f that is development from our transit system. our intermodal that went in made a big difference on what we have done. but we are the -- fort worth together, gary thomas is here from dart somewhere, even though he like to talk about our friends at dart we really are a huge region and like many of you in this room we tend to not be able to separate dallas from north worth. once you come you're going to be able to separate them easily and you're only going to come back to fort worth. because we are not the center of the universe. but we have in the last two years and for the next three years we'll have $34 billion of infrastructure construction going on. we say everybody in fort worth has got orange cone syndrome. they hate us. they're sick of it. they're just sick of it. but we've got to get our public transit better. we've got to get it for the millennials coming in. and more importantly than the millennials the silver tsunami is here.

the number of people who turned 65 a day, and will for the next ten years, if you haven't googled it, google it it will blow your mind how many of us there are. and i'm one of those. and they tell me all the time, we want transit because we want to age. we're not going to drive for much longer. hopefully they will but many of them won't. they want to be able to take transit but they want to be technical savvy. they want to pull up the next bus locator and see when the bus comes. texas is hot. fort worth is 110 in july and august. and 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, here it comes all i got to do is walk down the street and catch it. and we're beginning to get there. the federal government has helped with some of that. but it's also got to be a ride 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 their 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 that we have. my friends that are in the car business hate it when i say that because they say we're going to keep selling. we're going to try to keep parking them and put them on buses. but gridlock will kill us. the growth that 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. and we're actively remodeling it. in the next four year, it will be remodeling and there will be an express lane down the center. we have a development on the far north edge of ft. worth that's in tarrant county and denton county both, but it's ft. worth city limits called alliance town center. it sprung up from an old ranch property ch it is now 35,000 jobs and rapidly growing. part of our development

incentive is that anywhere from 5 to 15% of the employees there to get a tax incentive have to come from the inner city and we've struggled with getting them up to 25 and when 35 is redone, the t, which is our transit authority, will run an express bus up in the morning and reverse it and run it back down in the evening and they will have to develop the circulator system to get there and that's already in the master plan and i'll talk just a second and then let them speak about the t. the t is our transit system funded by a half cent sales tax from city sales tax and the federal grants and rider fees. it's been very successful. our next big project is text rail or light rail. we have one rail project now. the first and it's a joint project with dart.

the tre, the trinity rail express and it's about 8,000 riders a day. a commuter line between dallas and ft. worth. young people and all people, really, they just don't see the boundary between the cities. they like to go to dinner, go to the stockyards, the museums and back and forth. but our next big project is going to be a light rail project and we're excited about that, so, come see us, you going to love it. >> well, thanks for letting me be here. things are so crowded at the national league of cities with the president coming, we were joking, we drew the long straw and were lucky to come here avoid all the chaos at the other side of town right now. so thanks for giving us an out to that. i'll respectfully disagree as to where the location of the center of the universe is i think.

>> that's okay. >> quite right. it's a dual edged sword there. if i'm a little grouchy i'm here instead of there right now, it's because during march, mesa is the center of the basketball -- baseball universe. we are a big spring training city. we're a two stadium city. so weed have the cubs or the a's. and i'd be wearing short sleeves and sipping a diet coke with my feet up having a great time. so, i invite everyone to come to mesa. march is a great time to be there. the weather's perfect and we have a lot of out of town guests, so, next time you're looking for something to do in march, put mesa, arizona on your map. mesa is is a great place. we're one of the larger cities, maybe is not a household word, in your lexicon out here. we kind of anchor the east valley, the east part of the phoenix metropolitian area where about a half a million people, 37th largest city in the country, second largest city in the phoenix metro region.

kind of big on our own, but still very much a part of the phoenix transportation system, mag and other regional transit authorities. we are the beneficiary of a lot of our funding through them, so we're the beneficiary of having that asset directly to our east. i'm sorry, to our west. but again, on our own, pretty advanced, large city. while there was recently i think a few months ago, an interesting article in forbes that labeled mesa the most conservative city in the united states. and as a large, if you look up here, there's not a lot of large urban cities that have kind of a conservative bend to them, but you see probably three examples of that phenomenon up hering right now. and so, it's an interesting

location to analyze the popularity of transit systems. so, i'm curious to hear my fellow panel members talk about that. we are a large city, we're a growing city. economically, we are still trying claw our way out of downturn. we have a large boeing facility in mesa. we just added the announcement of a new, $2 billion apple facility. we're riding a good wave of economic development. i grew up in mesa in a downtown area that in my childhood was part of the old route 66, so, we had motels and a very vibrant, interesting downtown in mesa in the '60s and early '70s. of course with the advent of freeways being built, the north and south of us, our downtown just kind of withered up and died and went to large big box malls. i think i see a lot of smiling faces. people recognize the scenario,

so we're kind of a poster child for that whole, we had a great downtown. we built malls and freeways downtown withered up an died and i was on the city council in the '90s and we would find every possible way to try to pump life into downtown, that was literally a ghost town and we threw a lot of money at it and nothing seemed to stick and towards the end of my service on the council back in the '90s, when i felt like i had worked that out of my system, one of the last votes i had was do we participate in this regional transit program that's going to bring light rail to the edge of our city. i remember being more than skeptical, thinking this is kind of cute, walt disneyland ride that will come into our city, but i don't see it as something that's going to help us from a transportation perspective, but i reluctantly agreed to go on with this communist conspiracy of bringing these silly little

cars to the edge of our community and thought well, i might live to regret that move. i have to tell you that i am so delighted now to come back to city government and no one's ever been happier to be entirely wrong than i think i am. light rail has a huge boom to our economy. light rail has proven to be successful as a transportation system. to mesa. millennial seniors, especially. we've exceeded ridership. we're ten years ahead. but as popular and as successful as it has been as a transportation system, it's been more successful as an economic redevelopment system is. the downtown urban core of 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 development activity and we have another two miles going further to the east that will be open in two more years, so, through a variety of creative and aggressive financing models with the help of regional dollars and 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 say, i and everybody i know of had pretty much given up on, so i'm here to tell that story and encourage everyone to look to us to get excited about light rail. mesa, like these other cities, we're about 150 square miles. and so, we're kind of a spread out, urban suburb and community, so, light rail has got a lot of

excitement, but at the same time, we're so spread out, we have to figure out other ways. one train track going down the middle of our community is not going to have a huge impact on all of our transit needs, so we've tried to be sensitive to that. there's a lot of park and rides worked into this model. as we've progressed further east, we're going to find this next few miles going forward is going to take it actually out to where people live in our community. i think we'll see the commuter aspect of light rail becoming more relevant. like i said, from a commercial perspective, generating excitement about a part of our town, the people looked to with some amount of disappointment and almost shame, this has been tremendously successful and i encourage you to take another look at mesa. thank you.

