[Senate Hearing 113-468]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 113-468
BRINGING OUR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE TO A STATE OF GOOD REPAIR
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
HOUSING, TRANSPORTATION, AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON
BANKING,HOUSING,AND URBAN AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING THE STATE-OF-GOOD-REPAIR NEEDS OF THE NATION'S TRANSIT
INFRASTRUCTURE, AND THE FEDERAL ROLE IN ADDRESSING THESE NEEDS
__________
MAY 22, 2014
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available at: http: //www.fdsys.gov /
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
91-224 PDF WASHINGTON : 2014
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800;
DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota, Chairman
JACK REED, Rhode Island MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
JON TESTER, Montana MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon MARK KIRK, Illinois
KAY HAGAN, North Carolina JERRY MORAN, Kansas
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts DEAN HELLER, Nevada
HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
Charles Yi, Staff Director
Gregg Richard, Republican Staff Director
Dawn Ratliff, Chief Clerk
Taylor Reed, Hearing Clerk
Shelvin Simmons, IT Director
Jim Crowell, Editor
______
Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman
JERRY MORAN, Kansas, Ranking Republican Member
JACK REED, Rhode Island BOB CORKER, Tennessee
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio MARK KIRK, Illinois
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia DEAN HELLER, Nevada
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
Brian Chernoff, Subcommittee Staff Director
William Ruder, Republican Subcommittee Staff Director
Jackie Schmitz, Legislative Assistant
Homer Carlisle, Professional Staff Member
Rachel Johnson, Republican Professional Staff Member
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2014
Page
Opening statement of Chairman Menendez........................... 1
WITNESSES
Dorval Carter, Chief Counsel, Federal Transit Administration..... 2
Prepared statement........................................... 24
Joseph M. Casey, General Manager, Southeastern Pennsylvania
Transportation Authority, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania........... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 28
Beverly A. Scott, General Manager and Chief Executive Officer,
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority..................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 32
Gary Thomas, President and Executive Director, Dallas Area Rapid
Transit........................................................ 12
Prepared statement........................................... 33
Additional Material Supplied for the Record
Statement submitted by Leanne P. Redden, Acting Executive
Director, Chicago Regional Transportation Authority............ 36
(iii)
BRINGING OUR TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE TO A STATE OF GOOD REPAIR
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2014
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and
Community Development,
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met at 9:33 a.m., in room SD-538, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Robert Menendez, Chairman of the
Subcommittee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN ROBERT MENENDEZ
Chairman Menendez. Good morning. This hearing of the
Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community
Development is called to order.
Let me thank our witnesses for being here today to discuss
what I believe is one of the most important challenges in our
Federal transportation program. Investing in our transportation
infrastructure and supporting 10 billion passenger trips every
year is essential to our mobility, our economic development,
our air quality, our overall quality of life, our ability to
create jobs, and our global competitiveness. The benefits of
investing are clear. The fact is we are not investing enough.
In 2009, a Federal Transit Administration report found that
of the seven largest rail systems, including New Jersey
Transit, and the systems represented by two of our witnesses
today, SEPTA and MBTA, they had a $50 billion backlog in
projects--$50 billion just to make sure that the systems were
in reasonably good condition, not state-of-the-art but
adequate. And, frankly, to me that is simply unacceptable.
Investing in our transit systems is not a luxury. It is a
necessity. It is a win-win-win that creates good, family wage
jobs. It makes our infrastructure safer, more efficient, more
reliable, and it keeps us competitive.
Just recently, my home State of New Jersey received an
alarming wakeup call. The president of Amtrak announced that
within 20 years, one or both of the tunnels under the Hudson
River between New Jersey and New York will need to be shut
down. Shutting down the Hudson tunnels is unthinkable, and not
investing in keeping them open is unconscionable. These tunnels
are over 100 years old, and to make matters worse, they were
flooded with corrosive salt water during Hurricane Sandy.
Within 20 years these tunnels will be closed unless we commit
ourselves to investing in keeping them open.
According to Amtrak, if one of these tunnels were to close,
they would have to reduce train traffic from 24 trains an hour
to 6 trains per hour. That is four Amtrak trains and two New
Jersey Transit trains per hour.
For those of you who are not familiar with the commute from
New Jersey into Manhattan, let me tell you that two transit
trains an hour is simply not going to cut it. So we go from
having the ARC project needlessly canceled, which would have
built a new Hudson tunnel and allow for 48 trains per hour, to
a future of closed tunnels and 6 trains an hour in the heart of
the Northeast corridor. That is simply unthinkable.
Losing the Hudson tunnels is not something our region can
work around. There is no detour. There is no extra roadway
capacity for the transit and rail commuters to fall back on. We
saw it during Sandy when our transit system was inundated. We
saw it after 9/11 when people relied on ferry boats to travel
to New Jersey from Manhattan. Without a fully functional,
multimodal transportation system, the Nation, and New Jersey,
is simply stuck in gridlock.
