St test test test. This is a test. This sophomore a captioning test. California are looking at Carbon Pricing. Many as you heard over 30 have their own gas taxes. Some are going to tolling. So there are a lot of different ways we can raise revenues without focusing only on eds, which states are thinking about right now. I like to say there are no silver bullet, we need to learn from the states and see which work. We now have our chair and Ranking Member from our transportation infrastructure subcommittee. I want to salute them and their stats and leadership they are providing as we go through this process. Thank you. Senator boseman. Thank you, senator braun. Mr. Braceras, arkansas, it was significant, record breaking floods both in height and just the force of the water. Tremendous damage, lots of damage to the infrastructure, the good news is, like utah, arkansas is working very hard, theyre going to recover, great leadership in our state and all of those kind of things. I guess what id like to do again, so many of our states have gone through this lately, you experienced it i believe in 2015 and then, tell us what you learned, how you built back and mitigated perhaps for future floods so that, you know, to help in that regard . Yes, thank you, senator, for the question. I think one thing that all state dots excel at is responding to emergencies and disasters. The men and women that work at these departments are amazing people. Tremendous. They do just a great job responding to that i think the partnership that we have with our Contracting Industry and our consulting industry was key to our ability to respond. We have limited staff, as every dot does and when a disaster happens, whether it be flooding, whether it be avalanches that we deal with or lately some massive forest fires, we rely on our partnerships with our consultants to help give us the answers and for our contractors to respond 24 7 to emergency contracting proposals. I would say that the challenge isnt over once the public thinks we have mitigated the danger. We bought the roads back opened. I think thats the time when we need to step back and we need to think about what are we going to do to help this facility be more resilient to this type of occurrence in the future . Thats something all the dots are working on right now. I just picked up yesterday. I was attending the National Conference and a document that were putting out through with the help of tr transportation board for all dot talking about resilience, a dot imperative. What we can do to help make our systems better prepared for this changing environment. In regard to the federal government response, what did you learn in that regard . Are there some things we can do better . You know, first of all, we are blessed in utah with the partnership we have with our division administrators. I think thats one really important lesson. When you look at u. S. Dot and some omt of the other agency, the federal Highway Administration, that modal organization has people on the ground in every state. What we do is develop a working relationship with them that allow us to get things done. So when an emergency happens, they are one of the people we contact. They are working shouldertoshoulder with our employees because if we are going to be turing around and asking the federal government to help through fema fund to pay back some of the. We had to layout there, we basically pull it from other projects, much needed projects, we need to document things in the right way. Thats one thing they do really well. That process can be stream lined a little bit. The ability to be able to incorporate more resilient features with the use of some of that emergency money i think would be a much better investment for the public right now, pretty much, we can replace whats there in kind and thats not sometimes the smartest thing to do with the publics investment. Mr. Kinney, the arkansas, a small state, with repoliced with a thriving Trucking Industry we are blessed with a liveing sTrucking Industry. We have with a thriving Trucking Industry. We have the bigs and the littles, the Transportation Industry is critical to our state, critical to the nation. Tell us about the impact, if we dont take care of the infrastructure, the economy, what it does also to those trucking, the Trucking Industry in regard to wear and tear and the cost in that regard. Sure. Well, you know, one one dramatic instance that i know of where the Trucking Industry in not taking care of our industry was in 2013 a truck hit a bridge over the north of seattle and collapsed and my company did a replacement of that on a dramatic build. That was a substandard build, too low, the cross members arched down, the truck was in the wrong lane hit it down it went. So. The only great example there was the fact that they rebuilt it if a year. If they had had, again, not skirting any issues in regards to safety, but everybody working together, as a posed to you know probably ten or 20 years. Well, so actually so there was one company put up the temporary bridges in a month. We did the permanent replacement in 88 days. We were way short of a year. So why cant we do that . You know owe zploe that was obviously an emergency, it was interstate 5. It was the main north south corridor for the state of washington. Are you right, every agency came together to make that happen from federal agencies to the dyke district. We had to get access to the levy to get to their site. Everyone was absolutely committed and focused. When you do that, i wouldnt say thats possible on every job, its an extreme example. It definitely worked there. