Washington, D.C. — The following are opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, from Ranking Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Dina Titus (D-NV), during today’s hearing, titled, “America Builds: Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Federal Rail Assistance.”
Video of Larsen’s and Titus’ opening statements can be found here and here.
More information on the hearing can be found here.
Ranking Member Larsen:
Thank you, Chairman Webster and Ranking Member Titus, for holding today’s hearing.
Today’s hearing is about efficiency and effectiveness in delivering rail improvements. I support these goals, and yet I am concerned this Administration is more worried about rhetoric than rolling up its sleeves to get us there.
In his first 100 days, President Trump has driven up costs and cut critical services.
We have seen chaos and confusion in the constant freezing and unfreezing of transportation grants, attacks on the workforce that delivers these transportation investments, and conditions placed on grants that have nothing to do with transportation.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was a transformational investment in passenger rail.
After 50 years of under-investments, Amtrak and the recipients of rail competitive grants can plan and succeed thanks to five years of guaranteed funding for capital projects.
This funding has allowed Amtrak to address decades of deferred maintenance and begin construction on long-delayed capital projects.
This investment has allowed Brightline West to begin construction, as Ranking Member Titus highlighted.
Funding has been announced to support safety improvements across the country, including in my district:
- In early 2025, the City of Everett was awarded $18 million to eliminate two crossings with Burlington Northern Santa Fe through the construction of an overpass and roundabout near the Smith Island terminal.
- In 2023, the City of Burlington was awarded a $2 million planning grant to identify which of the city’s 16 at-grade crossings is most suitable for grade separation.
Nationally, these investments helped create 1.7 million construction and manufacturing jobs across the country.
These are jobs with good wages and benefits.
That’s why it is hard to understand why the Administration has, over the past hundred days, halted progress and put millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of job, and thousands of projects at risk.
Secretary Duffy testified last month before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that roughly 3,200 previously awarded projects were on hold.
The BIL invested more than $48 billion in 445 projects to improve rail safety and expand passenger rail travel nationwide.
Still, the Administration refuses to even tell us which of these projects are on hold.
In the Pacific Northwest, Washington state and Oregon are committed to advancing the Cascadia high-speed rail project.
Cascadia will connect people and communities, increase economic competitiveness, and improve the quality of life across the region with high-speed rail between Vancouver, B.C., Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. It will connect workers in my district to good jobs, increase access to affordable housing and offer greater mobility for almost ten million people.
Similarly, the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail is matching billions of dollars in state and private investment in passenger rail improvements including bridges and tunnels on the Northeast Corridor.
The BIL is improving transportation in every state and every Congressional district, which is why it’s concerning that the administration is trying to undermine the BIL’s progress.
Just last month, Secretary Duffy reduced previously-awarded grants for rail infrastructure in New York, Newark, Dallas, and Houston. He also sent a letter to put all federal grant recipients on notice that previously-awarded grants will be reviewed, and possibly paused, to ensure they align with this Administration’s priorities. If jobs and investments aren’t the Administration’s priorities, what are?
Halting the flow of benefits from appropriations already approved by Congress is a strange way to launch the golden age of infrastructure.
It is not efficient. It is not effective. Instead, we should be working on a bipartisan basis to keep it going.
Meanwhile, the Department continues to signal that mass layoffs are coming even though USDOT staff who administer grants are there to prevent waste, fraud and abuse of the money Congress allocates.
The FRA is a grant-making agency. Approximately 2.2% of its budget is for salaries and benefits. Federal workforce cuts provide minimal cost reductions and make the Department less efficient.
Moving forward, public investment is vital to building a truly national intercity passenger rail system. Every passenger rail system in the world developed with some form of public investment.
Highways, transit, airports, and harbor maintenance projects have access to dedicated revenue. It's time to provide long-term funding certainty for intercity passenger rail.
I am committed to building on the successes of the investments in the BIL and ensuring this Committee can say that “America Builds Rail” at hearings for many years to come.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here, and I look forward to the discussion.
Ranking Member Titus:
Thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, this Committee made historic investments in passenger rail, and we are certainly seeing the impacts of those investments in Las Vegas. Thanks to a $3 billion grant from Federal State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail, Brightline West broke ground last April on a new high-speed train service from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
I have been working to bring high speed rail to Southern Nevada for decades, and I am excited that it is finally becoming a reality. I am also proud that the project is creating good-paying, union jobs. Rail union workers are building the Brightline West line and will play a role in operating and maintaining it once it is in service. Overall, the project is expected to create 35,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs.
And while Brightline West is a success story, I know that it is not the only model we need to support as we work to improve intercity passenger rail service across the United States. There is not a passenger rail system in the world that operates without some government investment in capital projects.
We need to provide robust funding for Amtrak and competitive grants in the next surface transportation reauthorization so we do not lose all the progress we have been making over the past five years. Amtrak services Red and Blue Districts alike, and I was glad to see some of my Republican colleagues vote in favor of amendments to protect Amtrak funding for the Northeast Corridor and for North Carolina rail investments during last week’s markup in this Committee.
There are many communities across the United States that will benefit from sustained federal rail investments. The Federal Railroad Administration has identified 69 corridors in 44 states as ready for additional investment. These corridors are in many of our districts, with proposed lines, extensions to existing routes or improvements to passenger rail service in 49 districts in this Committee alone.
In addition to helping expand passenger rail service, federal rail grants also make our rail networks safer. For example, the Railroad Crossing Elimination Program helps address safety concerns at grade crossings. There are over 2,000 incidents and 200 fatalities at these dangerous intersections each year. We can and must do better. The $3 billion Congress allocated to this program is helping eliminate or make these intersections safer across the United States.
I would like to use our time today to hear from our witnesses about how investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are improving rail service in your communities. I also welcome suggestions for how we can work together to speed up the grant implementation process. Whether it be through improving the obligation process or ensuring that the FRA has sufficient staff to execute these grants, I believe targeted changes could speed up grant implementation.
I look forward to working with Chairman Graves, Ranking Member Larsen, and Subcommittee Chairman Webster on these issues during the surface transportation reauthorization process.
I yield back.