Test. Test. Test. Test. I heard a lot of good ideas here, but most people dont understand it. And i would beg you to put it into visual charts to sort of show what the changes would be and then compared with what charts charts . It was a suggestion. Very good suggestion. Maybe in the second row down in front here . Ann stone. I have advice about getting the transportation to accept new technologies. You talk about redoing bridges and roads. There are materials a lot better than concrete and asphalt out there now and were not using it. In fact, theres one person i know that invented something thats used to fill potholes in minnesota and i think kentucky and the filler is so effective, the road crumbles around it and the pothole rehamains. Why not do the entire road out of it . And with concrete, catches on fire. Burn, melt, collapse. There are materials that are fireproof. So how do we get the government to look at these new technologies so that if were going to rebuild infrastructure, we do it smart and we dont do it stupid . I think we need to start with procurement reform and requiring open procurement and competitive bidding. A lot of these problems, while there are many at the federal and state level with the procurement rules really go down to the local level where you have municipal engineers who have been doing the same thing for 20 years, have relationships with specific suppliers and you see this across the entire, not just for transportation infrastructure but its in the water and waste water sector. I think open procurement, competitive bidding, start there and see what happens. I think more private ownership would also be helpful because the problem you have in procurement process is the low bidder wins and thats not to say that theyre necessarily cheating anybody but in fact, theres an incentive to use less expensive materials and a lot of what you have is more expensive but last longer. Nobody cares about that at the bidding process. It doesnt make a difference whether its 10 or 30 yeears. If youre a private owner, you have a great deal of incentive with using a product that lasts 30 years. You have a system now with no internal incentives to adopt technology because technologies are more expensive and in the public sector, theres no way to capture that gain. This is one of the widely discussed advantages of socalled Public Partnerships like the company that built and is now operating and managing the capital beltway toll lane expansions. Theyre responsible, they designed, built, and operate for the longterm so they have an incentive to use materials and procedures and structures that minimize their longterm costs. Back down over here . American Public Transportation association. Thank you for the invitation to be here. Comments on private sector participation. That is indeed a good thing and some references were made about places in transit, particularly where there is a private sector, the denver project, on the cusp of the purple line here in the region, florida texas projects and then beyond that, my question is, really, a straight question for an answer. Is there an appreciation that not all projects might be private sector that many will be but some are not going to quite work under that model, that has been discussion in some congressional hearings. Its not for everything. I would accept that point of view. I wonder if the panel views it that way or not. Ill give you my view on that. Im for diversity. Im for federalism. So i think the problem now is because so much federal money and topdown Regulatory Authority is involved here, were not giving the states enough chance to go the wrong diverse ways. I dont know what the best solutions for what the different cities you mentioned are, but i would like state and local governments to be making decisions without the distortions that i think federal aid and regulatory mandates create. Im a rail nut. I love trains. The next time i come to washington, dc, im taking amtrak from oregon which will be the route is a 4day trip. And so i once was open to that idea, but the more i looked at urban transit, the more i realized that once you open up the door to saying, okay, were not going to worry about making a profit, were not going to worry about covering our costs. The washington metro system said, fares are going to cover 100 of operating costs and 80 of the capital costs and 50 of the capital costs and then 50 of the operating costs. So once you open the door, it just gets more and more expensive, more and more bloated. You build things that you shouldnt have built in the first place, shouldnt have considered in the first place because they were too expensive and there has to be a line and i think if the line is its got to be able to cover its own costs, whether its public or private, i care less about that than whether its going to cover its own costs out of the fees paid by the people who were using it. And maybe we ought to have another session and you and i can debate that. I would say, we have this discussion internally at reason and to be perhaps a tad controversial, if there are truly areas of need that cant be served in the private market, maybe we could be open to looking at that with some sort of public funding. The bus projects are built for choice riders, not transit dependent riders. In my personal view is that the transit dependent riders is the folks who do not have a car, do not have transportation any other way, if were providing a sort of government funding, especially federal, but local and state, that should be our priority and i dont think it is right now. And i guess in theory, you raise a good point at least in my mind but i think we need reforms as to how were doing it currently. Maybe down front here . Thank you very much. I live in china part of the year. Ive taken the chinese high speed trains. Ive been in france and taken high speed train and this country seems to be a natural for high speed train. Why arent we emphasizing that . What is the problem of not making new york an hour from here or going from miami to washington the way you do from shanghai to beijing . That would take a tremendous load off the road and highways. What is the roproblem there . Thank you. The problem is we have this newfangled invention called airplanes. They go faster, cheaper than trains. Dont require a heck of a lot of extremely precise maintained infrastructure and cheaper, california in 1995. An economist estimated it would costs 10 billion to build a high speed train from San Francisco and at that cost, said high speed trains would cost more to move from los angeles than by car or plane. Far cheaper by plane and a little cheaper by car. No way thats competitive with flying. Flying, los angeles has 5 airports. San francisco has 4. You can fly from an airport to near where you live, to