But losing one or both of the Hudson tunnels would mean
nothing less than the complete crippling of the region and
would send a terrible signal around the world about American
competitiveness in the global economy, simply because we are
unwilling to make the necessary investments in our transit
system.
The Hudson River tunnels are the starkest example of our
failure to invest, but every city and town across the country
has its own examples. Whether large rail or small bus systems,
our transit repair needs total about $86 billion, projected by
the DOT to grow to $142 billion by 2030 if we do not begin to
invest today.
At the end of the day, we all understand that investing in
our infrastructure is not a cheap proposition or politically
easy in the current atmosphere. But the cost of inaction is
much, much higher.
So I look forward to hearing the perspectives of our
witnesses today, and working with my colleagues both on this
Committee and as a member of the Finance Committee, we will
have to find the funding mechanisms to address these
challenges.
Let me introduce the first witness of our first panel. Mr.
Dorval Carter is the Chief Counsel for the Federal Transit
Administration. In addition to his work at FTA, Mr. Carter
previously served in senior positions at the Chicago Transit
Authority, a system with a significant state-of-good-repair
needs. I look forward to hearing his testimony, which comes
with the great depth and breadth of knowledge and perspective
of the issue.
Let me say, Mr. Carter, your full statement will be
included in the record, without objection. I would ask you to
try to summarize it in 5 minutes or so, so we can get into a
dialogue. And, with that, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF DORVAL CARTER, CHIEF COUNSEL, FEDERAL TRANSIT
ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Chairman Menendez, and thank you for
inviting me here today to discuss our Nation's serious deficit
in public transportation infrastructure as well as to highlight
the Obama administration's plan to bring our aging rail and bus
systems and facilities that support them into a state of good
repair as part of the GROW AMERICA Act.
As you stated in your opening remarks, this is a critical
time for transit. Transit ridership is at its highest level in
generations, and that trend is likely to continue as the U.S.
population is expected to increase to approximately 400 million
by 2050, while growing proportionally older and more urban.
The caution I bring today is that the foundation we build
on to meet that demand is already fracturing. Let us be clear.
Transit remains one of the safest ways to travel, but our aging
infrastructure carries hidden costs that we cannot and should
not ignore.
Our 2013 Conditions and Performance Report finds that the
backlog in transit maintenance and replacement stands at $86
billion, a 10-percent increase since 2010. We will need $2.5
billion more every year from all funding sources just to
maintain the status quo.
Today it is State and local governments that are bearing
the burden, taking on more than half the cost of annual
spending to preserve and grow the Nation's transit systems.
The biggest challenge is our rail system, which accounts
for about 63 percent of the state-of-good-repair backlog, with
most of that due to assets like rail stations, trestles, power
substations, and more. These deficiencies have a direct impact
on riders. They undermine the resiliency of our transit
systems, and they drain resources that could be better spent on
timely replacement and expansion.
That is why state of good repair is fundamental to
everything that we do at FTA. By providing my testimony here
today, you are going to be getting a two-for-one opportunity
because not only do I speak for the Administration, but I also
speak from the perspective of someone who has worked on the
ground with a transit agency to keep transit systems in a state
of good repair.
As you indicated, Mr. Chairman, I spent half my career at
the Chicago Transit Authority, which operates one of the oldest
rail systems in the country. Part of my responsibilities at CTA
was managing the capital and operating budgets, the procurement
operations, and the warehousing activities of that agency. From
that experience, I can tell you that the older a system gets,
the more challenging the simplest of tasks become.
For instance, where do you find parts for 100-year-old
equipment? No one makes them anymore. You cannot get them off
the shelf. Your options are to either cannibalize existing
assets or to make the parts yourself. CTA during my tenure had
done both. When Hurricane Sandy damaged the equally aged PATH
commuter rail system that operates between New Jersey and New
York, Chicago was one of the few places that they could turn to
for replacement parts.
Let me suggest that we cannot keep transit systems safe and
reliable with a Craigslist approach. Instead, we need to make
the right investments to get ahead of the problem and keep us
there so that we are not always a step behind. That means
striking a responsible balance between investing in new capital
construction and preserving and modernizing existing
infrastructure.
One of the best tools that we have to prioritize these
investments is the Transit Asset Management Planning Tool. We
are grateful to this Committee for making it a requirement as
part of MAP-21. With better metrics and performance-based
planning, we can get a more accurate picture of true need,
enabling local decision makers to allocate limited resources
more effectively systemwide.
We used transit assessment management at CTA, and it was an
invaluable tool. It helped us prioritize unmet capital needs
and support the argument for public funding. Moreover, it
provided a road map so that Federal, State, and local funding
partners knew that we had a concrete plan to use our resources
efficiently and wisely.
