r, this system disproportionately affects our operational customer satisfaction of fuel burn. if we get it right and have an opportunity to get it right, we can have a huge step forward in the efficiency of this system in the value of this system to the united states and the economy to consumers, this is a tremendous opportunity for us. this is the system we focus on the most because this is where we actually have not only a vast majority of our assets and our flights, but also this is an opportunity for the united states of america where we are citizens and in the united airlines is a citizen of the united states to provide the best air traffic control system in the world. >> i'm out of time and will say the nighting public you can see all of the traffic in the air at any given time is humbling. and grateful for what we have here with 130 million number used there, i believe it was.

>> 132 million. >> these are impressive numbers and keeps us aware of the system here today. >> to address the first question -- >> if you look what the faa tried to do, to shut them down because they didn't have funding, majority of those more contract hours but more faa towers, majority of them were in rural america. that is one of our biggest concerns about status quo. >> thanks for looking out for rural america. >> thank the senator from montana for looking out for rural america and i think he and i would probably both agree at the end of this we would like to see more direct flights to and from, is that right?

>> i appreciate i think we've run out of questioners and i do appreciate very much the panel great remarks today different perspectives this is the senate's first foray into the issue of reform and we have to figure out a way as we move towards reauthorization of doing what's best. we all have the same goal in mind as was pointed out. sometimes maybe slightly different perspectives on how best to get there but i think one of the things raised is going to be an important one. and i think that's something in the current budgetary environment that we find ourselves in today is increasingly challenging. so i think there's an openness to look at models that might better cope with that issue as well asome other issues that were raised today. thank you all very much and the hearing record will stay open for two weeks for members to submit questions and you can respond in a timely way to the

questions, it will be most appreciated. this hearing is adjourned.

if you missed any of the hearing on modernizing the air traffic control system, you can watch this any time online c-span.org. more live coverage later today here on c-span3 as senate sub committee considers body cameras from police. we'll hear from tim scott of south carolina testifying as well as representatives from law enforcement and civil rights groups. you can watch the hearing live at 2:30 p.m. eastern time. and you can weigh in online where we posted the question, should police be required to wear body cameras. you can leave your comments on the facebook page and twitter at c-span. >> the hill reports the white house announced new units and programs that supply local

police. other equipment put up new too ensure officers are trained in their use and constitutional policing and community input. you can read more at thehill.com. current and form members of congress and victor menendez and representatives from private businesses also took part and this is the council on competitiveness hosting this discussion. >> but on behalf of -- and the

council on -- we're -- in welcoming all of you to one of more than 50 such events sponsored over the course of this week to highlight the importance of infrastructure investment to our improved quality of life and economic competitiveness and well being. over the duringation of the next two hours, while gathered in this the historic hearing room, you'll hear from chairman bill shuster and ranking member peter de fazio, leaders of this

distinguished committee and you'll also hear from deputy seblgt victor mendez and other transportation and infrastructure leaders from across the united states. our two panels will be moderated by distinguished former members of the u.s. house of representatives and the u.s. senate. former majority leader trent lottand the distinguished senator from louisiana, john broe. infrastructure week started monday of this week with comprehensive presentations by vice president joe biden and u.s. secretary of transportation anthony fox. followed by panel discussions that included voices from a diverse quarter or quarters if you will of our society.

rich trumpke and lungren from the u.s. chamber of commerce and noted harvard professor rosa beth moss kanter, who unveiled her new book "move putting america's infrastructure back in the lead." today's session will focus on the specific and particularly important topic long term transportation funding. the imperative as relates to u.s. competitiveness and leadership in the global marketplace. to begin i would like to call forth victoria cram, the co-chair of the transportation infrastructure and local governments practice group to introduce ranking member peter defazio who will bring opening remarks to be followed by

senator lott and our distinguished first panel vickie. >> thank you, secretary slater good morning everyone, it is my great pleasure to introduce peter defazio first selected in 1986 and now the longest serving house member in history and served on the house transportation and infrastrungt tour committee since he was first elected. he is the ranking member of the transportation and infrastructure committee. if you've seen him on the floor or in the committee, you'll know he's passionate about transportation policy he's been integral to the development over the past 35 years and no one who

has fought for long term transportation investment more than congressman defazio, i want to bring the congressman up. thank you for being here. [ applause ] >> thanks vickie trent and i were recommend nising about tenure i'll start with this point, last time you you know we raised the gas tax was 1993. and that was with dad of the current chairman bud shuster bud brought a group of ours to vote with the then majority democrats and we raised the gas tax. and you know, ran a very bipartisan committee and learned a lot from bud and now bill and i are teamed up it's -- you stay around long enough, i don't think i'll be around for the grand kid from the family but

you know so as you know, country has fallen apart in 140,000 bridges need repair or replacement, 40% of the national highway system surface you have to dig up the road bed, substantial renovation necessary. we're up to $86 billion backlog on our existing transit systems to bring them up to state of good repair. it's so bad we're killing people here in washington, d.c. on a metro system because of the state of disrepair on the system. that's pretty bad news all together. we have the strongest buy america, much stronger than the pentagon. if we make these investments we'll put a lot a heck of a people to work not just steel by high tech manufacturing and transit vehicles and a lot of small businesses will be contributing to this effort. it's imperative we get to that

point we had two commissions and they did great work. one focused mostly on the system itself and state of disrepair and other focused specifically on finance. if you want to know all of the potential options, go back and look at that finance rereport. we haven't invented new ones except things that might deal with the tax code which we weren't talking about then because we were focused on a user fee based system and i as a member of the committee are still focused on a user fee based system. it's proven and i think it's a possible way to go forward. the problem is the president has been opposed we have a few roadblocks there but more and more rank in file members are coming up and saying, you know if you can get your bill and i'll talk about that to the

floor, i'll vote for it but i'm not putting my name on it. the ice is melting here. we went tloi through a bad period for people who believe in devolution, jim inhofe has declared the theory dead. it was a fun idea when we thought it up but bad idea now. there are still some in the house and the poster i have is from a picture from life magazine, 1956 and it's an aerial shot of this ribbon of concrete then it ends and it's these weird angles that are dark like this, what is that? well that happens to be the kansas, oklahoma state line, oklahoma said if you build it we'll build it. they got into financial difficulties and didn't. those weird bridges are the farm

field where the new freeway or turnpike ended for a number of years and built a big wooden barrier and people crashed into it. he could have made a lot of money and he didn't plant that part of the field because people kept driving into this. when oklahoma got the cost share with the feds, they built it. so we've already tried devolution, if it didn't work in the 50s, it sure as hell isn't going to work -- to more fishltly movings and people we're around 1%. i give a lot of speeches and talk about us becoming third world because of deteriorated condition. we're rated 26th now in infrastructure. after one of those speeches, that is insulting, you know how bad things are. you're insulting third world countries because they are investing more of their gdp than

we are. i've now taken to call us fourth world, now jumping to the back of the pack. we need to make these investments and i know you'll have a competitiveness panel later in talking about the implications for the u.s. in the world. i won't really go into that. i'll focus more on the finance side. but you know the two problems with the gas tax one is we haven't raised it since '93 and construction costs have gone up dramatically. it seems had we indexed it back then we wouldn't have a problem. we could still index it today to construction costs inflation it's cumulative over time. at least you stop losing ground. but if you add in another factor, which would be fleet fuel economy, that's the other major reason the trust fund is in trouble. vehicles are driving particularly light trucks and cars are driving more miles. there's more of them on the road. but they are consuming less fuel. if you double index the gas tax

to fleet fuel economy and construction cost inflation, the estimates last time was when ray la hood was secretary it would be 1.7 cents a gallon a year. i don't think there are any colleagues that believe they would lose election if gas prices went up 1.7 cent. when you drove buy the gas station this morning you probably saw the digital sign go up a nickel because something was going on in the middle east. there's still some reluctance. but i think they would vote for it. that doesn't solve if you did that that doesn't solve problems but you would then project that gas flow and we would borrow a lot of money, put it in the trust fund and dedicate that increment on the gas tax for as long as it took to pay that down. we could have borrowed $140

billion and paid it back in 15 years. that solves the immediate problem with the trust fund. and the mid-term problem with the trust fund. there's still an issue, what are we going to do going forward from there. it will get us through a robust bill for the next $140 billion. that has not ever caught on although there have been more and more people have talked about the potential for indexation. i first put that idea out there and i think it was '06. then you know, since it wasn't getting anywhere with that, i thought let me try something else. another way to go and what's interesting is this has been done recently. virginia did away with the retail gas tax and moved to a somewhat complicated whole sale level tax. and pennsylvania just recently raised their transportation funds with a whole sale level tax. so -- at the time pennsylvania was a red state and virginia was a red state.

