Me will get started. Were missing a speaker hopefully he will arrive when it is his turn. Thanks for all of you coming today. Infrastructure in is a priority for the new and ministration. President trump has called for a 1 trillion infrastructure plan. We dont know what that means 1 trillion of federal Government Spending or the plan put together by hisis pfizers that call for the tax credit for newman vestment of infrastructure prescribe not a fan of either approach so i hope theyre open to different ideas. Everyone agrees America Needs to reprove the efficiency of the Infrastructure Investment trump has talked about deregulation as a way to reduce the cost and must boost to of highway building to get better highways. That the main reform fe have proceeded is privatize edition of Publicprivate Partnerships and has spent three decades she privatize the met the launching a global mw restaurant now half of europes airports are private donald trump has called them thirdworld. What will he do about that . And with those freeform transix and there is some factor is the tale letters. We will discuss with infrastructure reforms of and highways and live barred heavily from all speakers today but then we would get going after introduce our speakers. The Research Fellow at thehe het one but for many years was the go to a guy for problems on infrastructure igo back he h here look at what ron has said to make sure a mother right track. With the Reagan Administration from a seven and has the pc from universal indiana university. Up nexus senior fellow at the competitive and Enterprise Institute to talk about Transportation Safety of privatization and innovation such as automated vehicles. One riding setter current to the crucial debate over reform that would be a big topic of discussion this year. And the third speaker is the assistant director of transportation policy have Reason Foundation and result capital hill handling transportation issues and the cleanup speaker will be Randal Otoole and has written tons of books and studies on those topics over the years. Did they help to disport focal tauruses and that has been a crucial to debunking the fairytale of the lights rail system with the city after city across the united states. So the speaker will talk for about 10 minutes then we can have time for q a. Thanks for coming. Things for that kind introduction also inviting me to be here today. This this uninteresting time to talk about infrastructure. It was partly through the Electoral Campaign when Hillary Clinton announced she was in favor of half a trillion dollarr Infrastructure Spending proposal she believed would create jobs to get to the American Economy moving again. One week later kennedy trump announced seeing is in favor of a 1 trillion infrastructure plan since that day there has not been much detail provided some readers still guessing but this gives us a chance to do some recommending because announcing you have the infrastructure plan what you do and set off an america and globally for that matter , is a huge money scramble and it has already started. The National Governors association has provided the white house with over 400 shovelled ready projects totaling 120 billion. This senator schumer has come mount with the opposition plan that you wouldnt suspect the is partially oriented toward his constituency that more and more are coming through our buddy wants to get. But warned of the faintest but to encourage the private sector to be more involved with interest to him and presumably the operation. Becaus because there are and but the flow of useful services for but with the Public Infrastructure we have rose airTraffic Control ignition meant so there is eight difference with those items listed for urged me butfrastruc defense if you move of roof one is otherwise assyria v and then to overproduce to create a nasty cycle but with the Public Infrastructure it is rarely have the deficiencies cow by shortages bridges that are technically obsolete and this is where a lot of people talk about the infrastructure and it is or is it of socialism because all things other problematic that dont lend themselves to easy solutions are publicly owned. And all things in the private sector reid make that distinction clear as will look forward to policies with the huge money scramble how will we make decisions about these projects but members of the house of threatening but i think there will be a freeforall because congress was to be a part of the action as. So the real rescue so if you start to but to rationalize the Infrastructure Projects because there is period many proposals and a sample of that was implemented but this could be easily done for airports or waste water but the atf to come up with the objective standards to bring based on their value. In 2014 but it covers the entire state, a congestion mitigation is one of six factors considered. All measures are quantitative and mitigation must predominate in major areas and the factors by region. The program is now called smart scale and the six measures are safety, congestion andnd public visibility visibility, environmental quality, Economic Development and land use coordination. And since all parts of the states are different is divided into foreword different regions. In category a which includes only 38 metropolitan areas in the state, Hampton Roads roads, washington d. C. And fredericksburg that