Would be the first to point out that irony that, like our infrastructure, all of us are getting older and in need of repair from time to time. Cr q was one very importantr mess t however, he wanted to be with you today to share. And that is to thank each of you for coming to washington and to visit with your members of congress. Hes been to the hill many times himself over the past year, and hes worked hard to share with lawmakers the stark facts and a sense of urgency. Hes explained how were investing much less than we should be in transportation. Hes warned that because of that disinvestment, weve fallen behind on repairs, something we have to addressq even as we plan for the new capacity we must have for growing demand. But these same arguments carry so much more weight when they come from you. You are able to speak in concrete terms about communities that are struggling to stay on the move. Large ones and small ones, urban and rural red and blue. That context matters. When states like arkansas and tennessee and delaware speak up and say theyre postponing billions of dollars worth o projects, it demonstrates in bold terms what the uncertainty of shortterm measures is costing us. Its up to each of us out there to convince our elected leaders that americas future growth and prosperity depend on the decisions that they will be making in the weeks ahead. Working shoulder to shoulder with local business leaders, you are in the best position to tell your own storyxd and to make it clear how important Public Transportation is in your community. Now, i want you to imagine that you had the opportunity to write a postcard to yourself and send it back 30 years in the past. What would it say . Maybe on the front side you would send a picture of your family as an encouragement to your past self. I really can be successful. Mayberyf you send a warning of the troubles we faced as a nat9qol3 people and an inability to connect them to jobs, education and healthcare. It shows bridges that have fallen with tragic results. On the back it simply says, invest in transportation. So why are we getting such a pessimistic postcard from our future selves, and will we follow the advice that it holds. You have to understand that the future america is a much more crowded place, one our nation could grow by as much as 25 over the next 30 years, adding more than 70 million people. Pick any highway bus rail car at rush hour in almost any city in america today, and you tell me if you can squeeze in 25 more people. Americans are already spending five days a week in traffic. In new york city a Record Number of riders on an aging subway system has already resulted in a greater number of overcrowding delays. In fact in december, there were more than twice as many delays as just the year before. This is not only a problem for our big cities. Some of the Fastest Growing areas in the u. S. Are places like frisco texas south jordan utah, gaithersburg, maryland and mt. Pleasant south carolina. In the town of san markos texas, they saw an 8 growth rate from 2012 to 2013 making it the Fastest Growing city in the nation with more than 50,000 people. And we are not talking about a tech hub or a wealthy oil town. In fact, the Median Household Income is 26,000 in san marcos. Thats far below the average for the state of texas. While the population in cities like these are growing nationwide the number of people 65 and older were more than double over the next 50 years. When the aarp asked Older Americans what amenity they most wanted close to home, the number one answer as a bus stop not a pharmacy. It was more important than a grocery store. Its how important their mobility and independence are to those seniors. What that postcard from the future is trying to tell us is that we will not be able to accommodate that kind of demand driven by change and growth unless we invest in transportation today, and specifically, public transport. Of course more people also means more people trying to get to work. And because this is america, it also means more people starting and growing businesses, and they will need to connect to workers. A very recent example. When the big blizzard in january shut down bostons Public TransportationMassachusetts General Hospital had a real problem. According to the hospital, nearly half of their employees take public transit. So in the midst of this very dangerous storm, they were literally working overtime to make sure they could get enough staff on every shift to serve their patients. And thats a situation that is not as unique as it sounds. In atlanta, a University Study looked at more than 50 Industry Sectors that make up the regions economy. It found that 14 of the 18 Fastest Growing sectors are among those whose workers rely heavily on local Transit Services to get to and from work. So although atlanta doesnt suffer from many noreasters any longterm disruption to its Public Transportation system would seriously throttle that regions ability to grow. Nationwide, according to the bureau of labor statistics, four of the five projected Fastest Growing jobs pay wages of less than 27,000 a year. Were talking about retail sales persons, home health aides, personal care aides, General Office clerks, many of whom rely on public transport. The reason our future selves are such debbie downers is that at the rate were going today we are not going to be able to keep up. In fact, decades of disinvestment are going to make our job even harder. If theres one thing that people in this town can agree on its that our National Infrastructure is in a woeful state of disrepair. The most recent report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nations bridges a cplus, our road and trance its a d, and our levies a dminus. These grades arent improving. In