there seemed to be some acceptance of the idea if we move the tax upstream it's simple to collect at a higher level and maybe we can use that to boost the income. i proposed a barrel tax. i would only tax the fraction of a barrel of oil that goes into taxable transportation uses. i'm not going after the farmers. not going after the tax exempts and fertilizer any of that stuff, only the part that goes to currently taxable transportation uses. barrel tax is very simple to collect and you could also assess an equivalent on refined fuel. there isn't a heck of it but there is some. use projected income of the barrel tax, start at a point and index that and do the same thing, borrow money up front. actually the way i designed it last year or year before would be the first year even if the

oil companies could pass through every penny of the tax in the first year i set the barrel tax where the tax would be currently lower than it is today by like a cent and a half. but then obviously it's indexed and over time it would grow and we could borrow against the future projected income. rahm emanuel i'm told rahm told me he got the white house to agree. i don't know how he did because larry summers was never helpful in transportation. he was -- i don't know why he was ever hired to tell the truth. i'm glad he's gone. but rahm said i got agreement and saw me just before we left in october, lame duck will go for the barrel tax. and then of course we lost the house and that was the end of that. no more discussion. so finally i thought how can we get the people who are against taxes but agree we need to invest, how about doing similar

to what virginia did, eliminate the retail diesel and gas tax and stupid truck tire tax which would make a lot of people happy for heavy trucks. then go to a barrel tax eliminating them. you have to set the barrel tax a little higher. but same thing, even if they pass it through first year, there's a good rand study on a different kind of tax that says because of the way oil markets would, they would not be able to pass through 100% of the cost easily to consumers. that would be a net added benefit if we attributed our system to opec and major oil producers, those ideas are out there. we had a new proposal somewhat similar, a couple of weeks ago which is a break through in a way because it's bipartisan.

and bill pass carrell and they would single in the gas tax construction cost inflation and assume that money over ten years and you know that would give us one year spending for current levels in highways and in the trust fund. and then they would -- the commission would meet and deliberate and proposals to congress on how to fund a transportation needs and then congress -- if congress didn't act, there would be some sort of automatic increase in the gas tax. so sort of a goldberg but i don't care. there are others -- i mean barbara boxer and i think can't

remember, cruz -- i can't remember -- rand paul right. proposed a repatriation to pay moving outside the user pay idea you know, some discussion over here, paul says he's going to find a way to do this. you know, the thing is they've adopted dynamic scoring and it's the rule of the house things will be dynamically scored, he could assume revenues and we'll put it in the trust fund and it's mandatory spending and if the revenues don't show up we have a bigger deficit. i'm not opposed to borrowing money to invest in infrastructure. if we were a corporation if we're building plant equipment, we would borrow the money. if we're operating and borrow for operating, you're in trouble. so as a government we should have capital budgets and look at these things as investments as opposed to one time expenditures

and scoring everything the same way. i don't how we're going to get there but there seems to be a growing consensus. we need a little shove you know, speaker boehner, you know, has assured chairman shuster that ryan will find the money, okay, we'll see. right now this week, well five legislative days we have to at least reauthorize spending. so that's potential looming problem. there's a debate over whether we should reauthorize with no additional money through like july or august first. that is already having a depressive effect on construction around the country because with current levels of income on or about the first of september, they will declare the

trust fund insufficient and begin to delay reimbursement to the states. a number of states have constitutions or charters or requirements where they can't deal with that. they can't deal with it. a number of states because of the uncertainty for this construction season to have already canceled or delayed project, my state has moved from major investments to more maintenance kind of things lesser projects. so if we do the two-month thing with no money, it's better than doing nothing with no new contract authority but there's going to be less demand for it. the ear option is we go to october 1st somewhat logical in terms of budget year or go to december 31st, end of the calendar year. i'm personally in the end of the calendar year camp but that takes us $11 billion to get there and remove the uncertainty from the states so we get a more rerobust construction season. i've been involved in a lot of discussions about this over the

last few days. and it's not clear where we're going. people have moved back and forth on both sides of the hill on what the term of this should be. they proposed the short term, no money for a while. that had great currency and backed off and now they are back on it, on the house side bill has proposed that we do the year end we've got to find the $11 billion to get to the year end. that's a brief summary of where we are and i would like to take questions for a few minutes. anybody? all right, good, i'll leave. no, anybody have a question? >> i would prefer the end of the year because the states would not he be reluctant to enter into this year's contracts.

we will get a more robust construction soon for the end of the year but we have to find the 11 billion and there's not a lot of options. have a great conference. >> moving right along that was very informative and welcome to all of you, thank you, congressman. i did actually serve in the house with him. he's been here so long, i served in the house and moved to the senate and retired and enjoying life and he's still here chugging away. but we do appreciate you coming. >> every once in a while, that was really great and next six months are drujry but that's why i'm here. >> some day you can get a real job. good luck.

>> he does have a real job. >> again welcome to all of you, i want to thank secretary slater for his leadership of what he's done in transportation and infrastructure. we have to gone on record thanking chairman shuster and congress defazio for allowing us to be here in this room and have this session. we're going to have happen something significant i believe in this room. we have to get it through the finance committee. it's a long way to go. i know from past experience when a shuster is at the helm and got a democrat riding shotgun with him out of this committee, good things can happen. i want to thank for the money for the tuneica airport that bridge across the mississippi river was a pretty good deal

too, $100 million for that one. we know how that works but we want to move it right along, we have distinguished guests here. first of all, we have greg cohen, president of ceo of american users alliance right here and then reejgina hopper, and we could use that in a lot of ways these days. and congressman jim mathison from utah served for years in the house and great addition to our team. his knowledge of the house and way he was able to work across the aisle on a lot of good things including trade, we may need you to sneak back over here jim, we've got michael who is president and ceo of the transportation association and

the deputy secretary of transportation, victor mendez who is a little busy this morning, got a few things going and more than one place. we're going to call on him right at the beginning then allow him to ease out if he does need to and we'll continue with the panel. we have michelle moore. with us this morning too. i think the timing of this is very significant. and as a republican in the house and senate and in the leadership in the house and senate, i was always an aggressive advocate of infrastructure funding and i even used to describe it, we need to do what is necessary for our country for lanes and planes and water and harbor and sewer the whole package. i was always pleased to work with people like bud shuster, chairman shuster's father on highway bills and water resources legislation. i was an aggressive advocate for a national rail passenger system and amtrak. i still feel strongly about

that. i think speaking as a republican, it's like supply side economics. if you want more jobs and want more growth you have to invest in it and it will have a tremendous multiplier effect. if we're going to compete in this global economy we have to improve the infrastructure in america. let's have the attitude today we're going to commit to that and help the members of congress and house and senate get this done because it is overdo. now, i never will forget when i got the call from president reagan and lewis saying they wanted a user fee increase on gasoline. i said we'll get that done and we did. we ought to have the guts to do it again if we want infrastructure improved in america. mr. secretary, victor mendez, thank you for being here. we appreciate your work as the deputy and want you to set the perimeters of what we should be doing in this area. >> well, thank you very much.