With your help, we are working to bring those benefits to
the transit agency nationwide. The latest Condition and
Performance Reports make the case for sustained investment and
the GROW AMERICA Act answers. The Administration has put forth
a plan that builds on the investments made through MAP-21, DOT
programs, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to
address our infrastructure backlog. The GROW AMERICA Act is the
right plan to keep transit safe and reliable now and for future
generations.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I conclude my testimony, and I
will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Chairman Menendez. Well, just to show the efficiency of
transit, you did not even use your 5 minutes.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Menendez. Let me start off with one of the
critical questions before the Congress, which is the funding
level of the transportation reauthorization. And so if Federal
funding remains flat in the coming years, do you believe that
we can make any progress toward eliminating the $86 billion
backlog?
Mr. Carter. No, sir, I do not. Our Conditions and
Performance Report indicated that we need at least an
additional $2.5 billion a year from all funding sources just to
maintain the existing backlog. In order to make any sort of a
dent in that backlog, you are going to need somewhere around
the neighborhood of $18.5 billion over a 4-year period to make
that happen.
So in order to basically address this problem, we have to
make significant additional investments in our transit
infrastructure, and the President's proposal is one of the ways
in which we believe we can do that.
Chairman Menendez. So flat funding does not only not meet
the backlog challenge, I would assume; it will accumulate a
greater backlog, a greater cost.
Mr. Carter. That is correct.
Chairman Menendez. Now, in your testimony you speak to the
excellent work that FTA has done for years trying to bring
attention to the state-of-good-repair backlog and discuss the
importance of the creation of a formula-based state-of-good-
repair program under MAP-21. And I agree with your assessment
of the importance of this program, but I know some have
concerns about the funding increase given in MAP-21 to the
state of good repair.
Can you speak to the need for having a strong Federal
state-of-good-repair system?
Mr. Carter. Absolutely. If you look at the overall
percentages for the contributions that the Federal Government
makes to the issue of state of good repair, we actually only
provide about 40 percent of the total contribution. The
remaining 60 percent comes from our State and local
governmental partners.
It is critical for all of us, both Federal, State, and
local, to provide a level of funding that is both reliable and
sustainable over an extended period of time in order to address
this backlog. The stopping and starting of these types of funds
makes it very difficult for transit agencies, both big and
small, to properly plan for and to address their capital
backlog needs.
Chairman Menendez. Are there certain types of modes or
transit systems that are driving the current backlog?
Mr. Carter. The rail systems make up approximately 60
percent of the backlog. That is primarily due to the heavy cost
of their infrastructure. As you can imagine, replacing power
substations and rebuilding train stations and things of that
nature is a significant cost. But I would not want to diminish
the impact that this issue has on the smaller systems as well.
As you can imagine, to a small operator in a rural part of the
country who may only have two or three buses, if one of those
buses is 20 years old and the ability to properly maintain that
bus is difficult, resulting in unreliable service, then the
impact to that operator is just as significant as the impact of
a crumbling infrastructure would be to a Boston, an MBTA, a New
York MTA, or a CTA.
Chairman Menendez. Now, you in your testimony you gave an
unsettling anecdote, which I know firsthand from my visits with
Port Authority officials when the PATH in Hoboken, New Jersey,
was inundated, and they were showing me the circuit breakers
that are so old that they no longer are manufactured, and you
mentioned that they had to resort to shipping in ports from
Chicago.
Is that an exception? How pervasive is that type of
challenge throughout the system?
Mr. Carter. Well, I am sure that the other GMs who will
speak after me can probably speak to this in more detail than I
can, but I can tell you from my experience at CTA, the older
transit systems like Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and others
are dealing with the harsh reality that their infrastructure is
extremely old, that replacement parts are difficult to find,
and it is only by luck that we are able to identify scenarios
like the one that occurred with PATH where there was another
system, thankfully, that was able to provide those parts on a
temporary basis while PATH went through the process of really
having to remanufacture the parts they needed themselves.
Chairman Menendez. Your testimony notes that more people
are choosing to live in urban areas where cars are less
necessary, younger people less reliant on cars than previous
generations. It seems to me those factors are leading to more
transit ridership among other elements.
Could these increasing demands on transit systems result in
the SGR backlog growing at a faster rate than the $2.5 billion
increase per year that you currently project? And is there any
modeling that is going on for these changes in calculating the
backlog?
Mr. Carter. Our Condition and Performance Report is based
on some modeling that we utilize to forecast what we believe
the reasonable growth in transit would be over a period of
time. But I think it is safe to say that as demand increases,
the backlog is going to become more and more of a problem. Our
models suggest that. I think that as we continue to address
this problem, we are going to have to deal with the reality of
both the challenge of providing an adequate level of funding to
maintain the existing systems while dealing with the expansion
needs that are required to grow those systems even more.
Chairman Menendez. Finally, asset management, and I think
we will hear a little bit more about this from some of our next
panel. One of the key changes authorized by this Committee in
MAP-21 was the creation of the transit asset management
requirement. What work is being done with transit agencies
representing different sizes and models to determine best
practices and create a standard that works for different types
of systems?
