James Oberstar

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of an innovative approach to increasing use on our Nation's public transportation network. Today, June 19, Americans across the country will ``dump the pump'' and ride public transportation as part of the Third Annual Dump the Pump Day. This important cause is sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association, APTA, and more than 100 public transportation systems will take part in ``dump the pump'' activities across the United States to encourage increased ridership on our Nation's transit systems. Activities for Dump the Pump day include having public events with drawings for free transit passes and other prizes, offering free or reduced rides, doing radio promotions, and providing ``transit ambassadors'' to help new riders. As the price of gas has now surpassed $4 a gallon, even more commuters are choosing to ride the train or the bus to work rather than drive alone in their cars. In the first quarter of 2008 commuters took more than 2.6 billion trips on trains, subways, light rail, and buses nationwide, an increase of 3.3 percent over the first quarter of 2007. Light rails saw the largest jump in ridership with a 10 percent increase to 110 million trips. Transit systems in metropolitan areas are reporting increases in ridership of 5, 10, and even 15 percent over last year's figures. Some of the biggest increases in ridership are occurring in many areas in the South and West where new bus and light rail lines have been built in the last few years. Recently, public transportation has experienced a renaissance in American cities and towns. In 2007, Americans took over 10.3 billion trips on public transportation, the highest level in 50 years. Public transportation use is up 32 percent since 1995, a figure that is more than double the growth rate of the population and is substantially over the growth rate for the vehicle miles traveled on our Nation's highways for that same period. All around the country, voters continue to approve State and local ballot initiatives to support public transportation, even when it means local taxes will be raised or continued. Despite these dramatic increases in usage, only 5 percent of workers nationally commute by public transit. Efforts to increase this statistic, such as Dump the Pump Day, are critical to assisting American commuters in making the switch to public transit in their daily commutes. Another important goal of Dump the Pump Day is to reduce the United States dependence on foreign oil by encouraging more people to use public transportation. According to a recent study, if Americans used public transit at the same rate as Europeans--for roughly 10 percent of their daily travel needs--the United States could reduce its dependence on imported oil by more than 40 percent, nearly equal to the 550 million barrels of crude oil that we import from Saudi Arabia each year. When a solo commuter switches from a single occupancy vehicle to a transit commute, this single mode shift can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 pounds per day--more than 4,800 pounds in a year. Public transportation use in all of its forms--bus, rail, vanpool, ferry, streetcar, and subway ridership to name a few--saves fuel, reduces emissions, and saves money. The direct petroleum savings attributable to current public transportation use in the United States is 1.4 billion gallons per year. When the secondary effects of transit availability on travel are also taken into account, the equivalent of 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline is saved annually--more than 11 million gallons of gasoline per day. This is why I have introduced H.R. 6052, the ``Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008.'' This bill provides much needed support to public transportation agencies and greater incentives for commuters to choose transit options, thereby reducing their transportation-related energy consumption and reliance on foreign oil. The Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008 authorizes funding for transit agencies nationwide that are temporarily reducing transit fares or expanding transit services to meet the needs of the growing number of transit commuters. H.R. 6052 also extends the Federal transit pass benefits program to require all Federal agencies in the United States to offer transit passes to Federal employees working in urbanized areas with fixed route transit systems nationwide. Both increased use of public transportation and increased Federal investment in transit are crucial steps we must take to address skyrocketing gas prices, environmental degradation and gridlocked roadways across the Nation. For these reasons and more, I support the Third Annual Dump the Pump Day to promote public transportation usage in the United States and help America break its addiction to foreign oil, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and free our highways from the crippling effects of congestion. I also urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 6052, the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I rise in support of the Manager's Amendment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008 (NASA Reauthorization), offered by the gentleman from Tennessee, Representative Bart Gordon, Chairman of the Committee on Science and Technology. I commend Chairman Gordon for his work on this important bill, which provides approximately $20 billion in funding authorization for fiscal year 2009, including approximately $853 million for aeronautical research, which is vital to commercial aviation. The Manager's Amendment includes two revisions to the base authorization bill to reflect previous agreements between the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Science Committee on provisions that were part of H.R. 2881, The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2007, which passed the House on September 20, 2007. The Manager's Amendment revises Section 305 of the bill, to require the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator, in coordination with NASA and the United States Climate Change Science Program to establish a research initiative to assess the impact of aviation on the climate and to evaluate mitigation approaches. In addition, this section, as amended, requires, within one year of the date of enactment, the participating federal agencies to develop a plan for a research program dedicated to aviation's impact on the climate. The Manager's Amendment also amends Section 306 of the bill to require the FAA, in consultation with other agencies, to establish a research program on ways to improve the confidence in and timeliness of certification of new technologies for introduction into the National Airspace System. In addition, this section, as amended, requires the FAA to develop a research plan, and to contract with the National Research Council to conduct an independent review of the research program plan, with a subsequent report to the committees of jurisdiction, including the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Madam Chairman, I support H.R. 6063, as amended by the Manager's Amendment, and urge my colleagues to do so as well.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I will yield an 30 additional seconds.