good morning to everyone, i like your idea about the whole package. let me begin with one item that's actually very important to all of us, as you're aware we had a very significant event in philadelphia with amtrak. i just want to make sure i pass along sincere thoughts and prayers to all folks affected by that. hopefully we'll have a speedy recovery for those who did survive. the other thing important to recognize, first responders were on point immediately and so our deepest thanks to them for doing what they are doing. and the other thing i'll always observe, this is really bad, but there's always silver linings. when we have these significant events, in the united states people step up and you see in all of the stories in the last year and a half, people helping each other and helping people get out of the wreckage and that

is always very inspirationle. i was watching an interview with a woman yesterday and talking about her experience and got out and at the end she looks at her shoe and said, these aren't my shoes, somebody gave me the shoes. that's what the u.s. is about. that's what we need to be doing, helping each other throughout the these issues. it's infrastructure week, we would hope infrastructure week was every week because we need to celebrate a lot of things that we do that are positive. but in today's world, i think as you mentioned senator, the whole package important for us to recognize long term the importance of investing in our own country. we as an administration have been working very hard for probably three or four years now trying to get the country to look at the issue of infrastructure investment. recently we did unveil a study that we call beyond traffic to

give you the top line on that. it's a 30-year framework looking at what could happen in transportation over 30 years. top line is we will have 70 million more people in the u.s. in the next 30 years. freight will increase so when you add that and couple it together, you start thinking about what does that look like when it comes to transportation how do we address that, not just the issues for today but the demand for the unitefuture. over the past six years however, congress has actually in transportation funded our programs through 32 extensions. and i can tell you that for those of you in the private sector, you do not run your business two or three months at a time or ten months at a time and in fact in transportation that's what we have been doing. one could argue that map 21 was a 27-month extension but that's not how you run a multibillion

dollar a year business, months at a time. we as somebody mentioned i think was ranking member defazio some states have pulled back some of the projects six states have pulled back $2 billion worth of project improvements simply because they do not have the certainty that there federal partner will be there this construction season. the timing for the season constructionwise is not good. if we don't extend beyond may 31st we know the xpiration is coming up in a couple of weeks. we have to deal with that but also the long-term approach. as you know, the administration under president obama has actually submitted a bill to congress. we call it the grow america act. it's a six-year $478 billion investment plan for the country. it's bold and the right thing to do. we have submitted it to congress and we have said if you don't

like our ideas, then we want to hear your ideas. if you don't like our pay for, we're prepared to chat with you about how do we invest in our country. i think i'll wrap up my comments i know we're short on time but that's kind of the lay of the land. at the federal level we want to be good federal partners, highways, public transportation you mentioned the whole package ports and rail and freight system so important for economy not just today but in into the future and we know when we invest, look at any city where they've invested in light rail, in what has happened from an economic impact, i mean, the history is there. we know it. so with that thank you very much for inviting us. >> thank you for your comments and thank you for your leadership and your time. i do remember when we were working on these bills, it wasn't just between the

republicans, bud shuster and me, slater was hanging out in my office. almost got him a desk because he stayed there so much. here's my point. get in the house, get in the senate. meet with those leaders and work together to get result. we've not had enough of that in recent years and plenty of blame to go around. when you sit down and talk it's amazing what you can accomplish, so come see. i think you might get something done. how about that congressman, you have a record of trying to find a way to get results. what do you say about this infrastructure week and transportation? >> thank you, senator, it's good to be back in the transportation and infrastructure committee where i joined this committee as a freshman member many years ago and it's good to be back. i do not have the magic formula to move this highway bill but i have thoughts on the way we can frame the issue in a way to maybe have a path to greater success than we've seen. first of all i think that we all recognize the goal here.

you understand the need for investment infrastructure. defining the problem and agreeing on the issue at hand we can agree on where we want to be. the challenge is how we get there. and as we know it's been very difficult to come up with a long term solution that adequately funds or infrastructure needs. i think ranking member defazio did a great job of describing the recent history of this issue and secretary mendez made a great summary how do we move forward from there? first of all, i think in congress there is a certain understanding or should say lack of understanding about the cost of uncertainty. i came to congress i was a businessman and remember your first year business course, you learn about that uncertainty or risk is a cost the future is

always going to have a level of uncertainty but to have the policy world put in another layer of uncertainty on top of that with this intermet ent short term funding, is a cost to our country. i would suggest that members of congress need a little education on the importance of that cost. they are creating additional risk and additional cost that are hurting our country's economic foundation, i suggest that's an issue we need to continue to emphasize is the need for long-term certainty for people to make rational decisions. the title of this panel is about american competitiveness, investment infrastructure and how it creates opportunities to enhance competitiveness with the rest of the world. that's a great framework for this issue that can reach a lot of members of congress. it's no secret it's characterized by a lot of polarization, it's fallen into the trap of an us versus them

mentality between the two parties. maybe we can shift that mentality a little bit. now it's us being the united states of america and them is the rest of the world. maybe that can be the unifying component that helps create greater emphasis on reaching consensus to make this investment because the fact of the matter is and there are people on the panel who will be able to offer real substantive details how this helps our competitiveness. the investment in infrastructure is a key factor for the rest of the world. other countries in the world are investing in far greater percentages of their gdp in infrastructure and even in this new digital world and high tech global economy we're in it turns out investment basic infrastructure still matters. in some ways it matters more because you have to be efficient and productive. and transportation infrastructure is a important part of contributing to that level. i'm thrilled there panel is framed in the context of

competitiveness, that's what congress -- that's the framework in which congress ought to look at this issue and hopefully that creates a path forward for a long term transportation bill. >> you can see why we're so delighted to have the congressman with us. he's going to be really good and help i believe finding ways to get things done. we don't like gridlock in congress and don't like it on the highways either so we would like to hear from the point of view of the highway users why this is such an important thing for our transportation system but for our competitiveness too i guess everyone so far had a connection to this room. i worked here as a staffer for bud shuster and it's just an honor to be back here to talk about these issues and a little organization has been around representing many of the aaa

clubs around the country. the trucker's rv industry and motorcyclists and companies that rely on logistics like ups and involved in safety like 3m. we're basically the sort of highway chamber combination highway chamber and taxpayer league for those who pay the gas tax, why would a group of taxpayers want to raise the gas tax from 1956 to 2008 we paid our full share. we paid for 100% of the federal program that build the interstates and paid for enough to pay for some other things, including some public transit programs and we are -- we want to be responsible citizens and pay our way. and you know the key thing here is can you imagine what our country would be like if we didn't have a highway trust fund to build the interstate system. talk about benefits and costs, you know, often we justify this program on the basis of jobs. i think they are really being short sided when we do that

because what we really need to talk about is the economics of what investment and roads and transit does for the united states. we have a network of 400 million miles of roads only 40,000 of which is on the interstate system. that carries 25% of the traffic in this country. our national highway system carries 40% of the traffic. it's only 3% of the roads. so as a national project, that benefits every citizen and every corner of this country to invest in this core system of federal interest is a no brainer. we got to pay for it. we have to get past the idea that simply cutting out waste is everything we need to do. you don't get something for nothing. and so i'm here on behalf of road users to say we need to invest, we're willing to pay the user fee and we see the benefits far greater than the costs. let me talk a little bit about the costs and benefits real quick. i know we don't have too much