Mr. Carter. We are currently in a rulemaking process that
basically is intended to get significant input from the
industry as to how we should approach our transit asset
management program. We also are in the process of developing
technical assistance for agencies to allow them to be in a
better position to implement these types of requirements as
well as developing additional tools that they will be able to
utilize that the Federal Government will provide that will
allow them to do the analysis necessary to develop a Transit
Asset Management Plan.
We believe that it is critical that we have good, solid
industry input into this process and that we develop a process
and a program that will address the various capacities and
technical capacities of the various size agencies that will
have to implement it.
Chairman Menendez. Senator Warren.
Senator Warren. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and thank you for
calling this hearing. I have questions for the next two
witnesses, so I will just hold until then.
Chairman Menendez. OK.
Senator Warren. Thank you.
Chairman Menendez. One final question. Workers' rights. You
know, we think about the challenges of transit system's
operating systems and facing fiscal challenges in the state-of-
good-repair status. I also think your testimony says that
nationwide almost a third of the facilities used by local
transit agencies to house their operations staff and service
their vehicles are in a marginal or poor state of repair.
Are these facilities a threat to the health and welfare of
our transit workers?
Mr. Carter. Well, first, I think I should be clear that we
believe the systems are safe. Transit is one of the safest
modes of travel that we have available to us in this day and
age.
We also believe very strongly that there are steps that
need to be taken in order to address the safety not just of the
general public but of the employees who work for these agencies
as well.
There is no question that when you are dealing with an
aging infrastructure and the needs that are required to
maintain that infrastructure, employees are going to be working
in hazardous conditions with moving vehicles and things of that
nature, that can make for an unsafe situation. But there are
steps that transit agencies take and do take, and I know from
my own experience we focus very closely at CTA on making sure
that our operators have appropriate training, the appropriate
tools, the appropriate protocols are in place to maximize the
safety of those employees when they would engage in these types
of activities.
But the reality is that for as long as it is going to take
to fix this problem, that will require more workers to work in
environments where that could be a more dangerous situation
than if it were in a state of good repair.
Chairman Menendez. All right. Well, thank you for your
testimony. We look forward to continuing being engaged with you
as we develop the legislation that the Committee is considering
on the transit side of MAP-21 authorization.
We appreciate your testimony, and you are excused.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Menendez. Let us now hear from our three transit
agencies about their work trying to maintain their systems to a
state of good repair. And as I call them up, I want to remind
all of our witnesses that their full statements will be
included in the record, and we would ask you to summarize your
statement within 5 minutes or so, so that we could enter into a
dialogue with you.
Our first witness is Mr. Joseph Casey. He is the general
manager for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation
Authority. SEPTA service is important to a number of my
constituents as well, so I appreciate your willingness to
appear before the Subcommittee today.
I know that Senator Warren would like to introduce Dr.
Beverly Scott, and I think that this moment would be a good
time to do so.
Senator Warren. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is my
great pleasure to introduce Dr. Beverly Scott, who is the
general manager at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation
Authority, our MBTA, and the administrator for MassDOT rail and
transit. Dr. Scott is responsible for managing the MBTA,
overseeing the Commonwealth's 15 regional transit authorities,
and MassDOT's freight and passenger rail program.
Dr. Scott has tremendous expertise in these issues, not
only in Massachusetts but also nationally. Her career in the
public transportation industry spans more than three decades
and includes executive and senior leadership positions with
some of the Nation's largest public transit systems.
Prior to coming to the MBTA, Dr. Scott served as chief
executive officer and general manager of the Metropolitan
Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, MARTA, where she was the first
woman to hold that position. Additionally, she served as
general manager and chief executive officer of the Sacramento
Regional Transit District, SRTD, and she also served as the
general manager of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority,
RIPTA.
Dr. Scott is nationally recognized for her extraordinary
leadership and thoughtful advocacy in advancing increased
investment for effective and efficient transit infrastructure.
She is a leader in her field and was named Transportation
Innovator of Change by President Obama and the U.S. Department
of Transportation for her long record of strong leadership and
innovation in the transportation industry.
We are very pleased to have you in Massachusetts and very
pleased to have you here today in Washington. Thank you.
Ms. Scott. Senator, thank you so much.
Chairman Menendez. Thank you, Senator Warren. It sounds
like every system could use a doctor.
And, finally, our third witness today is Mr. Gary Thomas,
who serves as the president and executive director of the
Dallas Area Rapid Transit, so we thank you for joining us.
Mr. Casey, we will start off with you and move down the
aisle. As I said, your full statements will be included in the
record. Please try to summarize them in about 5 minutes or so,
and then we can get into some back and forth.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH M. CASEY, GENERAL MANAGER, SOUTHEASTERN
PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY, PHILADELPHIA,
PENNSYLVANIA
Mr. Casey. Good morning. Chairman Menendez, Senator Warren,
I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify on the
Federal role in bringing this Nation's public transportation
infrastructure to a state of good repair. I am Joseph Casey,
general manager of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation
Authority--SEPTA--located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. SEPTA
is the sixth largest public transit operator in the country and
the largest in Pennsylvania. SEPTA provides 1.2 million daily
passenger trips, which are essential in supporting the economy
of the southeastern Pennsylvania region.
