4. I understand the deadline but the funding is the problem. I wish i knew. We have been in discussion with your office and the house snort leaders office. We have been talking with governor i met with governor brown. It is an issue there appears to be split opinions on this project as well. Are you saying they cannot issue the ffga . So far it has not been issued. I cannot issue it if the funding is not there. How do we i dont think its your problem, our problem. It is a big problem. We dont have the funding for it. I would urge your department to help us resolve this before june 30th. We are talking about nothousand of jobs and infrastructure. I would also like to ask you about the west line project. They requested funding in this years report and are seeking to enter later this summer. Can you commit this years project will follow the expectations and recommended projects for funding if. I dont know that yet. He needs 1. 3 billion in purple line funding. I understand the significance of it because its tied into the project he is working on. I say id to him i would look at it. Thats not 2017. Right. Thats correct. Okay. Is there any work we can do to follow up on you with that . Im always willing and eager to work with you and your office. I will continue to do so. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you mr. Chairman. It is nice to be here. Thank you for coming before the committee. I would like to begin with just asking a commitment to work with my office on West Virginias last priority but the completion is the last bit left that has been under construction for 52 years. So i would hope that you all and you have been, the department in the past has, and i would assume you would continue that commitment to finish that last little very difficult part of that system. I hope so. I want to really highlight the great work that the federal Highway Administration has done. They have been leading the way withdrawing together the core, the epa, fish and wildlife on the project and have been very responsive to state and local stake holders. And the fhwa lead by glor you shepherd was very responsive on the need to coordinate environmental reviews. It basically is a project where at the end there will be highways after the land is reclaimed. It has been a project thats been in the mix for a very long time and very stalled out. We are trying to find a way. It would save the private stake holders and public taxpayers a great deal of money in terms of almost 110 million. Thats how much it would save. I want to thank you for your department for their work on this. Thank you for that. This goes and i wont ask you to repeat because you have been asked about this a lot. You have talked a lot about the possibilities and some of the draw backs. I would encourage you that as youre moving forward with this package to look at more other creative projects such as this project as we are moving forward. So i dont really have a question there. I do have a question secondly is my state of West Virginia ranks 45th orb r or excuse me, 48th. Do you have any comments . That is a yes. While the final set of principles have not been released that is certainly what we have talked extensively about i was in a meeting where the highlight was on the package and cities and others. One of the meants they made is dont make the state pass through. How many does pass through the state . In our case i would say its a great deal. A large percent. 100 to my understanding. It is on a formula basis. In that aspect i disagree him being from a large state i think our state along with other stake holders and our state legislate tos and infrastructure and water and sewer are really in good positions to be able to prioritize where projects because we dont want to put a dollar here, dollar here and dollar here. It will be interesting to see how that debate goes forward. Mayors would hope the money would go directly to them. I didnt blame them for that but whatever is the will of congress in having the department distribute the funds is what we will follow. But traditionally it has been through the state. Yes. Secretary, chao, welcome. I hope that you see this committee as a resource for you. We did a number of big infrastructure bills. We did the last highway bill and a couple of water bills. He has the intention to have the Committee Work in just a powerful and bipartisan way. Having had the pleasure on my side and having the experience of him not on my side i can tell you he is very powerful. It has been great when we have been able to Work Together. I think it provides an opportunitien. I think in the relative bipartisan calm and quiet of infrastructure and traditions of this committee you can find considerable support. I hope you will see us that way. I hope that the administration will not try to jam congress on an infrastructure bill but work in a fashion to get something everyone can celebrate. And thank you. We would like to collaborate with congress. Without your cooperation there will be no bill. This is one of the view vehicles in which we hope to have bipartisan cooperation. Good. And of course where private capital wants to come in it has to be an investment. It means there has to be a revenue stream. For a considerable amount there is no present revenue stream. In many cases it would be hard to figure out how to generate one. It was nm west war dchs wick a few days ago. It was built in the 1950s. It needs to be rebuilt. Its not that big of a toll on it. In addition to Regulatory Elements there has to be a strong core of real spending for those types of projects otherwise they simply wont get done. We dont have a ton of coastal states here. Our Ranking Member is a coastal state. I think senators are two coastal republicans if im not mistaken. They are seeing a particular problem particularly with Sea Level Rise. So i think he would consider himself a coastal state as well. Yes. He would. So we have some issues about this problem because the Sea Level Rise projections are accelerating fairly fast. In many cases they dont have the resources to do planning and updating so they can understand what the conditions are that they need to build to. Theres no point building to a so one of the things ill be pressing you all on and i hope my coastal colleagues will be able to do in fashion. We need to also make sure we are investing in the planning and data so that we know to what conditions these things must be built, and that is often beyond the capability of the local community and to the extent that the fema mapping is as erroneous as it has proven to be in rhode island then a lot of people are being mislead about what the conditions are going to be. So if you could just put an asterisk noe asterisk next to my comments remember this coastal problem and try to make sure it helps getting the planning right so that the infrastructure is built efficiently in a way that defends from. Thank you. Thank you so much. Can you talk a little bit about Transit Oriented Development and the role you feel it is going to play in the long term Transportation Plan you have for the country . Well, i grew up in an urban area. I always used public transit. I would expect to be supportive of that as well. So they worked hard to make sure there was a prosigs in the fast act a couple of years ago. It is guidance on the strategy for the country. Have you got any idea what the status is of that provision is in terms of implementing a plan . I do not, but after this hearing i will go immediately and find out. The issue is very important to me. I was the house author of the law there is now a point in time where theres a reevaluation that will take place of those regulations heading towards the goal of reaching 54. 