time. we waste over $200 billion in crashes, societally, we lose that, at least a third of which could be prevented by small investments and safety on the roads. we waste over $200 billion in traffic congestion, a lot of which can be addressed through targeted improvements to the worst bottlenecks in the country and through tech no logical advancements groups like its america are bringing forward. the cost benefit ratio, almost $42 in benefits for every dollar we invest. at least $6 for every one dollar we invest. we've dropped from number one to 26 because we lost sight of benefit costs, so afraid to say we've got to pay more and we're letting our country go to hell. on behalf of users is bring more users into the conversation. the retailers and restaurants

and the phone and cable companies that have trucks all over the roads when they can't get to their products to market their services to the people in a timely basis. when they don't have the reliability. they need to engage. i know it's not one one for them. it may be number six or seven but this week i think is an important way to reach out to them and so i really appreciate the opportunity to be a part of that thank you. >> we need more transportation better transportation, how can we have intelligent transportation? >> with all of the wonderful companies doing deployment across this country frankly, we have to start greg with where we were, right when we first started talking about transportation. i've been fortunate to have worked in the trucking trees and telecommunications and with energy and now i'm very fortunate to be and so thrilled

to be associated with intelligence transportation initiatives. if you look at where you want to tape the country we have to have good roads and we have to have good infrastructure and when we repair where we are, we have to think where we're going to be in the future. one of the things america has been extraordinary at is making sure that we develop our intellectual capacity around technology. and that's where its america and its america's affiliates around the world are coming in. in fact infrastructure development is an international issue. while we're struggling now and not just this week with infrastructure week, we're struggles as a world economy to figure out how america plays within the world economy and the world investment in insfra trukt tour develop mgt. i sat as a young child and watched as my father came up here year after year after year as chairman of the arkansas

highway commission and two times talking about lots look 20 years out. let's look 30 years out. yes, we must deal with the issues that we have at this point, but let's also have some foresight. and so for me to be able to sit here in this room and thank you to you, senator, thank you to senator froe and secretary slater -- do we want to tell how long we've been friends. >> he smiled when you mentioned your dad, he knew him. >> he built the first tunnel in the state of arkansas i have to give hm a little credit for that. looking forward to how is it we can use technology and intelligence transportation society of america is the nation's largest organization dealing in research development and deployment of intelligent transportation. and it's really about 1200

companies, public agencies public private partners and research and ak deem ya coming together to say what are the issues now and what are the issues for the future that we can use technology to advance the problems? i've had several people when i told them i was coming here their face kind of goes, intelligent transportation okay, that sounds neat. then they kind of -- well what it is about information and control technologies that provide us accurate and realtime information that will help us to make sure we go from talking about surviving incidents to preventing incidents. and you can say that it's sort of an ancillary discussion where we are, the figure that the congressman put out at $86 billion in backup repairs is

enormous. as you look to what you do not just fixing what we have but how you look forward, what we do at intelligent transportation of america will help us use those those resources of thinking and technology to move us forward. so i know there are a lot of things that people want to say here. i want to point out, a lot of people are saying, well, is this just a future oriented thing? i want to give a head's up to the state of michigan and department of transportation, through the connected vehicle safety pilot 3,000 of these vehicles are already out on the road and being looked at day to day, that's going to be 9,000 and 20,000 and working with d.o.t. and others can push the programs into other states. thank you so much. >> i have to tell a story here. i can't afford one but my wife has a new infiniti and it has a lot of gadgets and backups and new warning systems.

the one i've had the hardest difficulty adjusting to when i get too close, it starts stopping before i put the brake on. i'm not sure i like that at first but once you get used to it this is a my preposition was not to be for it. we were having a conference meeting. i'm sitting next to jim and we were in the process of trying to kill the mass transit part of it so put all that money in highways. hillary clinton was on the committee and on the conference. she was taking the other side. she came with arguments,

statistics and knocked it out of the park. i said the search is out. we're going to have to do this, and we did. it was the right thing. that's a part of the whole package. what do you have to say about that? >> thank you very much. appreciate that great opening story there to inspire me to rally for public transportation. b we think back 20 maybe 15 years ago and our cities were domestic in how they looked. they are very international. we think back 15 20 years ago, our transportation choices were very byinary.

you can take car bus, commuter train, you can do all those things in a week. businesses are coming to our communities. mayors and governors are dealing with people especially those coming in saying how do i get my people to work in a safe reliable way. how can i be sure my goods and services will come out into the roadways into our cities in safe and efficient and effective way. reality is we have to find an efficient way to use our scarce resources. how will we make all things fit and work together. that's by looking at all of this as a system. if we can put people in public transportation and put them in interconnected way we can free up the roadways to have a more

efficient mean of goods. we can do it in a more efficient and effective way. we build walkable communities. we serve those moving back into our urbanized areas. millenials and baby boomers saying i want to move downtown. i want to drive less and be more efficient and effective in how i use my own dollars. last year we set a record, 10.8 billion trips taken into america. the highest number since 1958. tremendous growth in ridership in transit. there was a 43 cent drop this gas prices in fourth quarter of

last year. it's a good product. it's a good thing. some of the highest ridership increases were in cities under 100,000 population. many of the small cities the majority of the funding comes from the government in the role of capital. the government doesn't build those things. they fund them. creating good, high paying, technical jobs across the country in cities big and small. they are building these transit buses. they are creating jobs with the federal dollars. we are making a huge impact on our economy. as we look at what transit is

doing it's create a sense of place. our treat cars are creating a sense of urgency to build new communities around there. we're seeing billions along the corridors corridors. last year there were 62 local tax initiatives. the local share is there. this is nationwide system and it has to work together so the partnership of the federal, local, passengers paying their fares, it all has to come together. it's about the state of prepare. you heard the secretary talk

about $86 billion backlog in the state of repair. to keep our economy competitive we must invest. we did great event. it's a great story. 350 organizations from around the country came together at 150 events. they came together for transportation story. transit we're looking at $100 billion for the next six years.

talking about taking a program that's been stagnant. make the investments in infrastructure we need. the 50,000 jobs created or maintained by million dollar investment. we have to look what we need now. the time is now. the need is real. the numbers show it. we must understand that now good enough is not good enough if pewe want to remain globally competitive in this world. >> michael you're just not passionate enough. i will say after we got that legislation through i did become warrior for the mississippi gulf coast which i learned to appreciate against katrina. we lost many cars. our buses made it possible to

get to work after katrina. a different attitude with that type of experience. we're saving maybe the best for last. this is about the competitiveness as we said all along. michelle moore, what do you say about all this? >> it's a lot of pressure. i'm grateful to represent the council on competitiveness membership today. ceos from leading corporations, labor unions and universities around this country who have joined very diverse coalition that have come together this week around infrastructure week to call for investment, long term investment in america's infrastructure is being absolutely critical to our competitiveness today in looking very far forward into the future. we all know the statistics. we heard many of them today. many of you wrote them or did the original research. american society for civil

engineers, total, the infrastructure gap in the trillions. the potential benefits total in the trillions too. 3.5 million jobs from fully closing the infrastructure gap by 2020. it's my sense that the real cost of the short term in look at infrastructure can get lost in all those zeroes. we have to use roadways to commute. it's time away from your families and for business people it's delays in being able to invest and take full advantage of economic opportunities for growth whether you're a small business person and you can't predict where the economy will

go or if you're in the building design or transportation or construction industry that you don't know if the federal dollars will be there to match from a state perspective or thinking about big businesses. major manufacturers who are not only making goods and services but exporting. the lack of capacity in some cases on our roadways to be able to meet the opportunity for capacity growth and manufacturing. the ways that roadways connect with our port system. the fact that only two of america's ports are ready to accept it. that's an inabilities to compete for investment dollars today. that's an inability to create jobs today. that's an inability to plan for

the future. the tragedy is it really doesn't have to be that way. we can make a decision today instead of focusing on short termism to take the long path to make those investments in infrastructure and keep our economy, businesses and people moving. >> very good. we'll take a question or two if you have a question you'd like to ask. i'm going to give a hot question to the congressman first. are they going to get this done this year? >> i wish i could say they will do a super long term commitment. i think we'll see a short term through december 31. >> did these major

infrastructure highway bills done. take into account a while to run ut to come up with good ideas and get the courage to get it done. we need to do it. we need to do it this year. i like to hold highway bills till the election year. if they can't get it this year, it would be smart politics as well as good thing to do it in first quarter but just get it done. that's the question. can we find way to make this happen? >> i think the individuals you mentioned who are going to be the leaders of the various committees that need to put this package together are committed to doing it. >> if they can come together then anything is possible. you got to get the money. figure it out. >> any other question right quick from anybody?

