Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008

Floor Speech

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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 6003, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008. With over 21,000 miles that has already been mentioned of track in the United States and 44 routes throughout America, this reauthorization measure is sorely needed, and Chairman Oberstar and Chairwoman Brown deserve a great deal of credit and thanks for their hard work and their efforts on this, along with my minority colleagues that are supporting this effort.

This legislation, as noted, will make improvements to existing lines throughout the country and in California. California provides over $70 million a year for intercity rail. We have the second, the third, and the sixth most frequently used corridors in the Nation. As a matter of fact, when people think about California, they think of the land of cars. But the fact of the matter is is that we have more intercity passenger ridership in California than any other State in the Union.

In my district, the Amtrak San Joaquin lines run from Bakersfield to Oakland to Sacramento. It's the sixth busiest corridor in the country and had nearly 800,000 riders in fiscal year 2006.

California, of course, obviously is not alone. This bill that Chairman Oberstar and Chairwoman Brown have been working on so hard and diligently, the RIDE 21 Act, will promote the development, construction, and the potential for high-speed rail, which is the transportation system that I think is a part of America's 21st century intermodal, interconnected system that will be the state-of-the-art system that we will depend upon.

Our friends in Europe and Japan have had great success with developing over 6,000 miles of high-speed rail in Europe and over 2,000 miles of high-speed rail in Japan, and it is expanding. This is fourth generation state-of-the-art technology that we can have off the shelf. We don't have to reinvent the wheel.

This November in California we will have a $9 billion bond measure that will help us implement the first state-of-the-art high-speed rail system, 790 miles, trains that will go 225 miles an hour connecting 80 percent of California's population. This measure will be a big shot in the arm to help this State.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman's time has expired.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I will yield an 30 additional seconds.

Mr. COSTA. This measure will give an added shot in the arm to assist California and other States throughout the country that want to implement, choose 21st-century state-of-the-art high-speed rail within their States. There are 11 corridors there. This notion that, in fact, we are giving a subsidy makes no sense. Every system of transportation in this country, roadways, airlines, freight, rail, and ports and harbors have had a public partnership, and there is a subsidy in them. And to think that we would not do anything less than that for rail in this country, for passenger rail, makes no sense.

I urge all of my colleagues to support these good measures for all of the right reasons.

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