Last year, Americans took 10.7 billion trips on public
transportation, yet at a time when transit ridership reached
its highest levels in 57 years, the industry continues to fall
behind in the investment required to bring our transit systems
to a state of good repair.
According to the 2013 Conditions and Performance Report
released by the U.S. Department of Transportation in February,
the state-of-good-repair backlog for transit systems nationwide
has risen to $86 billion. This number is projected to grow by
$2.5 billion per year, and the report states that total
spending on state of good repair from all sources must increase
by $8.2 billion per year to address this backlog.
The funding and operational pressures related to state of
good repair are particularly acute in the large urban transit
systems with aging rail infrastructure. Infrastructure related
to rail transportation accounts for a significant majority of
the national transit state-of-good repair backlog.
SEPTA's experience demonstrates the need for investment and
the cost of not investing. Our current backlog of unmet
infrastructure needs is now $5 billion--nearly three-quarters
of which is concentrated in SEPTA's aging rail infrastructure.
Our challenges are not unique among large, old rail
systems. In northeast Illinois, the investment that would be
required to bring Chicago's regional rail transit systems to a
state of good repair would be roughly $20 billion. In Georgia,
the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, MARTA, will
see their state-of-good-repair backlog grow to $7 billion by
2024 without an additional state-of-good-repair investment.
In MAP-21, the Congress responded to the rail state-of-
good-repair crisis by creating a new state-of-good-repair
formula grants program and increasing funding for the Nation's
rail transit systems to invest in the critical state-of-good-
repair needs. On behalf of the transit riders in our region, I
want to thank the Committee for this role in making that
program a reality.
Since 2010, I have served as Chair of an informal group of
the Nation's largest, oldest rail transit systems, the
Metropolitan Rail Discussion Group, that together carry
approximately 80 percent of the Nation's public transportation
passengers. We continue to maintain, as we have since our
formation in 2007, that the long-term, predictable, and growing
transit program that emphasize state-of-good-repair investment
in the rail transit systems that enable this Nation's world-
class economies is not just good transit policy but sound
economic policy as well.
To understand the entire cost of not investing, we need to
look beyond ridership impact to the broader economic benefits
of public transit in our major metropolitan areas. These areas
rely on public transportation to fuel economic growth and
competitiveness by connecting employees to their jobs, allowing
freight and vehicle commuters to move on less congested
highways, and providing important mobility options for all
members of the community.
The Nation's economy is damaged when our major metropolitan
areas cease to function efficiently as gateways for the
movement of goods and people between U.S. and international
destinations. Maintaining the infrastructure that supports
metropolitan rail transit systems is an established national
priority, and Congress must preserve the Federal Government's
50-year-plus commitment to public transportation and preserve
the strength of the mass transit account in the Highway Trust
Fund.
We spend too much time focusing on the cost of Government
infrastructure programs and too little time focusing on the
crippling cost of not investing in infrastructure. A short-term
patch on the Highway Trust Fund highway and transit accounts
will not address the crucial shortfall in investment. If
Congress takes that approach--either for 6 months, a year, or 2
years--transit systems will again be left without the
appropriate funding or budget certainty needed to plan and
execute major infrastructure rehabilitation projects.
It has been more than 4\1/2\ years since the expiration of
the last transportation bill that provided any long-term
investment and planning ability. The intervening period has
been marked with uncertainty and insufficient funding growth. I
urge this Subcommittee and the full Committee to develop a plan
for a multiyear public transportation investment program with
funding levels that increase from year to year to meet the
growing needs across the country. A robust and growing rail
transit state of good repair and a fully funded core capacity
program that allows aging systems to sensibly accommodate
ridership growth while continuing to address state-of-good-
repair needs should be the centerpieces of the national transit
program.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify today,
and I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
Chairman Menendez. Thank you.
Dr. Scott.
STATEMENT OF BEVERLY A. SCOTT, GENERAL MANAGER AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, MASSACHUSETTS BAY TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
Ms. Scott. Chairman Menendez, Senator Warren, it is a
pleasure to have the opportunity to testify this morning.
For overall context, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation
Authority, affectionately called ``The T,'' is the fifth
largest public transit provider in the United States with more
than 1.3 million passenger trips per day and close to 400
million trips per year, and that is across an extensive heavy
light rail, bus, commuter rail, water ferry, and paratransit
network.
