the capacity, we must have for growth and demand. the same arguments carry so much more weight and when they come from you. you are able to speak in concrete terms about communities that are struggling to stay on the move. large ones and small ones, urban and world, red and blue. that context matters. arkansas and tennessee and delaware speak up and say they are postponing billions of dollars worth of projects, with the uncertainty of short-term measures is costing us. it is up to each of us to convince our elected people leaders that america's future

grows in prosperity, depends on the decisions they will be making in the weeks ahead. working shoulder to shoulder with local business leaders he are in the best position to tell your own story and make it clear how important public transportation is in your community. i want you to imagine you have the opportunity to write a postcard and send it back 30 years in the past. what would it say. said the picture of your family as an encouragement to your past self. maybe you send a warning on the troubles we face as a nation. you would revise your 1985 self to invests in microsoft, look out for a company called google and don't count apple out just

yet. we have already received a postcard from a 30 years in the future and on the front pinchot's broad highways full of cars at a standstill and trucks full of goods going nowhere. it shows a nation with 20% more people and an inability to connect them to jobs education and health care. as bridges that have fallen with tragic results. and on the back it simply says invest in transportation. why are we getting such a pessimistic postcard from our future self? will we follow the advice? you have to understand that the future of america is a much more crowded place, when our nation could grow by 25% over the next 20 years adding 70 million

people, pick any highway rail car, at rush hour, in almost any city in america today and you tell me if you can squeeze in 25% more people. americans are already spending five days a week in traffic. in new york city, a record number of riders on an aging subway system have already resulted in a greater number of overcrowding delay is. in fact in december we had more than twice as many delays as the year before. this is not only a problem for big cities. the fastest growing areas in the u.s. are places like frisco, texas south jordan, utah gaithersburg, md. mount pleasant, south carolina. the town of san marco, texas, they saw an 8% growth rate from

2012 to 2018 making it the fastest-growing city in the nation with more than 50,000 people and we are not talking about a tech hubble wealthy oil town. the median household income is $26,000 far below the average. the population in cities like bees are growing nationwide the number of people 65 and older more than doubled over the next 50 years and when the aarp what amenities they most wanted close to home the number one answer was a bus stop. not of pharmacy. it was more important than a grocery store. it is how important their mobility and independence are to those seniors. what that postcard from the future is trying to tell us is the we will not be able to