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chair. Andrew cardman. First i want to say in our comments its important this committee take the lead and has a reauthorization. I was whispering to the chairman it would be nice get beyond the five years as in the past, beyond five year to get predictability so those planning Major Projects know there is a dependable federal partner. I look forward to working with the chairman Ranking Member and the subcommittee on getting this moving forward. There are so many need out there. There are so many major needs. I think i will start with the north south highway that connects maryland and West Virginia and pennsylvania, which is important for the Economic Growth of our region in that country. Ive talked about the Howard Street tunnel, which is critical for freight rail that needs to be replaced. Its only about 120yearsold that tunnel. You cant do double stacking. That needs to be done. Ki talk about the bridge between virginia and maryland. The nice bridge that literally needs to be replaced before it falls down. We have another terrible episode we can talk about the need for commuter rail, rapid rail, transit, the list goes on and on. I am particularly pleased that we have been able to accommodate not just our state partners but our local partners and the Transportation Alternative Program dollars, i hear about that every time i visit a county in maryland, they tell me how important those funds are for the local community to stay connected so that they can transverse their communities in a much more efficient way for safety issues or to accommodate their local safety issues. So for all of those reasons, its important we move forward with reauthorization and i very much appreciate the chairmans candid comments about making sure that its adequately funded. Now, i think all of us have to step back a little bit, senator carper and i and senator whitehouse are all on the finance committee so we have to deal with it on both committees. But i think we all have to back up a little bit and say, look, we have to compromise here and figure out a way we can get a bill to the finish line that has had revenues in it. That will be one of our challenges. I want to follow up with a point, mr. Braceras that you pointed out about resiliency. We established a pretty pad week in maryland and washington. In frederick county, we had six inches of rain in two hours, which is unprecedented. And it has really challenged our infrastructure. So you mentioned resiliency. What can we do in the federal reauthorization to put attention to the realities that we have to deal with whats happening out there with our infrastructure being able to withstand the assault thats taking place every day . Yes. Thank you for that question, senator. You know, this is a the realization with most of us in the state dots right now that the infrastructure system weve built over the last 100 years is not going to be the infrastructure system that we need in our country for the next 100 years. It into evidence to change and we need to help it adapt. And one of the things that we have been working on within the state of utah and we have been working on within our association to help all the other state dots is to start as to better understand what those risks are associated with our different, we refer to them as lifeline corridors. So well try to narrow in on our Transportation System and identify what are those roads that get us to the hospitals and to those critical areas that people need to be and then design those basically to a higher level. So well design them at a higher seismic level in utah so theyll have a higher seismic level. We will also look at from a flooding perspective. From a wildfire perspective. Thats important. How does the federal program help you do that . Sorry, senator. I believe this is an evolving field right now. This still, this is a Research Program that just got done at this point. I think the federal government continued to support our associations and state partners in helping develop these rick asse assessments for our facilities. Help us better we feed a programmatic way in which to make these decisions. As you mentioned, there are so many need out there, if were not deliberate and strategic of picking which of those areas we need to focus on to give us a the highest return based op a good risk analysis, we will be just shocked on this approach. So i think helping us identify a good way to approach this from a riskbased, Statistical Analysis would be helpful. As we move forward, states would be able to put together a program let me take my last three seconds. If i can build on that a little bit, because our senator our adaptation work led by jessica goran is behind me here. They need more guidance and assistance from the government with expertise, downscale modeling to inform what changes are on the way. They need pre disaster assistance, to change their codes and standards so theyre allowed to build differently when the disaster money flows and postdisaster, there could be better coordination across agencies, i think fhwa has done good work but to coordinate with fema, that would streamline things a bit. Ill make a small comment. Were looking at Disaster Relief funds for planning fbefore disasters occur. Were having that in transportation. We need to beef up the planning capacity that we have. I think we can play a role in that in the reauthorization. Senator. Thank you very much. I want to thank the chairman, Ranking Member and my cohort on the subcommittee of transportation infrastructure. I know our staffs have been working very well on this. We are very close to a bipartisan bill. We have such mutual desire to get this done. I have refused to be pessimistic. So, some of the things we have looked at regulatory improvements to extradite project, supporting a utilization of our natural infrastructure. And also other ways to reduce costs and increase resiliency. Weve talked about this. In terms of the pre disaster mit fashion. We ma passed the homeland subcommittee on appropriations which funds fema. We do have in there this past year a pre Disaster Mitigation fund that i think is going to be very helpful for big and small