i think we're pretty close to being on time. i'm going to turn it over. thank you for being here. let's go from this panel and bring the next panel up. [ applause ] >> they've just warmed us up and we're going to keep things going. we have gotten communication from chairman schuester. he's in baltimore. we have gotten notice he was going this morning. we're going to continue to stay in touch with his office. i think we all know why he needs to be there. the secretary menendez started his comments paying respect to those who lost their lives, seven at present. those who were injured more than 200. this is a significant incident.

we would want the chairman there taking care of business. i'm going to call senator grove and he'll bring on our next panel. thank you. >> thank you very much. thank you for tending with us this morning. we have another panel which will be very very interesting and hopefully informative and have an opportunity to ask them some questions. thank you for participating and for the panelists. those were wonderful days and interesting days. the previous panel mentioning about the difficulty of making enough money to fund the transportation bill. i was in the senate on the finance committee the last time we passed the tax increase at

the great amount of 4.3 cents. i cannot tell you the agony of trying to raise it 4.3 cents at a time when oil prices were going down and had we passed a 10 cent tax at that time gas lease gasoline would still have been more before the price was passed. sayings i'm going to put my name on increasing a tax. every day was listed gas tax in every event they go to. i want to bring the panel up but what they're going to be doing is talking about what's happening out there in the real world right now.

incredible infrastructure needs. a ltsot of them are not being done. i'll take the privilege about telling you about a project real quickly. we're funding and paying for that's now got all the permits at a very long period of time struggling with the city, the district, the federal government. forget the permits to redo the virginia avenue tunnel. virginia avenue tunnel is built in 110 years ago. right on the democratic and include the city to bring rail traffic from the south all the way up to new england corridor all the way up northeast.

it's real huge bottleneck. do a double track to allow double stack trains to go through the tunnel. it will be two trains to go through at the same time and both of them carry double stacks which will eliminate bottleneck. one example that we'll hear more of in our next panel. let me start with jennifer.

she's with as group general manager of transnorth america the doing incredible work. we're delighted to have you. let you go ahead and make their comments. we'll let them make their comments and we'll have time for questions. thank you for being with us. >> thank you. it's such a pleasure to be here. creating an opportunity to have this important forum and perfect timing to do this. what we do is finance deliver and operate networks of toll road projects around the world to improve mobility address congestion and enhance travel choices of populated cities.

we are pleased to be able to put public-private partnerships to work, to be able to support transportation and economic outs outcomes. before we focus on the opportunities and look at specific projects, i want to do a bit of myth busting here. we're talking about sustainable funding, long term funding for transportation. too often public-private partnerships are talked about in the context of alternatives to public revenue for transportation. i want to be very clear in having had significant experience with these partnerships and with the private activity bond here in the u.s. that is not the case at all. we are not a substitute for

funding. there's about $250 billion worth of private capital out there that we could be putting to work to improve our infrastructure in this country. the only way that we will be able to tap into that private capital is if we have sustainable funding on the government side to be able to put both of our resources to work to be able to drive transportation and economic outcomes. i think it's important to bust that myth a bit. i will tell you when we look at specific projects that bringing the best of the public sector and the private sector together it's worth it in terms of what we can deliver when looking at individual projects. i want to highlight for a moment our projects in northern virginia. we have constructed about a

45-mile network of high occupancy toll lanes. i imagine we have a few customers many the room. i want to thank you for your business. you're probably here today because you took the express lanes and our non-customers are probably still sitting on i-95 at the moment. this is about $3 billion worth of transportation improvements that have been delivered as a package of improvements for these projects. if you look at a year like 2010 our project was about 10% for

that -- 20% for that one year. really have to give virginia credit. get a return of 110 times their investment. it's about economic outcomes and also transportation outcomes. if you look at the express lanes network it's really great story. 495 has been open to travelers since 2012 and 95 has just within open four months. we have great data to show what the projects are doing to improve mobility in the region. if you look at march 2015 and customers that use the 95 express lanes these customers

are saving, it's an average of 20 to 30 minutes per trip to help get them to work. we have customers saving as much as two hours a trip. we have gone a long way to improve the quality of life and get these travelers to work on time. by really looking at multi-modal solutions we have been able to deliver travelers savings and really unlocked and opened up the opportunity for bus travel and car pool travel in that corridor. since we have expanded and opens that network, three out of five car poolers say they are ride sharing more often because of the reliability they get from that project. if you look at across the spectrum of travelers you have

car poolers, transit riders, toll paying customer who is have received benefit. again, i have to give our client, all over the world but here in virginia it takes policy makers a lot of courage to be able to advance and try something bold and different through public, private partnerships. by doing so you can deliver transportation and economic outcomes and drive our economy. we can't use these partnerships unless policy makers make other bold decisions and put long term funding in place to be able to support this model and really unlock private capital to help drive mobility and drive our economy in the u.s.

>> thank you for your remarks. i'm sure there will be questions. >> glad you're here. >> i guess i'm here to representing the viewpoint of a state transportation provider. i've been the director for five years which provides mobility relief within the metro denver area. a little bit of context. colorado while it's not one of the top ten states in terms of population growth as in the last 20 years doubled in size.

most of it within the metro denver area from that $8 million level we're projected to grow another four to five million within the next 20 years. we have important research centers around the metro area. it is an area that is critical not only to the state of colorado but to the region itself. the state has not increased its gas tax for 20 years. we are facing a horrendous fighting through crisis not only basic maintenance to the state transportation system but to the critical mobility needs in the metro area. about five years ago i participated in the creation of

a piece of legislation that addressed at that point a critical bridge problem in the state and amid much controversy we were able to enact a license plate fee which is earmarked for repair bridges in the state. to address long term needs within the state and we try to enact a pilot program. just a pilot program. that lasted about ten days in the legislature before it got dumped out of the bill. a third part of the bill was the creation of the enterprise that i now direct which is focused on innovative finance relief for the congestion problems in the

area. innovative finance was code word for public, private partnerships. concept brand new in our state as it was in the country and still is in many parts of the country. jennifer described from her side of the table some critical elements which are difficult to explain to people sometimes is not a funding source. it's a financing source. we pay for the money provided by the private sector. nevertheless, it's a funding source that we make use of. five years into this process we were able to open our first major project.

it's a managed level lane project. we were able to find companies from the private sector who were willing to participate in financing that project and even in this case undertake the revenue risk from the toll of uncertainty that will exist for a while in that corridor. we have between 3 and 5 billion in transportation needs to deal wl the with the mobility issue in the metro area. we have one major project a

billion dollar plus project in procurement now. we're looking forward to a successful result from that. we have problems on the interstates intersecting denver north and south and east and west and as i said here we have no idea how we're going to pay for those projects. a critical corridor being the inner mountain corridor between denver and the critically important recreational areas in colorado which are central to the economy of the state. we are counting on future federal revenues to finish some of those projects. we're at the bottom of the

barrel, which i say with a sense of urgency. my job becomes even more critical as the state itself runs out of funding because we have got to look for ways to leverage what kind of revenue we can project from user fees, toll revenues on the network in the city. and i appreciate being part of this session. i hope -- i hope we are collectively able to deliver the message where it needs to be delivered, that the time is critical and i look forward to being part of the solution. >> thank you very much, mike, for your comments and your contributions.

