Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. TITUS. Mr. Chairman, I rise today with this very simple amendment. It is one that is meant to shed light on inadequate investments that are being made in our Nation's passenger rail service.

The bill before us appropriates nearly $16 billion for aviation, over $40 billion for our roads, over $10 billion for public transit, but just $1.1 billion for our Nation's passenger rail service.

I represent Las Vegas, where we import everything from tourists to lobsters, so we certainly understand the importance of transportation mobility.

It is interesting, many international and domestic travelers alike are shocked to learn, when they are coming to Las Vegas, that a major metropolitan city, home to more than 2 million residents and playground and boardroom to over 42 million visitors a year, we just don't have access to passenger rail service.

Visitors from Europe or Asia are accustomed to taking trains from one city to another, and they face a sad reality when traveling to Las Vegas from other Southwestern tourist destinations.

From Los Angeles, for example, you would have to take a 7-hour train ride that drops you off in Kingman, Arizona, at 1:30 in the morning. There, you would have to find the bus station, which is 4 miles away, get on a bus at 4 in the morning to travel another 3 hours to downtown Las Vegas. That is just crazy.

The last Amtrak train on the Desert Wind line departed the back of the Plaza Hotel in May of 1997, bound for Los Angeles.

Well, a lot has changed since the late 1990s. Over the last 17 years, southern Nevada's population has grown by a million new residents, and 10 million more visitors travel to southern Nevada annually, putting enormous strain on our area's highways and the airport, which is among the top 10 busiest airports in the country.

More than 42,000 vehicles also cross the I-15 border between California and Nevada daily. If you have traveled along that busy stretch of road, you know the kind of traffic nightmares that you might encounter.

In fact, I recently spoke with an airline pilot who frequently makes the short flight between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and he remarked that you can't get lost. All you have to do is follow the red brake lights on I-15 all the way to McCarran.

We can and we must do better; but this isn't just about Las Vegas. Cities like Phoenix, Arizona; Nashville, Tennessee; Columbus, Ohio; Louisville, Kentucky; and Boise, Idaho, don't have passenger rail service either.

In addition, there is no direct rail service between major metropolitan areas like Houston and Dallas, Atlanta and Orlando, and Kansas City and Oklahoma City. I believe that expanding rail service to unserved communities like those in southern Nevada should be a priority, but, unfortunately, this legislation before us does not really get us there.

At the end of April, I organized a roundtable back in my district to discuss the need to restore passenger service to Las Vegas, and I was really surprised by the high level of interest from local stakeholders.

We had participants from our State and local transportation authorities, the gaming and hotel industries, the chamber of commerce, labor unions and economic development organizations, all in agreement that southern Nevada should have passenger rail service as part of our long-term economic viability plans. This type of development is a regional and should be a national priority.

Now, a lot of attention has been paid to the Northeast corridor, where travelers frequent Amtrak service along the East Coast, but we should not forget that it was the railroad that built the West and still, today, remains a critical piece of our transportation network.

China is investing $128 million in rail in 2015 alone and India, $137 billion over the next 5 years; yet we are investing only $1.1 billion.

Mr. Chairman, since this amendment really has no monetary impact, I would respectfully ask that you accept it. It is my hope that we recognize this mode of transportation that is so tied to our Nation's history and that we can continue to work together to see that it gets the attention and support that it deserves.

Thank you very much for your time and your consideration. I hope that, together, we can work to be sure that passenger rail service is expanded throughout the country and especially in the Southwest.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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