We are also the oldest major public transit system in the
United States with a subway system that opened in 1897, the
oldest in the country, which still operates today at crush
loads every average weekday peak period, and a commuter rail
network that was originally laid out in the 1830s, among some
of the first railroads in the country--a network which remains
today a vital link for our Commonwealth, our partner States
throughout New England and in the Northeast region, and the
national passenger rail network along the Northeast corridor.
On our bus side, a critical element of our overall transit
network, some of our bus facilities date back to the early 20th
century, having been initially designed to serve horse-drawn
omnibuses.
As you would expect, achieving a state of good repair is a
significant challenge for the T. Today we estimate our backlog
of state of good repair at close to $5 billion. It is a
challenge that we live every day, our customers experience with
us every day, and our employees work to overcome every day.
Speaking of our transit workforce, the people
infrastructure--those who plan, design, operate, and maintain
our systems, particularly our frontline employees--it is also
extremely important that workforce development at all levels is
not an afterthought as we grapple with our need to achieve a
state of good repair.
All of this said, while we still have a long way to go and
definitely need a continued, strong Federal partner, including
significantly increased Federal investment in our critical
transportation infrastructure, both in our existing and well-
supported new targeted transit investments, under the
leadership of Governor Patrick we are making strides through
implementation of a serious transportation reform agenda,
including actions to bring transit employee health care and
retirement benefits in line with other State agencies, the
implementation of sustainable internal productivity and cost
containment measures, and the deployment of new technologies to
improve our overall customer experience.
On top of this transportation reform agenda, our Governor
proposed the Way Forward transportation program this past year
to provide much needed increased local funding for our
statewide transportation, a self-help plan, if you will,
including the MBTA, and statewide rail and transit, including
our 15 regional transit authorities. And this year, this past
year, that was successful with the help of our legislature, the
business, and our communities across the Commonwealth,
resulting this past year in the passage of the largest bond
package for transportation as well as significant new
investments sustainably for transportation in the
Commonwealth's history, including new State revenues dedicated
to funding transportation, the first increase in over 20 years
of the State gasoline tax, and this increase is aligned with
inflation to ensure that the level of funding will keep pace
over time.
The reason I say these things is, as we stressed this
morning, the absolute criticality of a strong Federal
partnership, predictability of funding, and significantly
increased Federal funding to help to turn the tide on this. I
want to make it very clear that we appreciate and we respect at
the local level that we need to step up and do our part as
well, and so that is what you see on the part of our
Commonwealth.
So what I will say is that things have certainly gotten
much better and we are continuing, but we are definitely in
great need of continued support by the Federal Government.
On the side of--I want to take a little bit now--state of
good repair, fix it first, commonsense must happen. But at the
same time we cannot wind up only looking at the hole and not
the doughnut, and that means that we have to also make new
targeted investments for growth. And so for us, the most
notable of those projects at the Federal level is our Green
Line expansion project, which we are moving through the New
Starts program at this point in time. And this project will, in
fact, wind up for us filling what has been a missing transit
link serving some of the most densely populated communities,
honestly, in the United States. Right now those communities of
Somerville, Medford, and Cambridge are only within--only 20
percent of those communities are within distance today of a
rail station. When this project--and prayerfully, we will, in
fact, hopefully receive an FFGA for this project, when that is
over, we will then be able to provide access for what is over
50 percent environmental justice communities for within--75
percent of those communities will be within walking distance to
rail, which will significantly wind up decreasing their travel
times by 65 to 75 percent and opening up a tremendous vista, if
you will, of new job and economic development opportunities for
a much needed community.
So at this point, we have done everything--asset
management, thank you, Federal Transit Administration, for all
of their support. We believe that we are struggling like
everybody else but cutting-edge, if you will, in terms of asset
management and moving in that direction. Performance metrics,
this is how we do our work. We are extremely transparent in
terms of what we consider the metrics to be in working with the
public. And we have also aligned what we are doing on the
transportation side with critical public policies having to do
with housing affordability, greening, resilience, just--it is
not just transit for transit's sake. It is really about
livability, overall economic competitiveness, and the way.
So, in conclusion, as we experience record high and growing
transit ridership and increasingly aging systems, reaffirming
the Federal commitment in partnership with a program that has
both predictability and growth is essential to making real
progress to turn the tide on the state-of-good-repair backlog,
and this is one that States and localities cannot successfully
tackle on our own. Federal partnership and investment is key.
So, with deep respect, thank you very much.
Chairman Menendez. Thank you.
Mr. Thomas.
STATEMENT OF GARY THOMAS, PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
DALLAS AREA RAPID TRANSIT
Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Chairman Menendez and Committee
Members. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. My name
is Gary Thomas, and I am the president/executive director of
Dallas Area Rapid Transit. We have a little bit different story
to tell. We are not over 100 years old. As a matter of fact, we
are just over 30 years old now. The voters of North Texas voted
to dedicate a 1-percent sales tax in 1983 to create a
transportation agency, and today we operate bus, light rail,
commuter rail, paratransit services, and HOV services in the
North Texas region covering a 700-square-mile area, 13 cities,
and about 2.4 million people, providing roughly 107 million
trips annually. I would also like to add that we operate the
longest light-rail system in North America.