[ applause ] >> well i'm the little dog city up here today. i want to make sure you understood one thing mike said. when he was it was our 150th anniversary, i hope you realized it was the city and not mine. with all these gray hairs, i wouldn't want you to get confused on it. i come from riverton, utah. i wasn't born and raised there. i was born and raised in southern california and move to riverton in 1975. we're 20 miles south of salt lake city, so wear in the metropolitan area. when i moved there, there were 3,000 people in 1975. in 2015, we have 42,000 people approximately and by 2030, i believe we'll be built out by then, we'll have 60,000 people. we're 12.6 square miles. i didn't leave a zero off of there. we're 12.6 square miles and we

have a general fund budget of $9.2 million to kind of give you a feel for our city. as i became mayor, i wrote down some goals that i wanted to accomplish, some emphasis. i wrote down some of my philosophy and what i wanted to do that way and one of the things i wrote down that wasn't in my campaign but in my philosophy as i took office that 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 counsel, 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's not a tree, they'll just run over you with their pick up truck, either way.

but you don't mess with 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 taxes. 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 raise the taxes by good, economic growth that i'll talk about in a minute and so, that is where we have 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 have been most of those have been taken away through widening the roads by udo. so, we had a pretty clean, clear canvas that we could develop. and when i went on the council, there was a senior member and his slogan was which i adopted in my own mind as well, you only have one time to build out a city. build it out right. and so, that became the overarching goal, too, and so, we don't have a lot of economic redevelop. we have economic development because of that. which has been blessing for us. and these aren't necessarily in the order of importance, but they're the goals that i've had all the time. one is to have and develop over

-- open space. and we've developed open space starting with parks. and in the nine years that i've been in as mayor, 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 22nd. and we'll 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're just completing a $17 million project where we took the park 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.

that project is being completed and we turned it into a, instead of a baseball park, it has been turned into a passing park. we built in 2010, we built a new baseball park, spent $7 million on that. so that is just a baseball and football park for our young to be people involved in organized sports. and some soccer. and some tournaments with girls baseball. we have another park for girls baseball. but that was our passive park. our other parks are generally programmable parks for youth sports because we have a high percentage of youth in our area. we have a very young population because of the growth. so, now, we're taking and moving into the second part of that. and that is we're now moving to trails. we have because we were farmland, we have irrigation canals that bisect our city. we have quite of those. and every canal if you're aware of the west and irrigating to

the dry farming you have a road next to it, a path, for canal maintenance. we have the jordan river on our eastbound eastbound eastbound east boundary. the jordan river has a nice trail that has been put down to jordan river and completed in our area. we're now in the designing and working with canal companies to move ahead and put trails as well. we're basically concerned with active transportation. which is we're moving and that is becoming our city engineer's major focus in that regard. we'll talk about our road transportation later, but we're pretty welcome pleated on that. we've spent quite a bit of money on that as well. but we're moving to the trails. we've got young people, old people that like to walk, so we need bike trails, walking trails and running trails and in part of our city, horse trails. there's part of our city that we're moving towards higher

densities, and we have high densities, so there is no horses up there. but in the traditional part of our city, we have horse trails and we are 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 we're so dependent on sales tax and franchise and so, we're in the process right now of finishing a deal that hopefully 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 of seeing big boxes move in. so, we have the walmarts, we have two walmarts in our city. we have home depot. we have lowe's, kohl's. before that, we had peterson's market and riverton drug.

going on there. we'll finish out our infrastructure improvements in the next couple of years in that way. so economic development is important to us. if you're familiar with salt lake, we're in the southwest part of salt lake. we sit 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 15 miles wide. in that regard and so, we have this corridor and right now, when i moved there, there was one road out of riverton because of the jordan river it was a barrier to us and the sensitivity we 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.

one is bangalar highway, a road that carries about 45,000 people a day and so, we've widened our other roads so that we have roads, our other road we had in riverton handles 30,000 people a day. we have bangular highway, which goes north and south and east and west. it circles because we're against the foothills where you can't go directly out. we've had those kinds of things and mobility going forth, and we'll talk about that a little later. 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'll talk about a little

later. as i mentioned, i grew up in los angeles, california. grew up in the smog era. grew up where you can't see the beautiful mountains because they were hidden a lot of the year by what we call smog in those times. grew up with a healthy young man, but when you're too involved with athletics, your chest would hurt because of the air pollution that was in the area. moved to salt lake and saw the big, blue skies and the mountains, but have seen that deteriorate as population has come. a major goal that i have is air quality. we don't have, we have some pollution, but we live between

the mountains and the winds move it out of our city a lot against the mountains. even though the bad pollution of the salt lake valley is not my direct responsibility geographically, it is 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 have 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 in salt lake from our city. but i realized that as mayor, the important thing i got involved with was roads. as a teacher, what did i know about building roads and all of that? i was in my first elected office

13 years ago as a council member, what did i know about the political way to work? what i soon found is i looked at grants that were coming our way and development coming our way as far as roads and so forth. 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 will not mean anything to you, 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 why i've gotten involved.

