[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 101 (Thursday, June 23, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4539-S4541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   CONGRATULATING COLUMBUS, OHIO, ON WINNING THE SMART CITY CHALLENGE

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleague from the 
other side of the aisle, Senator Brown, who came to the floor earlier 
to congratulate Mayor Andy Ginther of Columbus, OH, and the people of 
Columbus, OH, and Central Ohio for a big victory this week. We won the 
Federal Department of Transportation's Smart City grant competition. 
This is something we have been working on for months. It is a big deal 
to us in Central Ohio. It gives us the opportunity to get $40 million 
in terms of a grant from the Department of Transportation to be a model 
city and also in combination with another grant of $10 million from 
Vulcan Corporation and $90 million that has been raised in the private 
sector--that is a total of about $140 million to reshape transportation 
in Central Ohio to create more economic growth for the citizens of 
Central Ohio and to be a model not just for Ohio but for the rest of 
the country on how we can use smart transportation to help create 
economic growth and opportunity.
  I want to thank U.S. Secretary of Transportation Foxx for getting 
this decision exactly right. As I have said to Secretary Foxx about 
this competition over the past several months, I believe this is the 
right investment for our tax dollars. I believe Columbus is the right 
city. I believe we have done all the right things to be the proper 
recipient for this. I was honored to help set up meetings between 
Secretary Foxx and Mayor Andy Ginther. Secretary Foxx was always a 
thoughtful and respectful listener, and ultimately he made the right 
decision.
  It was a tough competition. We had 77 other cities submit 
applications, and among the finalists were some very impressive cities, 
very innovative cities--

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Austin, Kansas City, Denver, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco.
  It is easy to see why the right choice was to invest in Columbus. It 
is the fastest growing city in the Midwest in terms of jobs and in 
terms of population. It is one of the top seven centers in the country 
for foreign trade now.
  By the way, that places a lot of pressure on our transportation 
system with this growth and with the increase in trade. There is a need 
for us to be sure our infrastructure keeps up with that success. This 
Smart City grant will help us ensure that happens.
  I thank and commend the more than 100 organizations from Central Ohio 
that were part of this that expressed interest in working with Columbus 
on improving this infrastructure--organizations such as the Battelle 
research institute, the Ohio State University and their research on 
transportation, Clean Fuels Ohio, and the IBM Analytics Data Center. 
The Ohio State University had other departments involved in this, as 
well, in terms of engineering and so on, and dozens of others.
  I also thank the leadership of the Columbus Partnership. Alex Fischer 
did a terrific job of bringing the business community together on this. 
I mentioned that they also have put $90 million of private sector 
investment into this. It is clearly one where the Federal dollars are 
being leveraged and more than matched.
  I convened a meeting in Columbus several weeks ago at the Ohio State 
University Center for Automotive Research with many of these 
organizations that are part of this grant application. We talked about 
the need not just to work together on this grant but to ensure that 
Columbus and Central Ohio were on the map in terms of being centers for 
transportation excellence. We have some of the companies there, such as 
Honda and some of the suppliers, but we also have a lot of the research 
folks there and a lot of people who are interested in making sure the 
community becomes more prosperous by helping to move people.
  It is almost as though physical mobility through transportation is 
part of economic mobility in Columbus. We see it that way. I think it 
is absolutely true.
  I was pleased to lead in a letter from the entire Ohio delegation, 
along with Sherrod Brown and all of my colleagues in the House--
Democrat and Republican alike--in support of this effort. It was 
bipartisan. It was from the entire State. We were unanimous that 
Columbus is a sound investment that the Federal Government ought to 
make.
  I thank Mayor Andy Ginther for taking the leadership role in getting 
this done. It was a team effort and a good example of how the public 
sector and the private sector can work together to help move our 
country forward--in this case, to give Central Ohio the chance to show 
how to move the country forward literally in terms of our 
transportation movement.
  The credit ultimately goes to the city of Columbus. They will put 
that $140 million to good use, improving our infrastructure, spurring 
economic development and jobs. It is a proposal to form a partnership 
with the Central Ohio Transit Authority, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning 
Commission, the Ohio Department of Transportation, Ohio State's 
Transportation Research Center, which I talked about earlier, and other 
partners in a five-part strategy, a very specific strategy--access to 
jobs, logistics, connecting visitors and tourists, connecting citizens 
and sustainability.
  Let me briefly talk about some of these parts of the strategy. As I 
mentioned, we are creating a lot of jobs in Columbus with these new 
jobs. We have to be sure workers can commute easily and safely. We are 
going to study ways in which to move people, not just from suburb to 
suburb but also to ensure that people who are living in neighborhoods 
that have high rates of poverty have an access to jobs through the 
transportation improvement. We have a neighborhood in Columbus called 
Linden. It is one of the neighborhoods that will be particularly 
impacted positively by this improvement. The Linden neighborhood has 
its challenges.