transit systems nationwide as you all well know we have an 87 billion backlog in repairs thats estimated to grow by over 2 billion a year. Your elected leaders are aware of this fact, and if they somehow missed it before secretary fox has recently traveled through many of their communities on a big blue bus to call attention to it. His message was very clear and its very simple. We need to do something now, and we need to do Something Big. To these urgent reasons to invest lets add another. The health and wellbeing of our communities and their people. Later this week, fta is hosting a conversation called rides to wellness that aims to improve cooperation and coordination among transit, healthcare, and social service providers. We will be joined by representatives from health and Human Services and the u. S. Department of agriculture as part of our ongoing efforts to Work Together more effectively on behalf of the people we serve. With more americans covered by Health Insurance, it is important that theyre able to access Preventative Care and regular checkups at the doctors instead of in an emergency room. For instance, there are 15 free screenings that are provided by law, and this is fantastic, but it can be really hard to convince someone to go to the doctor before something is broken or bleeding or hurting them. That is especially true when they lack Reliable Transportation to get there. 80 of medicaids healthcare costs are attributable to chronic diseases that could be better managed with more frequent care. But you have to get there. Improving access to healthcare and doing it in a more coordinated way is going to be a growing challenge particularly in rural areas that lack transportation options. So as you speak to elected leaders about the urgent need to invest in transit we mind them that you not only connect people to jobs and education, but you also connect them to Vital Services like healthcare. So with so many compelling reasons to invest our nations in our nations transportation infrastructure, the only question seems to remain is how can we possibly afford to fix this all. But i submit to you today that the real question we should be asking is how can we possibly afford not to. As secretary fox likes to ask, if figuring out how to provide for the future is going to be so difficult, shouldnt we make it worth it by going for Something Big instead of something halfmeasure. This administrations answer is the grow america act, and youve heard a lot about it in the year since it was introduced. We will be building and expanding on our proposal this year, and the president s proposed budget for fiscal year 16 is a good indication of where were headed. As the secretary has mentioned it includes six years of funding for transportation totaling 478 billion. Ftas share for fiscal year 16 is 18. 4 billion an increase of 67 over current funding. By the sixth year, it would grow to 76 higher than current funding for a sixyear total of 115 billion over the proposed authorization period. The fy16 budget for fta includes a record 3. 2 billion for our Capital InvestmentGrant Program better known as new starts and small starts. It would includes increase the Bus Facilities Program dramatically, providing more funding for state of good repair, reintroducing the new rapid growth area bus Rapid Transit initiative, which would provide 500 million for new brt service. These arent programs that we just made up out of thin air. Theyre in response to what weve heard from you in terms of what your customers want. And because the transit industry is changing along with the rest of the nation, we want to make Major Investments in Work Force Development to build the skills and train the personnel that we are going to need for the future. If much of this sounds familiar and it should, its because by the time the latest shortterm measure expires in may the grow america proposal will be one year old. And yet, here we are having the same conversations and staring down the same decisions. Its clear that not all of us have picked up that postcard from the future and turned it over to see what it says. Thats why its up to you to deliver the message. I know what secretary fox would have asked of you today to tell the truth the unadult rated, unvarnished, unambiguous truth. Tell congress about the many good projects that are stalled the ones that would create jobs and ease congestion and bring us into the 21st century in a bold way. A postcard today can take many forms. Though i still like getting the oldfashioned kind on a paper with a stamp, it can be a knock on a door, it can be an email it can be a tweet. For the Younger Generation maybe its a post to instagram with a picture of stalled traffic or an overcrowded rail platform, or a picture of someone they love boarding a transit van to go to dialysis. The bottom line is that the message has to be seen, it has to be heard, and it has to be acted on. Lets go out and do it. Thanks so much. Thank you administrator mcmillan. Now i want to turn the program over to our session moderator, diana mendez senior vicepresident and director of americas transit at aecom. Diana, please. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome, and thank you very much acting administrator mcmillan for communicating the message from secretary fox and the update from fta. Please do send secretary fox all of our well wishes and we wish him a speedy recovery. Im diana mendez as phil mentioned, and im delighted to be your moderator today where well be having a lively and interesting discussion with both the Transit Administration and the federal Railroad Administration. Now joining acting administrator mcmillan, we also will be hearing from Sarah Feinberg acting administrator of the fra, who joined the administration on january 9th 2015. In this capacity, she manages a 20 billion rail investment portfolio and helps develop and enforce rail safety regulations and oversees research and technology programs. Prior to coming to the fra, miss feinberg served as chief of staff to the secretary of transportation providing strategic advice and council regarding operational and legislative initiatives across all modes of transportation. Now updating us about the major goals and initiatives of the federal Railroad Administration, well turn to miss feinberg. Please join me in welcoming her. Good afternoon. It is such a pleasure to be here today with my colleague and friend ter ees mcmillan. In my old role as the chief of staff for secretary fox, i always appreciated the commitment that this organization shares with the administrations goal of making our National Transportation network safer more interconnected, more reliable and more efficient. To your president your board, your members and staff thank you for your partnership and support over the years. I am so honored to be with you here today as there are no greater friends to the department of transportation. Im a pretty frank person, so let me get right to my main points and then well get to the mod rated conversation. I want to talk first about safety and the importance of bringing a fresh perspective to old problems and then about rail and surface reauthorization and the important and incredible opportunities we see there. Much to the credit of the people sitting in this room, over the last decade, total train accidents are down. Derailments are down. Highway grade crossing incidents have declined. The Rail Industry in many ways is safer than it has ever been in history. Thats all good news and all of you deserve great credit for these improvements. But most recently, some of those numbers look to be ticking up on us again. Over the last year the number of incidents at grade crossings increased by 9 . The number of fatalities increased by 16 . While this next figure is less of an issue for the commuter rails to worry about just this morning the wall street journal reported on fra data showing the number of fiery and violent rupture accidents also on the rise. So my point is this. Those most recent statistics alone serve as a stark reminder that our work is not done. We still have a long way to go to get to zero accidents zero injuries, and zero fatalities. Just two weeks into my new job at the fra, a grade crossing accident occurred in new york killing six people and injuring 15. Three weeks later, another Passenger Rail grade crossing accident occurred in california and a metro link crew member died and 27 other passengers were injured. Stark and painful reminders that we have a ways to go to make grade crossings safer. I will add, we have news of another grade crossing incident just an hour ago in new yorkorth carolina. Thats just one reason why safety is the center piece of the administrations rail reauthorization proposal. In addition to our own legislative proposals, we have to take independent actions as well. Just because a problem is an old problem, maybe one we think will never be fully solved, doesnt mean we shouldnt give it a fresh look and ask ourselves what more can we be doing. Following the metronorth grade crossing incidents i immediately asked our fra staff, men and women who have literally dedicated their entire careers to keeping people safe at or near crossings to take a fresh look at how we approach safety. Last week i called upon Law Enforcement agencies to step up more patrols at grade crossings to increase their efforts to write citations to drivers who dont obey the rules of the road, and to immediately begin employing best practices to better safeguard our communities. In the coming weeks we will have more to announce about increasing Public Awareness about how to better employ technology, and how we might be able to increase funding to assist local communities that want to improve safety features. Other than the friends and families of grade crossing victims, of course no one understands the pain of these incidents quite like the train crews and operators. These incidents are devastating for everyone and we shouldnt lose sight of the price that so many of your own colleagues have paid. As we have said on other safety items over the years, we look forward to working with all of you, partnering with all of you to continue to bring down the numbers of injuries and deaths. On to reauthorization. Theres a lot of talk in washington right now about getting a rail and surface reauthorization done this session, and we are so encouraged by that progress. Few things could be more important or more valuable use of the congresss time. The fact that the house of representatives took an important first step just last week in adapting a rail reauthorization measure is a huge sign of momentum. I congratulate chairman schuster and everyone who worked so closely with him to get that done. But we need to do more. We need a comprehensive rail reauthorization package that includes funding and implement ptc. As this process moves ahead we look forward to working with both chambers of congress as they craft a measure that builds sustains and enhances a safe and rely able rail network for both passenger and freight rail service. We are their ready partner, and we will do anything in our power to assist them in moving a package forward. After all, we have a lot at stake here. Our grow america proposal a sixyear transportation funding bill, would give states the funding certainty they need to bridge the nations infrastructure gap. As all of you know, rail is unique when compared to other modes of transportation in that it lacks a committed source of federal revenue. Grow america will provide predictab