i have the passion. and it's critical to our city, the mobility part is a very, very critical issue. and that's why i've gotten involved. thanks for letting me be here. >> hello. thank you. i very much appreciate that. i'm going to ask ugh to drill down into the transportation initiative that you have. as you've picked up on, you've got city that's got light rail under construction right now. you've got pun one that's right on the cusp. just about the there. we're happy to help you get over that line and then the mayor talks about future development, planning and preparing for future transportation investments.

i was just in phoenix last month. and road the line out to mesa. saw the construction. the train in the middle of the day was full and mayor help me, but it was with those silver tsunamis. >> silver tsunamis. >> were packing that train and riding it around and loving it. >> right. >> it's there. ridership is at its highest point in history. utah transit authorities, people are screaming for transit service and alternatives and options, so we'd love to hear from you about a little more specifics about your project. and if you can focus on the benefits to the community. economic benefits, community benefits. perhaps environmental and beneficial. >> sure. well, as i mentioned earlier, our ridership has really exceeded expectation, we are currently at a place where we had hoped to be ten years from now and right now, light rail just comes to the edge of my community. we are the end of the line for the phoenix transit line. this fall, probably end of this summer will open three miles

from the edge of our city to the heart of our downtown. through literally down the middle of main street and that as i indicated earlier, from an economic development standpoint has been a huge blessing for us. from a transportation point of view as well, it's a huge blessing. we are, we have a fair amount of seniors. arizona particularly the east valley kind of viewed historically as a retirement community. we have one of the amenities we have in our downtown area is a huge, $100 million plus performing arts center that is a magnet for seniors, so there's certainly it's popular, we have a large senior population and it's popular with the senior population, but statistically, actually, mesa is a younger than average community. the ma len yals is what's been a surprise to me. we're in a, 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 any way to park a car and get on transit and it works with their lifestyle, they are going to do that. mor often than not. and that's been the case in mesa. soo so, we have a large, several large park and rides at this edge of our community where the system currently terminates. huge parking lot frankly and part of the challenge that we're going to have as a community is once we move the terminals further east, we're going to go back and redevelop these parking lots that aren't quite as big a deals as they needed to be and that's a great opportunity for us as well. it's going to provide more economic development opportunity along this very act of downtown light rail route. so, it's tremendously popular. as it goes further east, it's going to continue to add thousands and thousands more people as we reach like i say ultimately, four or five years

from now, we'll be in the neighborhood i live in, 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 rail, go to downtown phoenix, go to all the sporting events, go to the airport, all like i said, just a short car ride, a block or two to go to a light rail station. so i think when that happens, you'll see it impact not just the menials and seniors, but you'll get to the average joes like myself that see it as a viable transportation option as well. >> i think that's true. and we have a focus in ft. worth now on healthy communities. a fit worth and blue zone initiative and we will be by far the largest city today that's been designated blue zones and if you can get people out of their community, out of their car and back in their community

and transit can do that. transit can allow them to walk and stand and visit, whether at all levels. whether it's the mobility impaired transit that allows them to get around or whether it's young folks with strollers, young families or the it's the silver tsunamis, but getting that transit system expanded adds to the value and vibrancy of your community. we started trinity rail express in '96. it was 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're back, we realized that we've got to get light rail again. if we're really going to succeed where we want to be in the city, you've got the starts of it. and our friends in dallas have seen it. houston, austin and so, ft. worth has been focused on our

text rail project and it's our latest project and it will help not only with vibrant, strong, healthy communities, engaged communities, but with our air quality. all our buses like you in the salt lake, we started, there's a brown haze and all of these will help, but tex rail will be our direct to start out with. goal is ultimately, it will be net worked out across the city. but originally, it's going to dfw airport. the airport is jointly owned. it's the third busiest airport in the world and dallas has had dart at the airport, you can come out of your terminal, hop on a people mover and go to the dart link and be this dallas. now, if you're traveling public, coming on business for a convention or if you're coming just with your family for tourists and you've got an apgs when you fly into the airport, you'd get a rent car or a $70 cab ride to ft. worth or a $8

bus ride on light rail? to dallas. what are you going to do? >> i was on it last month. it is fantastic. >> it is fantastic. so, we really realize that we have to return our focus on connecting to the airport first and not only will it give us that competitive enl that we need to continue to grow and develop our convention trade, our tourism trade, but it also allows, we've got so many people who live in ft. worth and work in dallas. and if they can go to the intermobile center, hop on tex rail, go to the airport and hop over on to the orange line on dart and be in dallas with no congestion and you know,

everybody's married to their ipad or iphone, so, you're not driving, so what can you do in you can work or you can read the morning paper. or is my daughter used to say, she could put on our make up and comb her hair when she took the rail because she didn't do it in the morning. but we have our partner cities, city of grapevine and richland hills are partnered with us and it will be funded with our sales tax and we have a request in for a full funding grant and 50 million has been put in one budget and 100 million in this time's budget at the federal level and the good news about the federal grnts on this rail project is that it awe allows us to leverage our sales tax dollars. it's that leveraging we would lose if we don't get federal funding. we're really excited about what tex rail would offer. we have 54 miles of trails and many people say i want to take the train to the airport, get on a trail and peddle back into ft. worth or i want to go to dallas and ride to ft. worth. i want to peddle to dallas and ride back to ft. worth and we even get runners who say we're going to go to arlington, hop on a bus, go into is dallas for dinner.

it's an interesting concept that people are beginning to think very creatively and innovatively, outside the box, but it's economic development, it's mobility. it's better air quality. it's engaged and healthy cities. it would really make a difference on light rail. >> my previous boss had a saying, if you like to text, twitter or tweet, take transit. >> we're at an interesting time in our city. we have a culture, we'll talk about this later, a culture of unified transportation, roads and transits are together. so, we have that in our city. or in our state. we also have, i came from a background of riding transit. as i worked downtown, the downtown salt lake, rather than drive, i took, i drove over to sandy to get the tracks lined when that came in. i did express buses and just different ways.

