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 Frederica Wilson (D-FL), during today’s hearing, titled, “Amtrak and Intercity Passenger Rail Oversight: Promoting Performance, Safety, and Accountability.”
Video of Larsen’s and Wilson’s opening statements can be found here and here.
More information on the hearing can be found here.
Ranking Member Larsen:
Thank you, Chairman Nehls and Ranking Member Wilson, for holding today’s hearing on improving Amtrak and intercity passenger rail across the country.
Before I begin, I want to welcome Representative Chris Deluzio as a member of this Subcommittee, as well as the Subcommittee on Aviation.
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Representative Deluzio joins this Committee with a record of fighting to strengthen transportation safety and support workers. I look forward to your partnership on rail safety and other initiatives to make America’s infrastructure cleaner, greener, safer, and more accessible.
Turning to today’s hearing, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) was a monumental achievement that supercharged our nation’s investment in rail with more than $100 billion in funding.
The BIL provided bold, long-term investments in transportation systems and infrastructure. These investments are creating jobs and benefiting our economy.
For intercity passenger rail, the BIL guaranteed multi-year funding for capital investments and development.
It made possible, for the first time ever, dedicated, reliable federal funding—dispersed over five years—to improve and expand intercity passenger rail.
Since our hearing last year, the FRA has announced $26.6 billion in BIL grants for 237 projects.
This includes 69 corridors in 44 states including the District of Columbia that were all recipients of Corridor ID grants.
In my state of Washington, the Washington State Department of Transportation received grants for two corridors: the Cascadia Ultra High-Speed Ground Transportation project that will provide a new alignment for high-speed rail service between Vancouver, Canada, and Portland, Oregon, via Seattle; and the current state-supported Amtrak Cascades route that serves Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Stanwood, Everett and Edmonds in my district.
The BIL is also an investment in our workforce. The funding is being used to grow a well-trained, diverse workforce to build, operate and maintain a national intercity passenger rail network.
Amtrak has hired an additional 8,500 people in the last two years, and the BIL is funding university-led, Amtrak-led and union-led workforce development initiatives.
Great results are already here as we hit the half-way mark of the BIL, and more still will come from additional rail funding to be announced.
While the final appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024 did not include all the rail funding authorized in the BIL, it demonstrated bipartisan support for these investments.
I look forward to hearing today from our witnesses about the impact of budget certainty and how this will ultimately improve service for rail passengers.
As we did in fighting for rail funding in the BIL, this Committee is dedicated to helping communities get regular and reliable passenger rail service.
Of the $100 billion provided for rail in the BIL, $66 billion was provided in the form of advance appropriations. The remaining $34 billion is subject to appropriations, and therefore not guaranteed.
I will continue to push for Congress to fully fund its intercity passenger rail commitments to create jobs, grow regional economies, reduce congestion and carbon emissions and build a cleaner, greener, safer and more accessible transportation network.
The transformational investment in the BIL is a great start, but Congress needs to build on this by securing regular, reliable funding for intercity passenger rail.
Thanks to the BIL, for the first time since the founding of Amtrak over 50 years ago, states and cities have the certainty of knowing that funding for passenger rail projects will be there.
Highways, transit, airports and harbors all have funding certainty, enabling long-term major capital projects in these modes without fluctuations due to the annual appropriations process.
It is time that intercity passenger rail had the same certainty.
The demand exists—last year, FRA received over $18 billion in applications for $8.9 billion in available funds and the Corridor ID program received over 90 applications from communities that want to add or improve intercity passenger rail connections.
Today, we will hear from witnesses who are turning historic investment into tangible improvements.
I thank each of the witnesses for joining the Committee today to provide their vision and recommendations for the future of passenger rail.
Ranking Member Wilson:
Thank you, Chairman Nehls, and thank you to our witnesses today.
Amtrak is our nation’s intercity passenger rail service, but as a Floridian, I’m proud to note that Brightline service now connects Miami and Orlando, and I’m glad to see that Florida has Amtrak and Brightline operating side by side. Amtrak and Brightline operate on tracks that my great-grandfather built when he first emigrated to this country, allowing me to ride my first overnight train to New York City as a girl. Two Amtrak trains per day run through my district, and we have a maintenance facility in nearby Hialeah.
Brightline and Amtrak are good services in our community, but, unfortunately, we have endured too many grade crossing deaths. Two weeks ago, a vehicle was struck on the rail right of way in Opa-locka in my district. Luckily, no one was hurt this time.
For the three years before the Brightline launch, I discussed safety along the railroad line. Safety remains my top priority for the work on this Subcommittee.
The unprecedented investments of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are continuing safety improvements to the Brightline route in Dania Beach, Wilton Manors, Ft. Lauderdale, Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach.
Late last year, the Federal Railroad Administration awarded 8.2 billion dollars across 10 projects in nine states to improve and expand passenger rail service. This includes extending and improving the Piedmont Corridor in North Carolina, which will improve connections with the busy Northeast Corridor. Ms. White will be able to tell us more about how her state has been able to make this historic investment in passenger rail.
And we are also able to better support our future rail workers. Last September, the FRA awarded the University of South Florida a $17 million grant to work with universities across the country to boost the railroad workforce.
The Corridor ID program identified 69 corridors in 44 states including the District of Columbia that will guide the expansion of passenger rail across the country. Two of the selected corridors are in my home state of Florida, the Miami-Orlando-Tampa corridor and the Jacksonville-Orlando-Miami Corridor.
Beyond the benefits to rail passengers, the investments in the BIL are revolutionizing the railway supply chain. Siemens is investing in a new North Carolina facility that will build new Amtrak trainsets and provide maintenance for rail cars and locomotives for years to come. This facility will add 500 jobs and over $1.6 billion to the local economy, thanks to the BIL.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about the impact the BIL has made on passenger rail and what they would like to see in the next infrastructure law, and I yield back my time.
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