So as you can see, we have had very rapid growth, opening
our first light-rail segment in 1996, and now operating 85
miles. Later this year we will add an additional 5 miles as we
go to DFW Airport. We will open that segment 4\1/2\ months
early and under budget. While our oldest segments are now only
18 years old, our growth and subsequent state of good repair is
closely controlled by a 20-year financial plan that we strictly
adhere to.
This financial plan, by policy, ensures that we balance our
anticipated revenues against our operational expenses, our
asset management, and our capital expansion. Even though we are
relatively young, we have over 15 years of asset management
experience. One of the biggest key components of our program is
a regularly scheduled asset condition assessment that we do on
an annual basis, and then once every 5 years, we have an
outside consultant come in and verify where we are and then
determine if there is a course correction that needs to be
made.
The good news is that MAP-21 ensures a more unified
approach industry-wide regarding the development of transit
asset management plans holding each of us accountable for
managing our assets responsibly. We are supportive of allowing
the FTA to complete their process and the industry time to
implement the new policies before making major policy revisions
in a new transportation bill.
The good news, and perhaps the bad news, is that we have
created a large appetite for transportation choices in North
Texas. This obviously relates to where people live, where they
work, and we see that happening, surprisingly, as some people
might find, in North Texas every day. This appetite requires
not only maintaining our existing system, but growth of the
system to address the fourth largest and one of the fastest
growing metropolitan regions in the country. Over 73 percent of
our capital expenditures for the next 20 years is for SGR,
leaving very little for growth, even though the demand is
great.
One of our key areas of need addressing both SGR and growth
is what is happening in our core area of our system. Right now
we have a hub-and-spoke system, and the hub is a single
corridor through downtown Dallas. Because of the growth of the
system and the service that we provide and the growth of that
service, the track conditions in the corridor are deteriorating
faster than we initially anticipated. This means that we will
start a $45 million capital program later this summer,
replacing over the next couple of years the rail through this
core area. Additionally, we are planning a core capacity set,
or group of projects, to relieve the pressure on this existing
core. Therefore, we are a strong advocate for the core capacity
program initiated in MAP-21 to be preserved in the next surface
transportation bill. Our core capacity project as envisioned
provides capacity and flexibility while reducing maintenance
needs in the future. So a lot of the new starts and new
projects actually go hand in hand with the core capacity as
well as state-of-good-repair projects.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, in order to continue to
provide transportation choices for North Texas, we desperately
need a long-term, fully funded transportation bill providing
stability and predictability for our agency and, more
importantly, for our customers. We applaud the 6-year term in
the proposed highway bill and the funding levels in the GROW
AMERICA legislation. I would hope that this Committee would
consider both of those and consider the APTA recommendation and
merge these two together, resulting in a 6-year fully funded
bill for transit of $104 billion.
Of course, where public transit goes, community grows, and
on behalf of our board of directors, our 3,700 employees, and
our millions of customers, thank you for this opportunity
today, and I look forward to answering any questions.
Chairman Menendez. Thank you all for your testimony.
Let me first start with maybe a couple of yeses or noes, if
we can. DOT's Conditions and Performance Report tells us that
if recent investment levels are maintained, by the year 2030,
which is only 16 short years from now, the Nation's transit
system will be facing $142 billion in deferred system
preservation--I underline ``preservation''--projects. Given
that Federal funding makes up more than a quarter of the
investments, it seems that we have work to do.
Just by a simple yes or no, does anyone on the panel
believe the current funding levels are enough to help you
achieve a state of good repair? We will start off with you, Mr.
Casey. If you would put your microphones on while we are doing
this, I would appreciate it, for the record.
Mr. Casey. They are insufficient.
Chairman Menendez. Dr. Scott.
Ms. Scott. Woefully insufficient.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. No, sir.
Chairman Menendez. OK. And if Federal funding remains flat,
does anyone believe--or is it a possibility--and I have heard,
Dr. Scott, your testimony about the Commonwealth. But does
anyone believe if we just remain flat that additional State and
local funding alone can cover the cost of starting to pay down
the backlog? Mr. Casey.
Mr. Casey. No. I will say that last year the Pennsylvania
Commonwealth passed a transportation bill. It was approximately
half of what our needs are going forward to address our state
of good repair. So, no, the State actually did their share, I
think, but I think the Federal Government really needs to step
up and do a similar bill.
Chairman Menendez. Dr. Scott.
Ms. Scott. Same, sir. Not possible.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. While we have a large local match with our 1-
percent sales tax, it is not nearly enough to do what we need
to do as we move forward.
Chairman Menendez. Now, Mr. Casey, your testimony states
that the state-of-good-repair challenges are particularly acute
for large urban rail systems, and you noted that the average
age of SEPTA's rail bridges is more than 80 years old, 103
bridges that are more than 100 years old. That is a pretty
challenging reality for the system.