i had a natural feel for transit. i was in a position where i was working ten to 12 hours a day. 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 that, but transit is really a local issue. it's not locally financed in our area. nor could i, but it's a local issue. and so, i was sitting in an npo meeting and they were talking about transit and so forth and some of the new lines and things going forward and there was nothing coming my way at all. there was nothing coming my way. close, 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. it was my job. so i raised an objection to it. and that we needed to stay in the southwest corridor there. study. and i pledged $100,000 for that study. now, keep in mind that we're a $9.2 million.

general budget. when i went back to our city manager and we were in high budget. it was during the downturn. i said you've got to find me $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, it was a $2 million study and is going on now, we're finishing it up in the next few months and it will go before the city councils, four cities that are involved in this. where the city council for the preferred corridor to do. ended up being a $2 million study. uta threw in through their sources $1 million. we pledged $500,000 and went knocking on doors of the other three cities and developers to get other money 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, our planning director and i asked him so many times when new development was coming in, he just got sick of me. do you have the setbacks far enough to that a transit corridor can go through this commercial area. the last thing we want to do is buy building at a time or house at a time, so, we had some various routes, but we had to protect them because of our geography, there was only a couple of ways we could go any way, so we moved in a quarter of preservation in that regard and in our area for roads, we got developers to donate land for roads, we have big developments coming in now and my expectation, i've already talked to them, my expectation is that we will get donated land. they're giving us farmland. right now, the transit project can go through our city without tearing down one dwelling. now, that's a, that's an accomplishment of corridor preservation and i'm proud of what our people have 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, so we're trying to bring through education, bring both groups together. so, we have the people's support. the last thing that uta needs if they're going to build a line through our city is for political pressure to come against that line and protesters lining their board meetings and not want to, not want it. if that comes, we will be dead. in the water. and so, that's a very, very important part to me as well. but to get it, it's my job as a mayor and my colleague's job as mayors in our state 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, road and transit, that i'm not willing to stand out in the front of the parade and take some arrows. i asked them and i'm willing to

support them. 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, road and transit, that i'm not willing to stand out in the 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 as good on regional planning. probably 15, 20 years ago, we started our rtv. our regional transportation coalition and it was made up of dallas and ft. worth and all the surrounding seven counties

involved in it and it has been a major tool in helping connect. obviously, ultimately in a region like ours and like yours, john, large areas, you can't operate alone. it's too expensive for one city to run a whole system is. you've got leverage and you've got to leverage your regional dollars because if we can plan for the right away and corridors to try to get those through and if we can partner up with our partners and have a master plan, then we're all better served. the t is in the middle of working on their master plan. the city is updating our master plan. present a workshop on transit and it was very interesting and that's going on all over the metroplex and i think that will make you stronger by saying as a region, we're working together. dallas ft. worth used to hardly

talk and now, we have weekly dialogue. paul and gary and a lot of them meet because it doesn't make sense for us to run a line that stops here and you've got to get off and jump on another one. >> that's a perfect segue to the next session there. >> what both of these mayors were saying resinates. there's no better issue for regionalism than transportation. and when one mayor that has an exciting transit project going on in the middle of his downtown, you become everybody else's new best friend. my mayors to both sides of me are clambering, hey, we need to go out to lunch because i need you to partner with me on some studies. so it's made from a personal popularity perspective, it's been a great thing for me with my fellow mayors and it just

makes a tremendous amount of sense. regionally, it can bring it together in ways that other issues don't have the same sex appeal. >> and there's a whole lot of friendly competition and mike rawlings is the mayor of dallas and i say it's a friendly co-op. >> we get motivated when cities step up and decide they want to invest in this. that is the best motivator thatnd of to say okay, we're quoing to partner and that is the segue to the next option. which is what can we do to partner this enthusiasm and commitment at the local level. we're seeing referendums pass 75, 80% around the nation, conservative states are passing referendums to support public transportation. we're seeing local governments step up and extend their budgets to the enth degree to invest in that planning that's so important. the mayor talked about three other cities, stepped up and said we've got to do this for our future. how can we convey that energy

and enthusiasm here to washington. share that with our congressman. share with them how important this is to you, your communities and frankly, mayor, you talked about community engagement. how do we build that grass roots support we're evidencing with you and your cities and transfer that here to washington? >> i'll give you a couple of examples. we passed a bond election, a $294 million bond election this past november. 220 million of that is dedicated to transportation, to streets and roads and the state of texas passed proposition 1, which was constitutional. we passed that bond election at almost 80%. funding guarantees constitutional amendment of several billion dollars a year flowing back into transportation projects. but what you, i think part of what we did was we got out and we talked to, we did town halls and we advertised and talked and

we formed coalitions on prop one to pass this state guarantee to get out and talk, but we've done the same thing with washington. we come up here and lobby fairly often and when they're home and when they have, people tend to think and you as mayors understand, you get an invitation to a local elected official or u.s. senator or house member's election to their fund-raiser. and you think, well, they just want me to give them money. that's not necessarily the case. they want to hear from you. they want your money for their campaign, but you need to be going as transit members, as people working on transit, you've got to go talk to them. catch them with when their home, when they're here. tell them how critical it is. give them the statistics on the growth. give them the statistics on what's happening.

you know, take them for a ride on your train system or your light rail or where ever you are, but keep them in the loop. education is what's killing us in d.c. and for us in austin because they've developed a tremendous disconnect from what's happening at the local level and no one knows better than what's going on than your mayor and council. it can help spread that message, but to do it, you've got to advocate with your citizens. they can help you because they're voting for those people, also. you've got to turn your local citizens on to local transit to get d.c. interested in it. >> i agree. in order to afford this, you have to have regional funding. you have to work with your neighboring communities and you have to pass sales tax, you have to and i think there is a real appetite out there. all of us share the frustration of getting in our car and tryinging to get from point a to b.