  I visited many neighborhoods in Columbus that have challenges, 
despite the economic growth we talked about. Franklinton is one and 
South Side is another. We talked about our efforts to spur economic 
growth, how to fight drug abuse, how to help people who deserve a 
second chance get one, and how to bring jobs to those communities. The 
one thing I hear about is the difficulty with transportation--how to 
literally find a job and then get to that job. People don't have cars, 
and they have difficulty finding the bus routes that work for these 
jobs. Unfortunately, some of the jobs are not close to these 
neighborhoods. This is an opportunity, through this new innovative 
transportation plan, to connect people to the jobs that are there. By 
making it easier for residents to travel to and from jobs and schools, 
we can improve the future of these communities and these families.
  Credit is another issue that this proposal will help with. A lot of 
people who live in these neighborhoods have lack of access to credit. 
Think about it. Whether it is getting on the Metro bus or using some 
other form of transportation, such as the car2go or other 
transportation methods, credit is really important. This project will 
include looking for innovative ways to bring people off the sidelines 
and enable them to get around easier by providing credit for 
transportation.
  Columbus also plans to use the grant funds to improve travel 
information and broadband Internet access and to deploy self-driving 
cars to connect the East Transit Center to local employers.
  Columbus has one of the only cargo-dedicated airports in the world. A 
lot of freight moves through Central Ohio. We have the most truckstops 
of any State in the union. Some 60 percent of U.S. manufacturing 
facilities and 50 percent of U.S. consumers can be reached within a 
day's drive of Columbus. So it is a big transportation hub.
  I have met with a number of companies, such as Avnet, which 
anticipates more and more trucks on the road to and from the 
Rickenbacker Inland Port--again, this is our airfreight center for 
Columbus--because of this continuing growth. The city of Columbus plans 
to build a smartphone app for trucks with real-time traffic conditions 
and routing data for delivery of freight to better ensure efficiency on 
our roads. This is good for everyone. It is certainly good not only for 
our transportation companies and trucks but also in terms of safety and 
efficiency and good for commuters and all drivers.
  Another reason for the city's success is that we have so many people 
now visiting Columbus. Visitors spend about $5.7 billion every year in 
Columbus. That gives the city a total economic impact of $8.7 billion 
and supports 71,000 jobs for Ohioans. We need to be sure we continue to 
find ways to have the smart transportation project work with this 
increasing number of visitors.
  We plan to work with organizations like Experience Columbus to build 
a smartphone app to provide real-time information relating to events in 
the city for visitors, parking, traffic, and transit options. By 
helping visitors get around easier, we can help improve their 
experience in the city and also make Columbus even more attractive to 
more visitors and stimulate increased economic activity and jobs.
  These are some of the things that are going to happen as part of the 
Smart City grant. We also intend to focus on sustainability, and that 
would be to increase the use of cleaner ways of transporting people and 
goods. We will be expanding the electric-vehicle charging 
infrastructure and converting more of the city's bus system to 
compressed natural gas. The electric vehicles will reduce carbon 
emissions even as we are increasing transportation capabilities. This 
investment will not only have a positive impact on jobs but also on the 
environment. It is a win-win.
  Again, I congratulate Secretary Foxx on making a good investment 
decision, one that will help Columbus make history and create 
opportunities for Ohioans, and, most importantly, congratulations again 
for all of Central Ohio and those who put together this incredible 
application. I look forward to working with them closely to ensure that 
the money is well spent and that this project does indeed become a 
model for the rest of Ohio and the rest of our country.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield back my time.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

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  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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