i'll take it a little bit out of order now and take my law partner and former member of congress, state of georgia, congressman jack kingston to give his perspective on some of the things they're doing down in georgia, particularly in the port project area and he's now with us, with these projects, probably had something to do with them back when you were in congress yourself. jack, why don't you go ahead and tell us about what is happening down there. >> thank you very much, senator. i have to take a point of personal privilege that i really came here to lobby jennifer on going ahead and getting a fast lane on 395. i think we all would like to see that happen. and, mike, i want to say my mother actually lives in louisville, colorado, and your toll road is great. >> thank you. >> i've driven it many times. it is such a great alternative to 36. but as a member of the house, i was on the appropriations committee and served in the house for 25 years. and probably the biggest infrastructure project in the

state of georgia right now is the deepening of the savannah river. that project, we lived and breathed for 13 years. i'll put that in perspective for a minute. it took $40 million to get four federal agencies to sign off on it. we had to have the okay from epa, and from noaa and along with that we had to have state and stake holders and all kinds of people who had an opinion on it. it took forever and yet 300,000 jobs in the state of georgia are involved almost directly with the port. 15,000 businesses. and of the 15,000 businesses that export in our state are import, either one, 70% of them have less than 500 employees. so it is always this thought, well, you know, port, and export, that's the big folks, but that's not the case at all. we had to jump through all kinds of hoops, as you can imagine, just to get the river five feet deeper. and we were going to 47 feet

when general ogle thorp sailed up the river in 1743, it was 12. we have been playing in the mud for 200 years. this was not some new concept. but the global part of this is that during that period of time, china built a port from start to finish that was bigger than the port of savannah. savannah is the fourth largest port in the united states of america. but if we're going to compete in the marketplace, internationally, we can't have such a slow, tedious, really uncertain working, permitting process. the state of georgia was ready, had skin in the game. the project, by the way, went

from $250 million to over $650 million, but the state was there, dollar for dollar, for their share, always ready to kick in. and i think that's important. but now that -- and the point is, of course, to be able to be deep enough to get the panama -- post panama ships, really is what we're focusing on now. panama canal is supposed to be finished 2014, fortunately for us in savannah, they got delayed. that helped us. but it is part of the world trade, but the second part of it now that we're in is railroad access, railroad crossings, making sure that there aren't delays, and then, of course, truck lanes and so now we have to get back to traditional surface transportation issues. and that's one of the things that we're working on from a state level, the state of georgia just passed a transportation bill. congressman defazio talked about what virginia had done. georgia is a red state. georgia is a republican governor, republican house, republican senate, but the state

legislature increased the hotel, motel tax $5 a night. pretty big slug if you think about it. but that -- there had to be some funding mechanisms. but beyond that, one of the things i can say, i served in the state legislature and in congress, from a legislator's standpoint, in my opinion, you need to have leadership that we really don't have on a complete level. and by that i mean leadership from the white house to the core. everybody has to pass the baton. what i have seen from the other side, from the voting side of this issue is you get transportation type people, whether they're, you know, directly involved with cars or railroads or highway contractors and so forth, but they tend to

call on members of the highway transportation committees. they don't call on somebody from a health care committee. and, yet, health care is very involved in transportation. they don't call on somebody from the agriculture committee, but agriculture depends on good roads and transportation as well. one of the things i would say that we as those who support more transportation funding or a better vision, you got to call on all 435 members of the house. because calling on the transportation committee members, and i would say bill shuster is probably my best friend in the house, but they live and breathe it. they're for it. they're going to make it happen. pete defazio and shuster, they'll come up with the program. they can do it in half a day, but they need 218 votes. unless we're working on the entire congress then it is not going to happen. that would be kind of my report from my little foxhole. and, senator, i appreciate

you -- >> thank you very much, jack. a quick question. i know you have to leave. one of the arguments is since the congress eliminated earmarks on special projects and member districts, that's been a really tantamount to having projects that are essential, being authorized and approved. do you think the idea will come back to allowing those type of endeavors by members? >> i think that what happened with the earmark debate is it got out of hand numerically and in substance, but what it really is is a member directed project. and traditionally, when bud shuster held the gavel, we already mentioned, he would go to the individual member of the house and say what do you need in your district? you already heard from your mayors and county commissioners and governor and state legislator so you had an idea. there is -- we have some projects, they add up to $25 million. that's not paying for the entire project, but just the federal match that the state was ready

to go for. and then he would say, well, you're not going to get $25 million. what can i get, mr. chairman? you can get 20. let me go back and shop it back home. that's where i think a lot of the leadership came from, because suddenly that county commissioner, that city councilman, everybody had a buy-in. and you went back and you were going to vote for the bill, but right now, it is sort of an academic thing, gets fuzzy. we passed transportation bill. not sure who actually makes the decision, all that money might go to ohio. not to pick on ohio. i'm just saying it might go elsewhere. and that's what a legislator cares about what is going to come back to my district. i do think there needs to be a way to address member priorities as a way of getting -- of growing the vote. >> when bud shuster was chairman, every highway in pennsylvania became a six-lane highway. thank you very much, jack. i'll excuse you. i know you have another thing to get to.

i with like to welcome new our next presenter, chris -- no, mike. let's do mike. mike sharute. >> i'm going to cede my time. >> we only let you do it once. >> chris guthridge is a project director on infrastructure development. we're delighted to have you here. we look forward to your thoughts. >> thank you very much. ready to introduce scanska, a swedish company, 127 years of pedigree. it is one of the world's largest developer and contractor companies. it is a champion for sustainable infrastructure. it drives the way the company looks at its opportunities. it has 10,000 employees in the u.s. and the u.s. is our number one growth market. we're just completing a 2020 five-year business plan

cycle, but within the infrastructure development side, we think ten years ahead. and this is a hugely competitive market. lots and lots of international companies. all vying to get the next opportunity. and so, you know, we need to be teaming some two to three years ahead before formal procurements start. you know, we're here to -- we want the opportunity to invest in america's continued growth. but i would also include workforce development. it includes minority supply chain development. because in reality, we cannot grow the way that we want to unless we can actually create these centers of excellence. but we need a reliable program of projects, both federal, state and local levels. we want an opportunity to be able to show the value that can be created by using innovative procurement and financing means. we want fairness and

transparency. you know, don't blame public/private partnerships for short falls in permitting and right away acquisition procedures. we want decisiveness. once you set a path, you know, you need to stick to it. and last but not least, this is all about execution and it is execution in a timely manner. just to put a personal side to it, when i was the project director for the midtown tunnel, when we won the bid for this, 2 billion project, down in hampton roads, a really large construction worker came up to me and gave me a big hug and said thank you for assuring my job for the next five years. that's the reality, the impact on families and, you know, their bread winners and so on of unreliable project streams.

quickly, sort of talk about the midtown tunnel, with which i was very proud to be associated, this is a huge technical undertaking of elizabeth river and hampton roads area of southern virginia. this is a public/private partnership, this cannot be done without one side or the other. this is a 5,100 foot immersed concrete tube tunnel. 11 segments, each of them 16,000 tunnels. it was fabricated up in sparrows point, baltimore, and then the segments floated down the chesapeake to the elizabeth river. then each segment laid in 100 feet of water, with one inch tolerance. that's the sort of engineering you get with these, you know, megaprojects. you can't do projects like this without things like, you know,

federal loans. the loan was the key part of the financing for this project. what we see is critical success factors. firstly, joint stake holder management. we learned a lot about stake holders and the representatives. talking about getting the whole house on side. but this is much more than that. this is about getting, you know, all the political spectrum and the taxpayers and the users of these assets, going through educative process. and i would like to applaud what colorado has actually done in terms of the approach that they have had, driven by the governor, to actually get public -- critical to these projects. if you don't have a project champion, that's the real issue. project champion, many of these projects will just flounder. last but not least is just to make the point, dbe, you know, disadvantaged business

enterprise, i mentioned it earlier on, just for the midtime project alone, we have some 28 dbes and 124 vendors already on board. a key area of these projects is not just creating and constructing the project, but actually bringing up the community around it. thanks. >> chris, thank you very much for that perspective. next we would like as our presenter dr. oliver mcgee, a good friend of the secretary, and slater and served with the secretary in the department of transportation. he's now at howard university and professor there.