that's a common denominator. so, there is that angst to draw upon and if we can rally regionally with our neighbors, you can get it. an amount of money that's going the attract washington's attention. you're seeing from their point of view, the reasonable likelihood of a success stories. washington leadoffs success stories. they love the come to ribbon cuttings. tell positive stories and if you can paint a positive scenario in your community, you stand a good likelihood of attracting the federal money you'll need. as mayor was saying, it has to be a regional priority. in our community in order to expedite things happening, we are able to shift some of the federal stp money and flex it in a way that we can prioritize it for light rail. and by doing that, we expedited things happening. we've used this t pan is the phrase we use, but we're using

multiple dollars to expedite the funding. we're paying city of mesa funds, knowing the money will be here rather than waiting five or ten years to make a project happen. people came to mesa knowing this was our priority and that we would put our money where our mouth is but i think that commitment to success attracted the cooperation of the federal government loosened up the regional dollars in ways that we can focus because we used some flexibility and said we don't really need some of the street projects that we have on our budget. are less a priority than the transit projects, so let's prioritize our money in a way that we can do a large, significant project and get it done now instead of ten years from now. >> you know, we have a regional in our area statewide and we need to be working together and we, i had nothing to do with

this, but i'm sure glad that others put in in place. we have a unified transportation plan. so, we are unified in our transit and our road and our active transportation. so, in our, our legislature is in session right now. will finish this thursday, so we have some major transportation funding we're after and the ceo of our transit district, the nbo, or npo is there as well. hand in hand with their staffs. the city, league of cities in the state is there together. we also are have the business community, the chamber of comers is there with us. we realize that if we weren't united in what we wanted and we were fighting against each other between transit and roads and this and that, that we weren't going to get it. to say the least, utah is not a liberal legislature. some of our representatives and i understand their position, are

trying to help you as long as it isn't a tax increase. and so, now, what's happened in our state legislature, what's going on right now and today we'll change some things i think and go forward from this. but right now, there's two types of financing that they're looking at. for this. one is an increase in gas tax. and one is a sales tax. there are different groups that all have a part of this pie and we have to work together. our state roads run through our cities.

u dot in our city is finishing a project, a $45 million road project. so, i can't worry about city roads and say to the director of udot, hey, you do what you want, i don't have any interest in it. he's united with transit as well in this, so, the state needs money. they need more money. the city needs more money for construction and maintenance terribly needs more money in that for roads. so, we have that as well. and public transportation needs more money, and so, we have right now, a bill, we have several bills, but the bill that is more encompassing is a sales tax increase where you would get a .1 for transit, .1 for local roads and a .05 for counties and in the rural part of our state where you don't have transit authorities or needs, then that 1.14 for transit goes to the county because you'll have more roads in that. at first, i thought why are we counting these roads?

we have 30 miles of roads in salt lake city and some of our southern communities, we have three and four thousand miles of roads. because that's all there are. rural areas. and so, we have that and we also have a gas tax, several bills on the gas tax. one's just a straight increase of ten cents on gasoline. five cents on diesel. 70% of that goes for state roads. the other 30% goes for local roads. the other part of it is to take our gas tax, 24.5 cents per gallon and change it into a sales tax on fuel so it grows with inflation. but it's -- uniting together and each of us have our roles, so, our fight in the legislature right now is is not, it's between the senate and the house. it's not about the need for more transportation money. a very conservative state keep in mind. it's not that. it's about you do 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 give the kids more money? i don't care whether it comes out of the left pocket or the right pogt, but the way we've achieved that as mayors is that we've said to the legislature with the sells tax, we don't want you the raise sales tax. we want you to put it on the ballot. we're willing to stand with you and champion the cause champion the cause. so what problem is ann authorization for both these states through the the county council of commission and have a county council or commission put it on the ballot. it will be then distributed in the county of orgin, it will distributed in a variety of ways, wu we as mayors and we are united on this. are willing to stand up and walk on.

it's not there. if i say to my legislator, get me money. and then i just sit back and let him take the heat. it's my role to be arm in arm with him. >> and 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 then when you start >> and 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 then when you start construction, you've got additional jobs on the construction that come in and that's a big deal for any official to be able to talk about jobs. >> you're going to move this into the q and a for the audience, but i wanted to summarize what i think i've heard today. to be successful, you've got to have four major ingredients. good projects, good merit. good value added to your community ch you've got to have a good team that can deliver them. whether they're construction or operation, you've got to engender that trust in the community that's out there. you've got to put your money where your mouth is and come up with the local resources an then you have to have that community that says i want it. underscore what the mayor just said.

there are 85 cities in six counties that have gotten together along with the highway department and transit agency and virtually every other decision making body for transportation and have endorseded a plan. we're not fighting about what's on the plan. we're just in the weeds frankly talking about how to pay for it. those four ingredients understood score the need here in washington. we can do it, they can do it, too. they can be our partners. i don't want to forget and mayor, i touched upon the fact that a lot of this investment in utah is for state of good repair. to think about a conservative state that isn't talking as much about the shiny bells and whistles, more about potholes and replacing street pavement and running buses, number one gel i think that's a story we can share, so, success, you've understood score the need here in washington. we can do it, they can do it, too. they can be our partners.

i don't want to forget and mayor, i touched upon the fact that a lot of this investment in utah is for state of good repair. to think about a conservative state that isn't talking as much about the shiny bells and whistles, more about potholes can share with apta or us as an organization that we can help carry forward from your comments today. >> i love the stand up for transportation. i think taking the message back how critical it is that this country continue to rebuild its infrastructure that we can continue to offer modern, innovative ways to attract people to use traffic because it helps us at every level from air quality, congestion, time save, productivity and a healthier community. it's just a great message and this group can be a great vehicle for helping pass that along. >> great 9th, don't forget. >> the best lesson you can learn

from what's happened in our community is the importance of flexibility. and looking at the pots of money that you have and trying to figure out how to focus the resources you do have on the most important projects. to prioritize. are there ways you can shift some of the federal and our regional moneys to address the top needs. we've all got budgets with a variety of projects on them. and if some of the projects that you have funding for are not the most important projects, then you need to figure out how to make that problem be a problem anymore. so that's one of the things we've done locally that i'm proud of that i would suggest you take a look at. >> i think from my perspective is do wh do best. and that's build and operate public transportation. i wish i could tell you that you wouldn't have to worry about your funding. but you do. but tell us as mayors how we can help you with the funding. i have no idea how to build anything. but i need your help in tells 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. >> great. >> sorry for being a little late coming up. to your funding question, you talked a lot about sales tax and you've talked about other pots of money. have any of you used tax increment financing, value capture, special assessment districts and could you just give us a little flavor of how to get the businesses that will be taxed in those areas on board with those funding streams? >> when trinity rail express came in in '96, following that, it comes to the -- what's our old t & p. texas and pacific terminal both.