communities, particularly those i would start i guess with those that have repetitive issues which my state of West Virginia, we have several of those. So i want to talk about economic recovery has divergent paths for rural and urban america. I live in a rural state, excuse me, our biggest city is 50,000. I wouldnt say thats too urban. A beautiful state. But we have declining tax revenues. We have issues in terms of difficulty getting from place to place. We have a lot of deficiency bridge, were in the top five for our deficiency bridges. I want to make that a question. I want to know, do you see, where do you see the big it obstacle for Rural America in terms of the next highway bill. You mentioned lack of capacity in terms, not lack of capacity, but the capacity it takes to meet all the challenges of the Regulatory Environment and that could be streamlined. If you could dig into that a little bit for me. Senator, i thank you for that question. We would certainly as we look to the future, you know, really say that maintaining the formulary and the formula of funding is important to us in rural states from the standpoint of quick and i efficient use of the money. In terms of regulations, we do think there are ways to streamline especially in the oversight type agreements to make them simpler and easier to understand and less onerous in terms of regulation. Mr. Braceras, you have a comment on that . The state of you ha that you utah is interesting as a state we are doing well from an economic perspective. That growth is taking place in six counties. We have 23 counties the governor are focused on that arent doing as well so were looking at as suspects of how our Transportation Planning, we can come in and provide Transportation Planning services for these communities. Were doing it with state dollars. What were doing is were asking them the question, you know what can we do to help you become the community of your dreams . And then how can transportation help facilitate that . The government is bringing all the state cabinet agencies together on this mission of trying to help these communities kind of develop that uniqueness that might give them that little bit of advantage. Were trying to move state jobs out into rural utah and provide the opportunity for state employees to telecommunicate more so they can have a state job and do it from rural utah. I think any type of flexible you can provide in the program to allow states to use the funding to be able to help these communities, because there is not one size fits all. Ki go to so many Rural Counties and it will have different issues. Mrs. Wicks, i would imagine in delaware you have quite a few bridges. We have quite a few deficiency bridges. What we found i think, i think were trying to remedy this in our legislation is, if a governor has a choice to build a 5 mile, fourlane highway or fix a deficiency bridge. We all know whats going to have a bigger kick back home. Not to say theyre ignoring deficiency bridges. You have to set priority what are you finding in delaware with your bridge reconstruction and how what can we do in this bill to help with that . I think you are right, rehabbing a bridge and new structure dont seem as sexy, obviously, one can seem to get a better headline so we have maintained a rehabilitation approach so we have been able to educate our legislators and our elected officials and the public that Preventative Care will then yield great rewards financially than having to wait too long and then you have a reconstructive way approach to the bridges. And this has served us well and were able to have that timely inspection to be able to act upon that to use technology to make the assessments and to be able to efficiently combine improvements into a package thats either done by our maintenance folks or we put it out to bid. So i think trying to be able to communicate the benefits of doing that early rather than waiting and how much more costly those improvements will be. And just the whole sense of safety to the traveling public. Not seeing the postings and School Children having to go around and school buses. So you know that message is something we just continued to drive home year after year and it has paid off. Thank you all very much. Thank you, senator capatow. Senior whitehouse. Thank you, chairman. Thanks for your work to push this forward. I know we dont have a budget, a cap Funding Agreement with respect to this, which is i think a real liability, but as we continue to push forward i think were making that more likely. So, thank you for doing that. In the fast act, we required the National Acad miss of science, engineering and medicine to do a report on innovative materials. They did so, it took a while, but it is out and they came up with three recommendations. And im quoting from page 73 of the report. A new federal program to provide incentives for innovation and bridge construction. Research needs to develop and evaluate innovative approaches to reducing the lifestyle costs of highway bridges. And other actions to encourage innovation to reduce life cycle costs of bridges. And on the program, they describe the federal program to provide incentives for bridge construction, they point out numerous technologies, im reading at various stages hold promise for improving bridge performance and reducing life cycle costs. However, most require further evaluation or promotion to increase aware inside of their potential among bridge owners. Congress could create a new Bridge Incentive Program administered by the federal Highway Administration to advance such technologies and to promote their use in u. S. Highways. End quote. Back in march, mr. Mckenna, an ashtow witness said and i quote in response to a qf of mine, it is important that any infrastructure bill improve conditions to encourage the use of innovative materials for not only bridges but other materials as well. The use of if you innovative mat