and will share some thoughts, i think, on technology and positive train control thoughts? >> thank you, secretary slater, for having me here. and senator breaux and lott. i want to congratulate squire peyton fox for representing transportation infrastructure week in this fashion. it is so very, very important. transportation in my eyes and many others is about economic choices. it is about moving people, ideas and things as secretary slater oftentimes said. but more importantly, i'm a mathematician, engineer and scientist. and so i would like to put things in mathematical formulas. competitiveness equals risk, uncertainty and growth. and i learned that from a great economic teacher, an absentee teacher, frank knight, at the university of chicago, great book on this subject. and when you look at risk, it is about what we know.

and uncertainty is about what we don't know. it is our innovation, enterprise. and growth is about jobs. and more importantly, how we remain competitive, how we remain competitive in the united states and the world. and when you're looking about -- looking at growth, you have to start thinking about how you're invested in technology. and how do you employ it. positive train control is about taking advanced technology that was developed 45 years ago, and implementing it today. we're basically running a 19th century railroad system in the northeast. 50% of positive train control has been implemented between new york and boston.

but only 5% has been implemented between new york and washington, d.c. and through the philadelphia corridor. without that employment of technology, lives are lost. so oftentimes what i do is i look at what are we looking at and the public understanding of science and technology. and oftentimes that's what science and technology and transportation is all about, understanding transportation in the science and technology realm. there are really seven grand technologies we're trying. one is information technology. you've heard from the folks at its really saying we're trying to acuate information so you engage it. biotechnology is how health issues can incorporate and couple with transportation. we want a healthy transportation enterprise, but also healthy people engaging healthy transportation. and then there is also advanced wireless and communications. transportation is always about megascale engineering as chris

was outlining here, big, large, projects. but transportation is also getting smaller. we are actually doing virtual transportation more often than we are physical transportation. so when we had these wireless communication devices, we're moving people and ideas and things virtually. with telecommuting, virtual offices, that's transportation. but it involves wireless communications. microtechnology. microtechnology is about computing transportation, computing the choices and decisions that are involved in transportation. researchers are now looking much further, 50 years out, in mental technology, where things get very, very small. and oftentimes what i was sharing with secretary slater is we're going to be looking at molecular computing. looking at 750 times faster than the high performance commuting we have now. why do we need to compute transportation? because we're trying to figure out the traffic patterns in the

northeast corridor for daily flight and now rail systems. the derailment today that we're faced is costing our economy $100 million a day. so do we want to advance in these advance technologies or do we want to lose $100 million a day and get into the business of moving derailed trains off the tracks instead of moving people? cogno technology is looking at advances in brain research. this deals with the human factors. human factors is really what positive train control is about. but when we look at air travel, southeast asia is suspected to be the largest growth in air travel by 2050. but we have close to -- well over 1100 people who have died in airplane crashes in the last year, since march 8, 2014, which was the inception of, what? mh-370. still trying to find the aircraft. and also, in other parts of the region, of the world, we are impacted by germanwing airline where we had to look at the

psychological factors involved inside what we call a cockpit post 9/11. what is a locked cockpit door and who belongs in it? should we bring the navigator back so we can make sure that when we lock that cockpit door, we have very strong human factors and cogno issues in looking at psychological factors of pilots and personnel inside the aircraft cockpit. and then finally, we need to look at elder technology as in the western society as we get to an older society, how do we gauge with moving people, ideas and things, the mobility issues in engagement of transportation. finally, i would like to tap into what we're looking at in niversity and industry partnership that really

involves not only developing the advances in transportation of these technologies, which involves a lot of investment, a lot of uncertainty management, but more importantly deals with workforce development. how do we gauge a new supply of scientists and engineers to understand these advances in technology, engage them. more importantly as we look at heightened engagements who are actually engaging in transportation, and this will involve training many, many scientists and engineers not only in america, but also across the world, particularly when we look at the southeast region. flying, we have to look at pilot shortages, how are we training the pilots for advances in technologies, say, for an airbus or aircraft, which has a glasscock pit. and then how do we look at those technologies that are developing in the western side of the world and engage with the eastern side of the world when you're basically trying to fly the aircraft. imagine, for example, if you were flying an aircraft made in china, and it was largely in a

society of mandarin chinese and you're english and trying to fly that aircraft in a digital aircraft. it is very difficult. that's what we're talking about in the new age of workforce development as we go forward. in closing, i agree with frank knight. i think frank knight would probably say that infrastructure and transportation week is very important. he would say how risky are we taking our risk and how certain are we about our uncertaintys? and how will we grow the transportation enterprise for 2050 and beyond? it is about moving people, ideas and things, physically and virtually. >> thank you very much for those thoughts and insight. our final presenter will be beverly swain staley, the head and president and ceo of a project right near here that we all visited probably many, many times, the union station redevelopment corporation and here to tell us what they're doing and what they've done. beverly. >> thank you very much.

and, again, i want to thank you very much for the privilege of being here today. i always say i have one of the best jobs in the world. i have the privilege now of working on washington union station. and preparing it for what we call the second century project. just a little bit of had history, i'm sure you're familiar with the building and probably the challenges that it presents. but it was about in 1901, thanks to the leadership of the senate, senator mcmillan -- saw the need to revitalize washington, d.c. and we had the mcmillan plan and washington union station was built as an anchor to that plan. in the early 1980s, it had fallen into major disrepair as had rail travel. but, again, fortunately to the leadership of congress, the usrc was established as a public/private partnership with the goal of reinvigorating and rebuilding that station as a multimodal transportation center and also a commercial center that would revitalize the neighborhoods. and i think we can see 30 years later it certainly achieved those goals. it is now time, however, to go

into the next century and once again rebuild and build a new transit oriented development and link the eastern side of the city and the neighborhoods of capitol hill, noma and the downtown. and so two years ago, amtrak announced its vision plan for 2012 and there are a number of partners involved in that plan, including usrc, a nonprofit, and two developers as well as the city and other regional entities. so just to briefly give you a vision for that plan, we -- it entails, of course, preserving the historic building, but completely rebuilding all of the infrastructure behind the facility, new railyard, new -- that infrastructure is 100 years old now and not working very well and certainly not with the northeast corridor needs in order to address the issues and

provide for long-term transportation for the next 100 years. so redeveloping the station is critical to amtrak plans, critical to actually serving the northeast corridor. washington union station is also the busiest metro station in the system, even though it is not a transfer station and serves one line. metro fortunately also has plans to expand the metro services there. we also have a very active bus station there now. we serve over 37 million people a year in washington union station. to give you some comparison, i call it the fourth airport, largest airport in the region serves less than 25 million people. so it is a very busy place. i'm sure you're all very familiar, it is bursting at the seams. it is still a great place to be. but we definitely need to take it to the next evolution. so that's what we have been working on. and we are deep into the planning phases. we hope that next year actually

amtrak begins construction in the current concourse, though the full buildup, which will take us -- conservatively speaking, let's say 20 years, the plan would be to do the inside of the station in the first phase, which we're working on that design now, amtrak would completely rebuild the east side of the railyard and then a private developer will literally build a transit oriented development with hotels, homes, offices over top, then we would build the west side and, again, the developer would then complete the west side. we're essentially not only creating new transportation system in washington, but also creating a new neighborhood, so it is really a very, very exciting project. obviously to do a project like that, it will take a long time and we need a stable source of funding and certainty of funding. we have preceded, however, for the past couple of years and into the planning and nepa and early design and the way we have been able to do that because our