we had very little downtown living and the t & p building is in a tiff. tax increment financing zone and that money was able to come in and help renovate what the terminal along with the t and several, the city money and build residential lofts there and they sold out in less than a year, but the tiff zone around it is an incredible asset because it helps with the landscaping, the upkeep on it. there's another area they're looking at that is in that tiff. he's telling me yeah, it extends over to the side. it's been an incredible tool for us for reinvestment and we expect to see the same thing on tod developments as tex rail comes in. >> that hasn't been part of our formula, frankly. we rely heavily on the regional

transit tax. and i think that was past several years ago based in large part of the angst that our community was feeling over the failure to build highways as well as we should have. so, and wrapped up in that very popular notion of let's build more popular highways was a component for some transit and so, now, we're the beneficiaries of the transit money that really was sold to the public as part of the larger, more aggravating concern about highways. the phoenix system now is fairly well built out when it comes to highways as a result of this regional tax and like i said, the smaller component we're talking about here now has been the transit money that has allowed us to do the other portion of the projects. >> and funding for i-35, the major renovation was sadly not getting funding. we just couldn't seem to get it across the finish line until we revamped the plan and put a transit lane up the middle and suddenly, they came in and said,

we'll fund it. >> in our community, regional and federal funding is what's taken care of the actual building and there's a 600 acre development we're 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 is our cda, cda, we can put in another infrastructure and pay for that. i don't know, but i don't believe we can do that with transit, pay for transit out of the cda money. i'm not sure of the law there, but we can pay for other infrastructure and then get land donated as a result of that and we're putting, we're requiring 20% open space and that will be in transit is in that open space definition and so that's the way we're trying to help. >> there's an international lesson learned here. in the asian properties.

they're seeing 40, 50% of their resources come from their land development in the european properties, there are 20 and 30%. we're having a hard time reaching that. yet in this country. it's a long way to go. it's part of our cultural and institution infrastructure. there's a lot of reasons why, but there is great progress being made in cities that i know of in the united states and we need to keep that pressure on as the mayor talked about community development, grants and value capture and those kinds of things. it's a resource that probably isn't going to be the primary resource for our business, but it's certainly one of those leverages options that you've talked about today. any other questions? i'm going to say thanks to these mayors. it's been an incredible, phenomenal -- [ applause ] >> and i want to show our appreciation by giving them each

-- where is phil washington? this is a t-shirt. thank you, mayors, appreciate it. here's a t-shirt for each of you. they are right-sized. enjoy it. thank you all for coming today. i appreciate it. please take your seats. good afternoon, everyone. thank you for joining us this

afternoon. the capitol steps were outstanding, were they not? all right. this afternoon, we're going to hear from our leaders from the department of transportation. this is one of my favorite sessions, actually. we get to beat up on fta. first step is fta acting administrator therese mcmillan, therese is representing secretary of transportation anthony foxx today who could not be with us. she will also speak specifically about fta's initiatives for 2015. therese joined fta's dispute 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 map 21, she assumed a key role in guiding fta's implementation of transit-related provisions in the lot and overseeing the development of critical guidance. she's also played an integral leadership role in advancing several critical fta priorities to improve and the quality and delivery of transit services to the american public. including assisting in a streamline process for the new and small stats program and secure new funding opportunities for state and government transit assets. she took the lead in working with fta staff to ensure the allocation of 8.7 billions for 1072 grants. she also represented fellowships in the partnerships for sustainable epa colleagues. please help me welcome acting

administrator mcmillan. [ applause ] thank you. and it is great to be with again. as you know, secretary foxx planned on being here today, and the only reason he didn't is because he's having surgery on his knee. i'm sure if he was here, he'd be the first to point out that iron that like our infrastructure, all of us are getting older and in need of repair from time to time. there was one very important message, however, he wanted to be with you today to share. and that is to thank each of you for coming to washington and to visit with your members of congress. he's been to the hill many times himself over the past year. and he's worked hard to share with lawmakers the stark facts and a sense of urgency.

he's explained how we're investing much less than we should be in transportation. and he's warned that because of that disinvestment, we've fallen behind on repairs. something we have to address even as we plan for the new capacity we must have for growing demand. but these same arguments carry so much more weight 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 rural. red and blue. that context matters. when states like arkansas and tennessee and delaware speak up and say they're postponing billions of dollars worth of projects it demonstrates in bold terms what the uncertainty of short-term measures is costing us.

and it's up to each of us out there to convince our elected leaders that america's future growth and prosperity depend on the decisions that they will be making in the weeks ahead. working shoulder to shoulder with local business leaders, you are in the best position to tell your own story, and to make it clear how important public transportation is in your community. so, now, i want you to imagine that you have the opportunity to write a postcard to yourself and send it back 30 years in the past. what would it say? maybe on the front side, you would send a picture of your family as an encouragement to your past self. i really can be successful. maybe you send a warning of the troubles we face as a nation. or maybe you would advise your 1985 self to invest in microsoft, look out for a

company called google. and don't count apple out just yet, there's this thing called an iphone. well, we've already received our postcard from 30 years in our future. and on the front, it shows broad highways, full of cars at a standstill. and trucks full of goods going nowhere. it shows a nation with 25% more people and an inability to connect them to jobs, education and health care. it shows bridges that have fallen with tragic results. and on the back, it simply says invest in transportation. so, why are we getting such a pessimistic postcard from our future selves? and will we follow the advice that it holds? now, you have to understand that the future america is a much more crowded place.

