[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 107 (Tuesday, June 26, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H5654]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MASS TRANSIT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, there is a recent article in The New
York Times about the Koch brothers and its stealth campaign to try to
attack mass transit projects around the country. It was disturbing on
several levels.
First and foremost, it is misguided in terms of the economic impact.
Mr. Speaker, it is clear that there is $4 of economic activity
generated for every $1 that is invested in transit. It increases
business sales, and it results in higher real estate values and jobs
created.
It is important to note that, right now, we have a road system that
is heavily subsidized by the general fund. The road user charge has
long since failed to pay for it. We have had to transfer $140 billion
just to keep the failing Surface Transportation Program afloat.
The Koch brothers argue, through their organization, that American
cities really don't have the population density to support mass transit
systems. That is false. It is clear that there are some very dense
systems serving Chicago and New York, but there are very successful
programs in Phoenix and Houston with much lower density that are
providing essential services.
It is important to remember who gets that service, because transit is
much less expensive for men and women to be able to have access to jobs
and employment. The average vehicle costs almost $10,000 a year to
operate. In most families, it is the number two item in the family
budget after housing. For many poor people, transportation is actually
ahead of housing.
Transit provides access to jobs, so that people don't have to spend
42 hours a year trapped in traffic behind the wheel of a vehicle, as
happens on average.
The notion that somehow we are going to be forced to look at a lack
of density, well, communities across the country in the metropolitan
areas are getting more and more dense. They are attracting young
people, retired people, and more economic activity in the 49 largest
metropolitan areas around the country. In those areas, transit is the
most cost effective and environmentally sensitive way of providing that
service, to say nothing of the fact that we kill almost 40,000 people a
year on our roadways. Transit is amazingly safe by comparison.
One of the most disingenuous arguments is that transportation
programs for mass transit are bad because they promote gentrification
of our cities. Look at that argument for a moment. One of the things
that is happening in cities across the country is that there is a new
urban renaissance. Young millennials are moving back to the cities.
Those are the engines of the economy. Aging baby boomers are finding it
much more attractive to move into those urban cores than to be isolated
out in the suburbs with a large-lot subdivision and forcing people to
burn a gallon of gas to buy a gallon of milk.
Those urban areas are our future. Not everybody is going to do it,
but the majority of people are. We ought to be investing in
transportation systems for our future, not undermining them by limiting
investments to transportation of the past.
We are in the process of a rapid revolution in transportation
technology and people's approaches. More and more young people,
actually, are choosing not to buy a car, which sits idle about 22\1/2\
hours a day and is very expensive. They are instead choosing transit,
ride-share, bike-share, and being able to have transportation when they
need it--Lyft and Uber--without having an anchor of an individual car
bearing down on them.
Frankly, gentrification is a function of how we plan and develop our
cities. That ought to be an invitation to think about how to do it
better, as many cities are doing now, not to undermine progress by
assaulting transit.
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