partners consist of private developers, in amtrak, public/private, and nonprofit. we literally at the beginning of the year sit down and look at what we want to do and what we need to do to keep the project on schedule and one partner does not know in that fiscal year if they're going to have the money to put up to keep -- to fund the project. fortunately, one of the other partners at the table, including the nonprofit, has been able to say, well, we will front you the money this year, so we can keep the project going. that's how we have been able to get into the planning. obviously that works when we're talking about tens of millions of dollars, but we don't have -- no one has the deep pockets when we get into design and we're talking about tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. so within the next couple of years, we're going to be at a

place where we need to know certainty of funding and stable funding. we want this to be and plan for it to be a significant public private partnership. we'll have a number of options to fund it. but we can't ask the private sector to step up and to be there if we can't make the commitments for the public funding. and certainty, they absolutely need certainty. we obviously cannot embark on this project and the large and expensive phases that we have, we certainly can't start to build a railyard and stop building it halfway through. or start to build the development of the concourses for the private sector and stop it halfway through. so i think we have very close to here a great example of why we need -- we need flexibility in funding, we need options for the public sector and the private sector can work together to finance projects as well as stability for funding. so i'm confident, we had the leadership in 1901 and 1981, the vision and creativity, to make sure that washington union station was one of the most iconic multimodal transportation centers in the world. and i'm sure that we're going to do that again. we definitely need to step up with funding sources, creativity and flexibility. >> beverly, thank you very much for that update on a very important project and thank all of the panelists. let me open it up if anyone has

a question, our panelists, you're welcome to ask. yes, sir. in the back. speak up a little bit. >> sorry. >> i'm old and deaf. technology deficit. speak up. we can hear you. >> i'm curious. this may be simplistic but how much of the project is expected to be public funding and how much is it going to come from value capture or the private side? >> we've just started the master development plan, hired grimshaw and bbb. we're hoping in the next year to 18 months as we go through that to have the details but as i mentioned we have multiple potential sources of funding. we are currently as a nonprofit

funded primarily from parking revenue. we have the bus company and bus companies are paying. we have multiple areas we can monetize. the reason that flexibility is going to be so critical is to be able to bring these different kinds of sources together and to be able to do a financing package so that's what we're working on now and we don't have the answers and one of the critical pieces is going to know how much money we can expect for the public parts for example. >> let me throw out a question. it seems we always hear how other countries, passenger rail transportation like china and japan and some of the european models are averaging 150 miles per hour on brand new sleek modern trains and we don't see that in the united states. what are they doing differently in these areas that we might learn from? any thoughts? chris, maybe you're an international perspective or anybody? why are they doing it

differently from us and is it more successful than we're doing it here in this country? >> i used to commute from oxfordshire into the city of london every day using the great western line. for those who know the history the kingdom designed and built that railway. the whole point about it this is back in the 19th century. the whole point was it was literally to give you a smoother ride as you can take. you run the high speed 125 trains. the point is this is technology can which was in existence in the 19th century. it's a lot of investment but there's no question that you can create -- >> is it because the investment

over there is from the governmental sources as opposed to the private sector? >> this is private investment in the railways. >> i take it though the private passenger rail system pays for itself with the ripe erdership in those areas? >> you hope. if we were looking at public/private partnerships for improving rail systems in this country, particularly actually on the heavy transits or light rail, in particular light rail the reality is that these projects don't pay for themselves from the actual sort of fair box itself. in reality, the actual risk of the revenues itself still sits with the public sector but you can achieve an enormous amount

with a partnership of both the public and the private. >> obviously one of the problems is amtrak doesn't pay for itself, not anywhere close. jennifer, do you have any idea how we're doing from a public/private partnership? you're a private company but how are we doing as far as the funding operations? >> from our perspective, these projects -- partnerships are successful when you can align commercial objectives with policy objectives. that is a very difficult thing to do and it's not suited for every project, but we think the case of 95 and 495 we have that alignment where from a policy outcome perspective you heard me talk about the time savings, the increased transit the jobs the economic outcomes that have come from those projects. from a commercial perspective, we're very pleased that 495 is on solid financial footing and that 95 has come out of the box

in a solid position so that we can get a term for our shareholders as well. i think that's what we need here in the u.s. chris can speak to this as well. in our sector we need more examples in the u.s. of projects that have struck that alignment and been successful and delivered outcomes on both sides. i think those kinds of case studies will give i hope, policy makers encouragement to try these kinds of public/private partnerships and to be able to move projects forward like we've seen in other markets around the world. >> any questions from the audience? let me ask one more maybe to dr. magee oliver. you mentioned positive train control which obviously has been in the news because. recent derailment in philadelphia area, tragic derailment. and the argument that had you had positive train control they would have been able to stop the train before the accident. how are other countries doing on

ptc? do they have it in place, do you know? are we the only ones lagging behind? can you comment on that? >> sure. positive train control is 45-year-old technology as i said, but we are dealing with trying to turn a train at 50 miles per hour slower than the cars on i-95 parallel to it in a turn that was designed for freight system. so we have to separate the freight rail from the commercial rail. commercial rail is largely a straight line, and when you look at mag lev it's floating. so it really challenges us as the united states are we really ready to do mega scaled engineering development in a funding model like in map 21 that has 27 increments as we

step forward. it's very difficult for private enterprise to anticipate, make investments, risky investments to partner with the government that is really taking baby steps in increments for mega scale development like chris is talking about. when you go in a straight line and you have advances in high speed rail technology, then we may not be talking about positive train control but further advances in technology as i talked about in information systems and wireless systems and digital and computing technologies that could put a glass operation system inside a train system, much like what we see in aircraft. i had the privilege of traveling from paris to belgium and back and i was on that train and had a glass of wine and it never even shook. i said this is better than flying in southwest airlines.

we look at flying in this country like we're flying on the greyhound. how many people enjoy engaging in an airport these days, baggage fees. everything is feed to death. we're basically -- it's not an enjoyable experience. we don't have the pan-am of flying anymore. right now we're looking at $100 million a day in costs. i always say that we will develop the mega scale engineering technologies and do this when we're tired of the pain. but more importantly, on a serious matter this is lives lost. i think our transportation enterprise is in trouble when it loses 7 lives or over 1100 lives like we lost in air travel in the last year, and that's the most in six decades. so i'm always mindful about that. it's about safety, but at the same time when we do advances in technology, we get a safer

transportation enterprise. secretary slater used to always say safety is our north star in transportation. but as we engineers and scientists develop these new technologies, we have to deploy them so that we can become safer and keep advancing the transportation enterprise forward. everything we do today is an economic choice. every single morning we have to make a choice on the transportation system. that engages us every day. congress is doing incremental analysis because that's how they bring home the bacon. it's one of the most discretionary areas in the budget and that's how we say to our constituents, looky here what i brung home to you a new bridge, a new parking lot, a new train, a new curb in the highway, another lane in the highway. that's all incremental analysis. i will close when was the last

big transportation project we've done in this country? i think i can remember the big dig in boston but that was just do these big projects it engages the public understanding of science and technology, and we have more hope in the transportation system. and that's what infrastructure week is about this week, providing that hope. >> thank you, dr. magee. i'd like to thank our entire panel. chairman schuster left baltimore and is tied up in traffic appropriately for a transportation conference. i will thank this panel very much for their presentations and for all of our audience. let me bring up secretary -- let me ask secretary slater to come up and close the program. thank you, rodney. >> senator we would like to thank you for the great job you did moderating the panel. let's give the senator a round of applause.