when our nation could grow by as much as 25% over the next 30 years, adding more than 70 million people. pick any highway, bus, railcar 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 ageing subway system has already resulted in a greater number of overcrowding delays. in fact, in december, there were more than twice as many delays as just the year before. and this is not only a problem for our big cities. some of the fastest growing areas in the u.s. are places like frisco, texas, south jordan, utah. gaithersburg, maryland. and mt. pleasant, south carolina. in the town of san marcos, texas, they saw an 8% growth

rate from 2012 to 2013, making it the fastest growing nation in the city with more than 50,000 people. and we are not talking about a tech hub or a healthy oil town. in fact, the median household income is $26,000 in san marcos. that is far below the average for the state of texas. while the population in cities like these are growing, nationwide, the number of people 65 and older, will more than double over the next 50 years. and when the aarp asked older americans what amenity they most wanted close to home, the number one answer was a bus stop. not a pharmacy. it was more important than a grocery store. it's how important their mobility and independence are to those seniors.

what that postcard from the future is trying to tell us is that we will not be able to accommodate that kind of demand. driven by change in growth, unless we invest in transportation today. and specifically, public transport. of course, more people also means more people trying to get to work. and because this is america, it also means more people starting and growing businesses, and they will need to connect to workers. a very recent example, when the big blizzard in january shut down boston's public transportation, massachusetts general hospital had a real problem. according to the hospital, nearly half of their employees take public transit. so, in the midst of this very dangerous storm, they were literally work overtime to make sure they could get enough staff on every shift.

to serve their patients. and that's a situation that is not as unique as it sounds. in atlanta, a university study looked at more than 50 industry sectors that make up the region's economy. and it found that 14 of the 18 fastest growing sectors are among those, whose workers rely heavily on local transit services to get to and from work. so, although atlanta doesn't suffer from any nor'easters any long-term disruption in the city's system would seriously throttle that region's ability to grow. nationwide, 4 of the 5 projected fastest growing jobs, pay wages less than $27,000 a year. we're talking about retail salespersons. home health aides. personal care aides. general office clerks, many of whom rely on public transport.

and the reason our future selves are such debbie downers is that at the rate we're going today, we are not going to be able to keep up. in fact, decades of disinvestment are going to make our job even harder. if there's one thing that people in this town can agree on is is that our national infrastructure is in a woeful state of disrepair. the american society of civil engineers gave the nation a "c"-plus, our roads a d-minus. in transit systems nationwide as you well know we have an $87 billion backlog in repairs that's estimated to grow by over $2 billion a year. your elected leaders are aware of this fact. and if they somehow missed it before, secretary foxx has recently traveled through many of their communities on a big

blue bus, to at all attention to it. his message was very clear and it's very simple. we need to do something now. and we need to do something big. to these urgent reasons to invest, let's add another. the health and well-being of our communities and their people. later this week, fta is hosting a conversation called "rides to wellness" that aims to improve cooperation and coordination among transit, health care and social service providers. we will be joined by representatives from health and human services and the u.s. department of agriculture as part of our ongoing efforts to work together more effectively on behalf of the people we serve. with more americans covered by

health insurance, it is important that they're able to access preventive care and regular checkups at the doctor's instead of at the emergency room. for instance, there are 15 free screenings provided by law. and this is fantastic. but it can be really hard to convince someone to go to the doctor before something is broken or bleeding or hurting them. and that is especially true when they lack reliable transportation to get there. 80% of medicaid's health care costs are attributable to chronic diseases that could be better managed with more frequent care. but you have to get there. improving access to health care and doing it in a more coordinated way is going to be a growing challenge, particularly

in rural areas that lack transportation options. so as you speak to elected leaders about the urgent need to invest in transit, remind them that you not only connect people to jobs and education, but you also connect them to vital services like health care. so with so many compelling reasons to invest in our nation's transportation infrastructure, the only question seems to remain how can we possibly afford to fix this all. but i submit to you today is that the real question we should be asking is how can we possibly afford not to. and as secretary foxx likes to ask, if figuring out how to provide for the future is going to be so difficult, shouldn't we make it worth it by going for something big, instead of something half measure? this administration's answer is

the grow america act. and you've heard a lot about it in the year since it was introduced. we will be building and expanding on our proposal this year, and the president's proposed budget for fiscal year '16 is a good indication of where we're headed. as the secretary has mentioned, it includes six years of funding for transportation, totaling $478 billion. fta's share for fiscal year '16 is $18.4 billion and 16% funding. and over the sixth year it would grow for a total of $115 billion over the proposed authorization period. the fy-16 budget for fta includes a record $3.2 billion for our capital and investment

grant program better known as "new starts and small starts." it would also increase the bus program dramatically providing for funding reintroducing the new rapid bus transit system which would provide $5 trillion for new services. these are in response what we've heard from you in terms of what your customers want. and because the transit industry is changing along with the rest of the nation, we want to make major investments in workforce development to build the skills and train the personnel that we are going to need for the future. if much of this sounds familiar, and it should, it's because by the time the latest short-term measure expires in may, the grow america proposal will be one year old. and yet, here we are, having the

same conversations and staring down the same decisions. decisions. it's clear not all of us have picked up that postcard from the future and turned it over to see what it says. that's why it's up to you to deliver the message. i know that's what secretary fox would have asked of you today, to tell the truth. the unadulterated unvarnished unambiguous truth. tell congress about the many good projects that are stalled. the ones that would create jobs and ease us in in the 21st century in a bold way. a postcard today can take many forms. though i still like getting the old-fashioned kind on a paper with a stamp. it can be a knock on a door it

can be an e-mail it can be a tweet. for the younger generation maybe it's a post to instagram with a picture of stalled traffic or an overcrowded rail platform or a picture of someone they love boarding a paratransit van to go to dialysis. the bottom line is that the message has to be seen it has to be heard, and it has to be acted on. let's go out and do it. thanks so much. [ applause ] >> thank you, administrator mcmillan. now i want to turn the program over to our session moderator, diana mendez senior vice president, director of america's transit at ae com. diana, please.

