Infrastructure Development

Floor Speech

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Ms. TITUS. Well, thank you very much, Congressman Blumenauer. You are always welcome to come to my district in Las Vegas. We were very glad to have you there, and you brought your leadership. And I appreciate your wearing your bicycle, because that is one of the things I want to talk about.

A part of infrastructure is safe streets and the ability for our pedestrians and our bicyclists to be safe, as well as through other means of transportation. I certainly respect Congressman DeFazio's leadership on this. And I appreciate hearing some of the creative ideas you have for moving infrastructure forward because it is so important that we fund it, and having this hour to talk about the critical role of government and maintaining and enhancing our infrastructure I think is not only timely, but is critical.

As you heard earlier, the most recent report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers clearly illustrates the dismal condition of our Nation's infrastructure. Now, the good news is we moved up a grade, but the bad news is we went from D to D-plus. So that is not too much to brag about. If that were one of my students, I wouldn't be too proud of that level of accomplishment.

Well, if you look in more detail at the findings of that report, you would find that more than half of the Nation's roads are in poor or mediocre condition. One out of every four bridges is in need of significant repair or can't handle the traffic that relies on it.

We have seen the price of this crumbling infrastructure not just in a loss of jobs but also in a loss of lives. For one out of every three traffic fatalities, the condition of the road was a factor. So we have got to do better than that.

We recently received an update on the fiscal situation of the highway trust fund--the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) was referencing this--and if the projections hold, that trust fund will be insolvent by the end of July. Now, that is at the height of the construction season when we should be moving forward with these infrastructure projects. All of them will come to a standstill across the country, and that immediately threatens 660,000 jobs--direct jobs, not counting the extra industries that rely on that construction as well.

Now, our construction sector was hit very hard already by the great recession, and it continues to see unemployment levels twice the national average. So we simply cannot afford to let this trust fund lapse.

We need to take immediate action to shore it up and remove the insolvency because it not only halts progress, but it injects uncertainty into our State capitals, our city halls, and all of the transit agencies across the country who don't know whether to move forward with projects or not because the money just may not be there.

If you look at the cities, like Las Vegas, you can see how this is especially hard-hitting because infrastructure is at the heart of our local economy. We have world-class hotels and casinos and restaurants and retail, but we rely on infrastructure to bring to us people and goods from around the world, whether it is rail or air or highways. We import everything, from tourists to lobster. We don't make it in there. We have to bring it in. And if you don't have good infrastructure, that system is not going to work.

So as we turn our attention to the next surface transportation authorization, I want us to invest in a number of things, and one of them is existing and future freight corridors. On that list, I hope to see the development of I-11. That interstate has been designated, but we need to move forward with it. It would go from Las Vegas to Phoenix. Eventually, it would connect all points north and south. But right now, Phoenix and Las Vegas are the only two major metropolitan areas in the country that are not connected by an interstate highway.

So this would create new freight corridors. It would relieve the congestion on the narrow road that exists there now. It would save lives. It would increase the connection between the roughly 8 million people who live in that area, and it would foster tourism, which would be a good thing for our economy. So I hope that we can move forward on that because it would be very important for moving freight in the kind of post-Panamax economy.

In addition to this, I am concerned about the safety of the travelling public in the urban areas. And this is where you and I have had many discussions about pedestrians and cyclists.

We have seen marginal improvements in highway safety. That has been going in the right direction. But pedestrian safety has been going in the wrong direction. That has been getting much worse if you look at the statistics. And more and more people are using that kind of transportation, for recreation, to get to work, to go shopping, for exercise. So that population is going to increase, and yet the fatalities have increased as well. In fact, nearly 16 percent of traffic deaths in 2012 were people who were walking or bicycling, and yet less than 1 percent of safety funding goes to infrastructure to protect those travelers.

And that trend is really true in southern Nevada. My district has the most dangerous crossings of any because it is metropolitan Las Vegas. In 2011, there were 23 pedestrian fatalities, but that jumped to 42 in 2012; and last year, 51 men, women, and children lost their lives in pedestrian accidents.

So I hope that as we move forward with infrastructure funding that we provide resources and services to address that issue. And part of that can be encouraging local governments to do planning policies, like the Complete Streets program. I know you are well aware of that, very familiar with it and involved in it. That takes into account the needs of all users when it comes to transportation. There are lots of possible improvements, like bus rapid transit, dedicated transit bike lanes, safer crosswalks. All of those will help users reach their destinations more quickly and more safely.

So as we look at infrastructure, let's remember that it is bridges, it is roads, it is railroads, it is airports, but also, we need to do what we can for those using bicycles and just walking on their own two feet.

I am committed to working on this. It is very important for our country and for our local economies. So count me in, and thank you for your leadership.

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