is part of the agenda at this point and congestion mitigation accounts for 45 of the score for particular projects. So that must predominate then the other factors take over the end of it congestion counts for nothing because there have of problem. Ea but the reason is to hold all regions harmless in terms of the money they get from the stay because what happens is if you talk about congestion mitigation to the world legislators and officials they say you ship the money to Northern Virginia to allow their state money to the particular needs and their community. But each of those factors the accessibility access to jobs that is the most critical part for the disadvantaged and mobile choices and air quality and energy Economic Development section intermodal access and and reliability but this but those were revitalized to cover the next six years and includes transeven. And then to submit their projects and the measures of the benefits according to scale applies over the six different factors. And then to select the project so we have done this in virginia 2016 and into takata. Of the 8. 5 billion stolen and look forward to questions. Thanks to chris for moderating bible talk as what was alluded to be issued to apparently findion of 1 trillion of the Infrastructure Projects over the next 10 years from both parties. I was talk about getting the most bang for the vat to shift the cost and project risk away from the taxpayer. Spe we heard speaker rhine and leader mcconnell will say that that trillion dollars be would not be 1 trillion of new federal spending the the two areas is financing reform and Regulatory Reform and with respect to financing the difference with financing and funding with the private sector partners enter the credit markets to use Debt Financing to construct these Infrastructure Projects somehow when i go to the Publicprivate Partnership it does shift risk away from the taxpayer but one problem to increase private sector involvement is on the public side they could access taxfree Municipal Bonds while they do not generally enjoy a vat tax it granted to the ideal solution is to Level Financing andtax is t eliminate that exemption so that is unrealistic so the second best solution is to refinance for Publicprivate Partnerships and we already have private activity bonds highway bill reauthorization that allows the private sector to bargain in a way similar to the Public Sector but there is a lifetime cap of 15 billion and as of jan yuri 23rd the federal Highway Administration and for what has already been allocated so for congress to greatly increase financingt capa that cabbies to be raised substantially and there is a solution that will potentially expand asset Class Eligibility the projects that eligible to receive right now it is limited to a transportation projects. But we already have been example with the head that past demonstration that had a proposal to create a qualified Public Infrastructure bonn to expand eligible projects into airports fourdoor wastewater systems to uncap the issue of and eliminate the expiration date. If the goal is private Sector Investment in the near term a framework should be created between the public and private sector. Another area of financing reform is the reauthorization bill to modernize the passenger facility charge and helps to reduce the Taxpayer Burden it is capped at 40. 50 butha has not been changed since 2000 that is half of the buying power many airports are approaching the debt limit so if we were to modernize the pfc to eliminate that cap allowing them to raise the charge the revenues could be used to back the bond that that is it they would be shut out of large airports have said theyre willing to give up the federal program grantsortuna but fortunately last week we saw legislation up Peter Defazio and a republican member of the committee and their bill will i am going we su to go abroad dawn but we should do but then i will not give some specifics. Many of you know, rather than specifying then and the airport appearance that has been for many years but despite attempts to move away from the safety regulations. The agencys and to have the few examples. But those higher performancese space theyre telling you how to design your airbags but theyre giving you a threshold but the automakers can decide how to meet that standard with whenever technology they want. In contrast to a mother has been efforts want to move away from safety certification and we did see in recent months and moved in so those of Unmanned Aircraft systems you but that is a very tunefulfi portsmouths but with thoseid performance based plans and but those standards to adopt that approach to allow the introduction of new technologies to unimproved the design that while they were developing that proposal and it also proposed a rule to require a minimum two person crew that cuts against ongoing efforts that railroads install positive Train Control Technology that is a sweetsu of communications and one of the business benefits that is cited in the best the same way we move toward self driving cars theres no reason. But this was clearly political and those rules that dont allow the but tovi have a comprehensive for regulatory review with uh duty and according to the remaining rules of the will acquire but they need to be paid but there is the risk to adopt those standards that could really cause usd to forgo the