[ applause ] >> well, good afternoon, everybody. welcome. and thank you very much, acting administrator mcmillan for communicating the message from secretary fox and the fta. please do send secretary fox all of our well wishes from afta. we wish him a speedy recovery. i'm diana mendez as phil mentioned and i'm delighted to be your moderator today where we'll be having a lively and interesting discussion with both the federal transit administration and the federal railroad administration. i'm now joining acting administrator mcmillan. we'll also be hearing from sarah fineberg acting administrator of the f.i..a, who joined the administration on january 9th, 2015. in this capacity she manages a

$20 billion rail investment portfolio and helps develop and enforce rail safety regulations and overseas research and technology programs. prior to coming to the f.i..a miss fineberg served as chief of staff to the secretary of transportation rngs providing strategic advice and counsel regarding all modes of transportation. now updating us about the major goals and initiatives about the federal railroad administration we'll turn to miss fineberg. please join me in welcoming her. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. it is such a pleasure to be here today with my colleague and friend therese mcmillan. you know in my old role as the chief of staff for secretary

fox, i always appreciated the commitment that this organization shares with the administration's goal of making our national transportation network safer, more interconnected, more reliable, and more efficient. to your president your board, your members and staff, thank you for your partnership and support over the years. i'm so honored to be here with you today as there are no greater friends to the department of transportation. now, i'm a pretty frank person so, let me get right to my main points and then let me get to the moderated conversation. today i want to spend our time talking mostly about safety and the importance of bringing a fresh perspective and new thinking to some old problems and then about rail and sufrks reauthorization and the incredibly important opportunities we see there. but first safety. as all of you know and much to the credit of the people sitting in this room over the last decade total train accidents are

down. derailments are down. highway grade crossing incidents have declined. that is all good news. and all of you deserve great credit for these improvements. but most recently some of those numbers appear to be ticking up on us again. the number of incidents over the last year increased by 9%. and the number of fatealities at grade crossings increased by 16%. and while this next figure is less of an issue for the commuter rails to worry about, just this mosh morning the "wall street journal" reported on f.r.a. data showing the number of fiery and violent rupture accidents also on the rise. so my point is this. those most recent statistics alone serve as a stark reminder that our work is not done. we still have a long way to go to get to zero accidents, zero

injuries, and zero fatalities. just two weeks into my new job at the f.r.a. a grade crossing accident occurred in new york killing six people and injuring 15. three weeks later another passenger rail grade crossing accident occurred in colorado. and a metro link crew member died and 27 passengers were injured. stark and painful reminders that we have a ways to go to make grade crossing safer. and i will add we have news of another grade crossing incident just an hour ago in north carolina. so we're hopeful that will be less dramatic and everyone there as well. that's just one reason why safety is the centerpiece of the administration's rail reauthorization proposal. but in addition to our own legislative proposals we have to take independent actions as well. just because a problem is an old problem, maybe one we think will never be fully solved, doesn't mean we shouldn't give it a

fresh look and ask ourselves what more we should be doing. >> following the metro grade north cross incident i immediately asked our f.r.a. staff, men and women who have literally dedicated their entire careers to keeping people safe at or near crossings, to take a fresh look at how we approach safety. last week i called upon law enforcement agencies to step up patrols at grade crossings to increase citations to drivers who don't obey rules of the road and to immediately begin employing best practices to better safeguard our communities. in the coming weeks we will have more to announce. about increasing public awareness about grade crossing dangers, about how to better employ technology, and how we might be able to increase funding to assist local communities that want to improve safety features at crossings. other than the friends and families of grade crossing victims, of course no one understands the pain of these incidents quite like the train crews and operators. these incidents are truly

devastating for everyone. and we shouldn't lose sight of the price that so many of your own colleagues have paid. as we have said on so many other safety items over the years we look forward to working with all of you, partnering with you, to continue to bring down the number of injuries and deaths. there's a lot of talk in washington right now about getting a rail and surface reauthorization done. we are sewn couraged by that progress. few things could be more important or a more valuable use of the congress's time. the fact the house of representatives took an important first step just last week in adapting a reauthorization measure is a huge sign of momentum. and i congratulate chairman schuster and everyone who worked so closely were him and his staff to get the bill done pu but we need to do more. we need a comprehensive reauthorization package that includes funding and safety provisions like assistance to

commuter railroads to implement ptc. as this process moves ahead we look forward to working with both chambers of congress as they craft a measure that builds, sustains, and enhances a safe and reliable rail network for both passengers and freight rail service. we are their ready partner and we will do anything in our partner to assist them in moving a package forward. after all, we have a lot at stake here. as you just heard therese say our grow america proposal a six-year transportation funding bill, would give states the funding certainty they need to bridge the nation's infrastructure gap. as all of you know, rail is unique when compared to other modes of transportation in that it lacks a committed source of federal revenue. grow america will provide predictable dedicated funding for rail with the establishment of a rail account in a new transportation trust fund. for the rail industry grow america just means a $29 billion

investment over six years to improve rail safety and invest in a national high-performance rail system. the act also builds on a current investment. ranging from ptc to financing programs that will better enable the rehabilitation of aging infrastructure. grow america would make changes to improved existing programs. among other topics, the act would enhance the riff program making it more accessible and flexible for borrowers. revamp amtrak's planning process for goals such as addressing the backlog of stated good repair needs. advance safety research by focusing on risk reduction and new equipment testing. assist the railroad industry in implement ing implementing ptc as the backbone of the next generation of rail safety. grow america would also