The Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority in philadelphia has it did i know. Know has it done. Metro link, theyve got it done. How were they able to do it, but other major railroads have not . Reporter in a letter to the Senate Committee on commerce, science and transportation, the mta chairman said while significant progress has been made, new yorks heavily congested Commuter Rail environment has challenges. He wrote ptc was not an off the shelf product. This is a complex technology. Reporter this is the director of Government Relations for the American Public Transportation Association and skyped with us from washington, d. C. He say high costs are among the reasons. The scale of this, especially across the country, is enormous. And we want to make sure that ptc is implemented correctly. Ultimately thats the goal. Folks just need more time. Now commuter advocates like jim hope that railroads will make the 2018 deadline. This is a technological solution. Its not easy to install. I
Minutes. The speaker pro tempore the gentlelady from florida is recognized for two minutes. Ms. Brown thank you mr. Speaker. Here we go again passing another extension and failing in our duties to provide a world class Transportation System. Transportation program is much too critical to our economy to be delayed any longer. Unfortunately, the Republican Leadership in washington continues its long running failure to fund Surface Transportation Infrastructure programs. Just last week House Republicans passed a bill cutting taxes by 269 billion for the richest 1 of americans with no offset but failed to pass a real transportation authorization bill that put america to work. We know for every billion dollars we invest in transportation it generates 44,000 permanent jobs. In closing second anthony foxx said all of us have a role to play in shaping our secretary anthony foxx said all of us have a role to play in in shaping our nations infrastructure. As we saw last week during the tragic Tr
Year. The last longterm bill we passed with safetealu in 2005. That was 10 years ago and that bill was underfunded because of the resistance of raising the gasoline tax or identifying new revenue sources. For over a decade we have failed to address the funding challenges necessary to break the cycle of underinvestment and put this country back on a competitive path with the rest of the world. Today we spend about 1. 7 of g. D. P. On infrastructure while china spends 9 , europe 4. 5 to 5 . We used to spend 4. 5 to 5 also. There is a 800 million backlog. Public transit has an 6 billion backlog of critical maintenance and repair needs which increased by 2. 5 billion each year as bus and Rail Infrastructure ages. While infrastructure crumbles around us, we dont fill the gap in the Highway Trust Fund just to do a longterm bill at current levels. But this week they will put on the floor a tax extenders that will cost 182 billion over 10 years completely unpaid for. Im concerned that we will
Direct conversation and have the direct and put around issues that we care about whether its Climate Change or infrastructure and know that we have within these agencies and leading these agencies folks who are genuinely looking for ways they can improve their partnerships to help us do our jobs locally so to each of you thank you so much and we really appreciate you being here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] they were suggesting i give all of you my cell phone number and you can pass that along. Please follow up. It is now my great honor to introduce the 51st secretary of the u. S. Department of the interior. As secretary she leads an agency of more than 70,000 employees. The department of the interior serves as the steward of approximately 20 of the nations land including National Parks, National Wildlife refugees and other public lands. The Department Also oversees the responsible development of conventional and Renewable Energy supplies on public lan
Battle of tal afar. Continuing on to serve in afghanistan afghanistan. And now h. R. , im going to butcher your title. So ill let you give it to me directly. Its Deputy Commander general for training and doctrine command for futures. And then the clunky long title is the Army Capabilities integration center. Im glad i didnt try to memorize that. Arcic. But what h. R. Is really that quite extraordinary combination of thinker and great military leader. There arent that many in our history. There are a few people like general jack galvin but its very few. So were really privileged i think to have somebody with us who has an extraordinarily distinguished record of command including command in combat. With an equally distinguished record as a thinker. He was also i should have mentioned up front a senior fellow at the iiss and remains affiliated with iiss as well. Its wonderful to be here with him particularly since as i said were old friends. The way we thought wed do this is begin it as a