many benefits technology promises for the future bride could name someme specific rules to be withdrawn from us the vehicle to Vehicle Communications proposal to specify a specific technology to warn drivers of hazards. The problem is, does not allow alternative compliance for technology and basically ignores the rise of automation you can actually have a computer directly avoid these collisions rather than just having a hazard warning whether it is tactile feedback for a driver. Ds to led to person and crew rule makes no sense and should be withdrawn and final example wouldbe the Service Transfer station board proposed reciprocal switching change. What they did basically you had free to railroads word deregulated, you had a standard that required a showing of any competitive conduct on the part of the railroad for the surfaceically e transportation board to force railroads to interchange each others traffic now over 30 years there have been no evidence of any anticompetitive conduct so the solution was to simply eliminate the requirement to allow to arbitrarily imposed the switching arrangements as back door price controlsastructu this is another example of agencies going in the wrong direction while simultaneously to go in a performance based direction. Finally President Trump in his joint session to congress address, add did tout private financing which i thought was good although there were no specifics but at least he was talking about it. One thing it did trouble me is one of the two principles to guide his plan is the by america provision. This is a mistake will be does the driver of the costs of Infrastructure Projects we have seen this play out with the stimulus under obama use solid due to theso buy america provisions you see the cost increase. This is exactly the opposite direction because under the federal credit so that and the call tuesday if a that calls against the presence so with that i will conclude an accord to questions. Yearello. Thanks for attending. And assistant director transportation policies and also thanks for inviting me to speak on this fund topic. The first two presentations focused on ideas that we should be doing in things that would be good to move us forward with this is a proposal introduced in congress that passed the Transportation Committee it is the best chance to do Something Big over the next few years. Is a little different so i will go over that to and i can answer the questions at the end. So i just want to provide a presentation outline why i think this is a chance for meaningful reform what is currently wrong with the current air Traffic Control system others say it istm wonderful. You dont need to do anything that is not true. Every what it will lead salt flats and some examples of what we have now howl atc wouldd solve those problems. With a chance of meaningful reform there is things with infrastructure so for example, of blocking federal barriers to private Services Transportation and investments there are quitetr a few barriers theres a lot of surface Transportation Solutions if you make easiercone every time i see a slide people said the problem is we dont have enoughth opportunities. No. The problem is we have laws that prevent those from being taken vantage of. To rebuild a full blown negative airports is different but that goes topo the comment of the new york airports and how they are decrepit and could be betterinka and tinkered jean waterway reconstruction is another issue that would be interesting and it airTraffic Control reform cannot but and i think it is the most significant of these challenges that this comm. The timing is right we have support from political leaders that president and us chairman schuster mere not on the record as of yetr but the thing takes on the right to obviously the airlines are very important talking about airTraffic Control with no air travel having them on board is important when i say unexpected places i thought if we have support it would be a slam dunk but politically it is more challenging the airtraffic thes Controllers Union and the Pilots Association and the reason is uh Current Situation leads the of open to Government Shutdowns which means they dont get paid even though they are part of the union the uncertainty has gotten so bad with the Current System they are like please get me Something Else even if they have to give up the union protections. What is the main problem . To make the faa designed around that principle. Theyre hesitant to embrace major changes including updating the Aviation System they shin be using rich information to pet chasing will locust because of that technology and upgrades over 50 years they can now get to a more robust system. Gps automates airTraffic Control that more capacity is now having to build up process. E is serving their rule airports will losing yet to maintain. But is not open to those stations that best time but working for the government does not give you a chance for a new have to do theof same thing for your career and that is not real attractive to the more educated in a sophisticated those coming into market right now. The third problem is the micromanagement by politicians Many Americans dont realize the and is pretty complicated. If they do pay our Something Else which mining indifference and from food both engines petition and committees and did gao, i see and omb and the is did really hard to op