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Chairman, we stand on the threshold of a transformational moment in the history of intercity passenger rail service in America. There was an earlier such moment. That was Amtrak, the creation of the Passenger Rail Corporation in 1970 when the freight rail interests of America gradually had been abandoning passenger service, discontinuing lines, discontinuing less-than-carload service, discontinuing the overnight railway Post Office service aboard intercity passenger rail. And as the RPO was discontinued, the passenger portion of the rail service became unprofitable and the railroads one by one appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission for discontinuance authority, to discontinue service on that portion of the line. And gradually, passenger rail service disappeared from the landscape until finally the Federal Government was left holding the bag, if you will, and created, through act of Congress, the passenger rail service we know today as Amtrak. But over the intervening years, Amtrak was never given the funding it needed to improve the track, the rail bed, to improve the rolling stock, and to operate independently from freight rail service on the lines and corridors where passenger service operated. And especially over the last dozen years, we have seen declining investment in Amtrak's operations, and in the last 6 years we have had at least one bankruptcy budget submitted by the administration, candidly stated so by the Secretary of Transportation. But with a combination of Republicans and Democrats looking to the future, we have been able to just keep Amtrak's nose above water during these intervening years. Today, we change that model. With passage of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, we will transform the future of intercity passenger rail in America. We heard all this morning from the one-minute speeches, the price of a gallon of gas breached $4 a gallon for the first time in history. The American Automobile Association says gas prices have gone up more than 10 percent in the last month and a dollar in the past year. Those prices are reverberating across the Nation, changing people's travel patterns and habits and causing them to look more to transit, and transit across the country has exploded in its growth. Last year we added more than a million new passengers to transit services a day across this country for 375 million new transit trips last year. Amtrak has similarly experienced enormous growth. Our airlines are cutting back. Eight airlines since December of last year have shut down. One filed for bankruptcy, largely because of rising fuel costs. Fuel now represents 40 percent of the airline industry's expenses. A small increase in gas prices, and I know that a dollar a barrel increase in the price of oil for Northwest Airlines causes an increase in cost to that airline of $42 million. You can increase that by 50 percent more for Delta, and double that for United and American. That means less competition, less mobility, and higher prices for our fellow citizens. The Department of Transportation says vehicle miles traveled in March fell 4.3 percent from last year. That is the first time we have seen a drop in miles traveled on public roads in over 30 years.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield myself an additional 2 minutes. The Center for Housing Policy says that working families in large metropolitan areas spent nearly a third of their income on transportation. That means families are not able to buy homes, they are not saving, they are not investing in their children's education, they are spending it on transportation. People are beginning to realize, just as they did in the days after September 11, that Amtrak service to move people from one city to another, is vitally important. One full passenger train can take 250 to 350 cars off the road. Intercity passenger rail removes 8 million cars from the highways every year and eliminates the need for 50,000 fully loaded passenger airline trips each year. Amtrak in the Northeast corridor has 56 percent of the air-rail market between Washington, D.C. and New York City, 43 percent of the market between New York and Boston. And now we come to the American public, perhaps 20 years too late, but just in time with the legislation before us today that will upgrade passenger rail intercity service. There is $14.9 billion authorized in this bill to rebuild Amtrak, construct high-speed rail corridors across the Nation, and I won't go into the specifics of it. At this point I simply want to express my deep appreciation to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) who extended his hand of cooperation, his enthusiasm for rebuilding passenger rail service in this country with some innovative ideas and a willingness to join hands and bring a truly bipartisan bill to the House floor, and to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown) the Chair of the Rail Subcommittee who has been Amtrak's most vigorous cheerleader and advocate.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield myself an additional 30 seconds. She did a Harry Truman-style whistle-stop tour on Amtrak when it was just about to go under and joined forces with a bipartisan initiative to save the funding for Amtrak. And Mr. Shuster from Pennsylvania who has been a true partner in shaping this legislation today; his ideas and contributions have been enormously valuable. We bring to America an opportunity to join the rest of the world in world-class, intercity high-speed passenger rail service. And again, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Chair of our rail subcommittee, Ms. Brown.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland, the Chair of the Coast Guard Subcommittee (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. I want to express my appreciation both to Mr. Shuster for his comments and to Mr. LaTourette for his observations. But it must also be added that in the bleak years of those starvation budgets for Amtrak, the gentleman from Ohio was out front with Ms. Brown and myself advocating for increased funding for Amtrak. If you look at the New York Times today, the gentleman referred to the price of fuel. Every increase in the price of fuel, already up 84 percent compared with last year, increases pressures on airlines. We have to pump 7,000 gallons into a 737 and 60,000 into a 747.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself another 15 seconds. So airlines are doing a whole host of new initiatives including washing their engines frequently. They get grime out of the engine which increases efficiency. And they're cutting back on a whole host of things like less water onboard aircraft for the lavatories, and they're trying to cut the paper manuals for the pilot and copilot in half to save weight onboard the aircrafts. It's all reported in today's New York Times and are things we've known on the committee.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself another 15 seconds. Today's bill puts us on course to do the right thing for the American public. Save fuel. Save the impact on the environment. Move people more efficiently. Now I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the land of high-speed intercity rail passenger service, the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski).

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Salazar), and before the gentleman, I yield myself 10 seconds to observe that the gentleman who just spoke representing New Jersey, New Jersey is the only State in America to have achieved a mode shift of 10 percent of all travel by transit. If the rest of America would do that, we would save 550 million barrels of oil a year, the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar).

Mr. OBERSTAR. May I inquire how much time remains on both sides, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts to engage in a discussion about Amtrak.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I appreciate the gentleman raising this issue. It's a matter of very deep concern to us on the committee. It goes to the heart of safety and security on our domestic passenger rail system. I certainly will join enthusiastically with the gentleman in making this request to the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for his concern.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 6003, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008.