5 Miles Per Hour by the year 2025. If we do that then we back out 2 Million Barrels of oil a day that we import. We are still importing 3 million a day, and so clearly thats the best way that we can use in order to back out that oil so that we are not sending young men and women over to the middle east but rather to protect oil tankers coming to our country but rather that we are ensuring that we are not consuming oil unnecessarily in our country. There was supposed to be a midyear review. It was reinstated again. So the department of transportation are working on this. We should be on target in terms of coming up with a midyear review by 2018. Do you think that its k midterm review. Yeah. Do you think its in the best interest to meet that goal . Do you know how likely you would like to see it . I was deputy secretary in 1989. I worked on the cafe issues back then. Certainly those standards were much lower and we have certainly improved on them. While not providing hampering of any economic growth. I think those are still ongoing. We of course all care about the environment. We want to do the right thing. What is reasonable or feasible, i think they are discussions which we need to have with you and other members of the congress. Thank you. The industry itself year after year has enjoyed historic increases in sales and i think thats a reflection of how welcoming the public is to this automation, this cool factor thats being built into these vehicles. I think it will trig aeger a ga over. So we thank you for your service and i just want to say, mr. Chairman to you and to the Ranking Member and to the secretary that im ready to go any where any time to work on a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Im ready to work with anybody at any time. I think its impairtive to have a bill that passes this year. Hopefully we can do so quickly. Thank you. Thank you. Senator, any closing thoughts or questions . Thanks so much for joining us today and for your responses to our questions and for your leadership. Mr. Chairman, i would like to ask to submit for the record please. No objection. It is one element of tax reform in particular your Corporate Tax reform. The idea was to deem it repay triuated to maybe tax it 15 , not 35 or 40 . It would raise about 300 billion. Its a big one time. Some thought we could use it to Fund Transportation going forward. It is big. We have all of these projects. These tunnels are 90 or 100 years old. There is a tunnel that goes under baltimore. There is all kinds of projects i think could be funded, like the kind of money we are talking about. It doesnt it couldnt be used to fund a transportation. I dont think its appropriate for lowering the corporal tax rate. Something could be in the base. I wanted to mention that. Also, i vindicated the administration in direct funding. They cant alms have these Public Private partnerships. I just ask you not to forget the urban areas. There are some areas where they dont have the wheit either. I think they have a prohi base. 35 states, they never had publicprivates. Texas took them off the idea off the table. As it turns out i was shocked to learn this. 80 of the people in this country live within 62 miles of one of our coasts. Think about that. 80 of people in this country. It doesnt mean we should forget the people who live between the coast, but thats a lot of people with a lot of transportation needs. I want to mention it is apparently delayed rules. I dont know if you had a chance to get into this. We said we want to fund what works. Right. We want to fund what works. We put in these targets to measure performance towards those targets. Lombar lombardi, he used to say unless youre keeping score youre just practicing. With that in mind we put in performance measures. I think the rules are scheduled to be effective. I think they have been delayed twice already. I want to ask you if you can allow it to go forward. Are you familiar with this . I am aware of the requirements for performance. Im not aware that the deadline is three days from now. Well follow up with questions for the record. Thank you. We think its a good idea. Find out what works and its hard to know. Finally, one of your major responsibilities, you mentioned three things. One of them was safety. Take a memt aoment and tell us t includes the rising number of pedestrian fatalities. It is a cause of great concern. Give us a glimpse into what youre thinking of doing on the safety side and on the Pedestrian Safety side. 40,000 people died on highways and bridges last year. When i was secretary of transportation the number was 51,000. When i came back in january of this year i was so pleased to hear that the number has dropped down to about 39,000. Unfortunately in the last two years that number has increased again, 7 , 8 respectively. We are very concerned about that. We have asked a number of age y agencies that are involved to Work Together to see how we can why this is happening and find out who the root is and then well have a clear course of action. I close with this mr. Chairman, if we have a good performance measure if one of those is very likely to include safety fatalities. If we are measuring performance well vl an idea how many are reducing fatalities. The idea would be look at those states, find out whats work. Thank you so much. We are happy to be with you today. Thank you. Thank you mad dam secretary. We are grateful you would pend your time with us this morning. Thank you for open answers you have given to each of the questions. Some of the other members may have written questions but im grateful for your system today. With that our hearing is adjourned. One of the things i urged them is to hit the pause button and use it to implement the streamlining from 2012 and then well see where we are and have good conversation about how to proceed. Reporter can i ask you about the split of the money . It is clear the administration is going to propose 200 billion then [ inaudible question ] when i met with secretary chao i shared with her what i shared here at the hearing. There are 35 states we have never done one. We are not going to do that. So i shared an oall of this. I call it the all of the above approach. Theres no silver bullet. Some are bigger than others. They are relatively smaller. We can grow i hope. I mentioned a number of others. Its only one. It could be projects of national importance. Thank you. Have you suggested as having funding already in place and it is picking winners from winners . [ inaudible question ] we use it in delaware they may provide less than a third but they Leverage Private dollars. There are other state and local moneys. I dont know if thats the direction they want to go. It will be a great secretary of transportation. She must feel like she is drinking from a fire hose. I still feel that way. Well Learn Together as we go forward. And there was talk today [ inaudible question ]