one where you want to go. High speed train will go downtown to downtown and thats tine if youre downtown but only 8 live or work downtown anymore. Thats not convenient for 92 of americans. High speed trains are a natural solution for tokyo to osaka. The rest of the world, france, spain, other countries have gone hundreds of billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars in debt because of them and theyre not providing satisfactory transportation in those areas. Two quick points. Theres been numerous stories in wall street journal and elsewhere about what boondoggles the chinese project including high speed trains are. Randall has an excellent essay the kaydoe site on exactly those issues you raised. Maybe down at the middle here . Thank you very much. From the European Union to the u. S. And this is not my topic but a lot of data to process so maybe i missed it in advance but in all the calculation for the cost, ive seen our costs in the calculation, its a very honest and not biassed question. Do we have numbers whether, for example, massive increase or Autonomous Cars or less costly in the longterm than using trains or planes or any other modes of transportation . The environmental impact. We have a lot of numbers on that, with 85 of travel is by car and maybe 1 of travel is by rail, counting both urban rail and intercity rail. Probably less than 1 . If we could double that rail, rail uses maybe 20 less energy than cars and maybe emits less than 20 pollution than cars. A lot of rail systems do worse but lets say emitted 20 less and make a double rail. That means reducing pollution emissions by a fraction of a percent. Its much more effective to go for the 85 and try to get more people to drive priuses or electric cars. Only get a small percentage of people to change there and you get large changes. In 1970, you couldnt see across town because air pollution was so thick in the united states. Maybe not quite as bad as beijing is today but i think in some cities, it was as bad as beijing was today and we tried a twopronged approach to fix it. We made cars cleaner and tried to get people out of cars on the rans transit. Average road 50 times a year. Spent half a billion and today, rides at 40 times a year. That didnt work. So on the other hand, making cars cleaner worked. Today, we only have it less than 10 pollution emitted as was being emitted in 1970 and that means each car is emitting that much less pollution because we have much more miles driven today than we did in 1970. Maybe two more questions down front here maybe . Its good to see you, mr. Otoole, especially as you have ideas to support anywhere tiinid i love your ties, ive said that many times. What is your observation of dc . You spent time in oregon and portland. Whats your observation of what could be done better in the showcase of the Nations Capital which recently hosted the inaugurations and every four years we do that. There were some problems in front of union station, cosmetic. As you cross over massachusetts avenue crosswalks, you can see theres an egregious negligence in the trestoration of the asphalt and the front of union station, the fountains. Some federal areas could use wowo work. Is this a federal issue or more of a local city issue . I think this is definitely a local issue and federal government distorted the system too much to make the locals behave rationally. For example, the a. Streetcar cost what, 200 million and its essentially providing zero transportation function and its such a failure, they want to expand it, they want to build more, right . Portland has built more miles of streetcar lines than anybody else and build 140 miles. The city of portland has 5,000 miles of streets and those 5,000 miles of streets are in desperate need of repair. Over half in poor or very Poor Condition and the cost of 140 miles of streetcars would be more than paving every single one of those 5,000 miles of streets. I havent done the numbers for washington, dc, but i wouldnt be surprised if the streetcar, grandiose streetcar plans for washington, dc are more than the cost of paving every single street in washington, dc. The metro system is an embarrassment. When i first came to washington a couple of years after it was built, it was like entering into 2001 space odyssey and today its like entering into blade runner because they settled on a technology that was too expensive, a technology we cant afford to maintain. We need to start thinking about using different technologies that we can afford rather than what we thought were 2001s technologies but in fact, were 1901 technologies. Last question. Down front here. Yeah, john at pedestrians. Org. Any thoughts about those and Infrastructure Investment . I actually bicycle more than i drive in the summers, anyway. I used to do it year round. And i think bicycles can be compatible with cars but its clear a lot of people dont feel comfortable cycling so they need to have a little bit of separation. And take a major arterial and find a street thats parallel to it and not major at all and turned it into a bicycle boulevard. That means minimize the number of stop signs and stoplights that the bicyclists on the streets have to deal with and put some shicanes and barriers but still allow local traffic. Very cheap solution for bicycles. Its been tried in berkeley and other places and it works very well. You dont have to spend millions of dollars a mile on special bike lanes and things like that. When you do have to spend money on bicycles, i think a tax on bicycle tires would be a good thi thing. They wear out fairly fast. If you tax the tires, you can raise the money. More people bicycle, the more tax they pay and more money you raise. And at least bicyclists would be able to say theyre paying at least a share of the cost of the roads theyre using. I think its important, let me just say, im generally skeptical of the federal role in transportation, but if we are going to have a federal role in transportation, ei think the projects ought to be significant and i dont think theres a way to make the argument for bicycle infrastructure. Those are entirely local issues but i have no rob with cities deciding to put in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. I just dont think theres a federal role there. All right. Thanks everyone for coming. The lunch will be served upstairs. Go down the spiral staircase into the back of the building. Thank you. House republicans have released their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care act. The legislation ends the mandate requiring Health Care Enrollment and replaces subsidies with tax credits. The plan keeps the policies that allow children to tstay on parents plan until theyre 26 and prevent ensurers from denying people from preexisting conditions. The house committee