What practical impact do these needs have on your riders on
a day-to-day basis?
Mr. Casey. Well, we were faced with shutting down a lot of
our rail system prior to the transportation bill out of
Harrisburg. From a practical standpoint, your first issue is
slow orders, you slow down the track, and then you have weight
restrictions, and then eventually shutting down the structure.
We have with the funding that we received from the State--
prior to the funding from the State, we had no bridge repairs
in our capital program. Now that we did get State funding, I
have 18 bridges that I am addressing in the next 5 years. And
just to give you the age of some of these bridges, I will go
through--there are 18 of them. The construction was 1891, 1900,
1891, 1900, 1896, 1916; a major bridge was built in 1895, and
it is significant because it spans 922 feet, 150 feet in the
air off the ground. I could go on and on. I have bridges here,
1876, 1854, 1834, 1834, 1906, et cetera.
We have a very old system, and a lot of this was built, you
know, Penn Central, the Reading Railroad, et cetera, that all
went bankrupt. Very little has been done to repair these, to
replace these structures.
We were in dire straits. The State funding gave us the
ability to help dig out of this hole, but as I said, with over
103 bridges over 100 years old, you know, we can only address
18 of them in the next 5 years.
Chairman Menendez. Dr. Scott, you said something--maybe it
is not about bridges in the T's case, but you talked about how
your passengers also face the challenges with you. What are
some of those challenges?
Ms. Scott. Same types of things: slow orders, just an
inability to be able----
Chairman Menendez. For the record, for those who may read
it and not know what a slow order is.
Ms. Scott. A slow order means that there will be a period
along a stretch of the track where simply because of the
condition--it could be a bridge or a tunnel segment or
whatever--I have got to really--instead of being able to take
it at the speeds that it really could go through from a science
standpoint, we have got to slow it down. Sometimes you are
talking taking it to a crawl of 5 to 10 miles per hour, which
means--you can imagine what that means in terms of the commute
time for our riders. And so it is--and you ultimately get to
the point where you just have to--you just literally have to
close down a segment.
Chairman Menendez. Let me ask you, Mr. Thomas, your
testimony notes that DART is considering applying to the new
core capacity program within the New Starts account. And I
think there is often a perception that the program is used
primarily by much older, heavier rail systems. Can you talk
about the importance of a Federal core capacity program in
helping a newer light-rail system like DART maintaining a state
of good repair?
Mr. Thomas. Yes, sir. The core capacity program in our
particular case would be incredibly vital and important as we
continue to expand our system. We are really at a point now
where, if we add to our system, we cannot get more trains
through the single corridor that goes through our downtown
area. So before we can add any more to our system, or really,
as I tell a lot of folks locally, if something happens on the
corridor--a fire happened on that corridor not too long ago.
The fire department put their hoses across the corridor. They
did not appreciate the idea of us rolling trains across that
fire hose. So we had to actually stop service during rush hour
to make sure that we dealt with it. So the core capacity
program gives us the flexibility and it gives us the capacity
to do that.
Now, what we are looking at, Mr. Chairman, is a combination
of projects, understanding that, on the one hand, we have got
to provide our local match; on the other hand, the core
capacity program is limited in size right now. So we are
looking at how we can reduce the size of the project and maybe
combine projects to deal with that capacity issue in our
downtown area. Currently we are looking at replacing the rail
in the downtown area. Because of the traffic, and the amount of
traffic that we have put through downtown, the trains have
already worn through the hardened surface on the rail, and so
it is eating through the rest of the steel very, very quickly.
So we are at a point now where we have got to replace that
to maintain our SGR and at the same time figure out how to
expand the system to give us the flexibility and capacity
through downtown that we need. So that program ends up being
critically important to us as we move forward.
Chairman Menendez. I have a couple other key questions, but
I want to turn to my colleague. Senator Merkley.
Senator Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you to all of you.
I want to ask just a limited question that has come from
several of my transit districts, so given your experience on
the ground, I thought you might have some insight on this. This
is essentially the situation where the discretionary grants
have been changed to a funding formula in the bus and bus
facility program under MAP-21. And the result for a couple of
my transit districts is they are having a great difficulty
acquiring replacement buses in the fashion that they did
before, which means they are buying fewer, therefore not
getting group bus discounts, and they are keeping inefficient
buses that need high levels of maintenance on routes for longer
to the detriment of the agency.
Have you all experienced in your own respective realms any
challenge like this? I would invite any of you to answer.
Mr. Casey. I have not, no.
Senator Merkley. OK.
Ms. Scott. I have not at the T, but we have 15 regional
transit authorities which are much smaller systems, and while
we keep a good overview from the broad Commonwealth level, I
can tell you that it is more challenging for them.
Senator Merkley. Thank you.
Mr. Thomas. Yes, sir. From our perspective, again, I have
not, and I think it really relates to the size of the agency
and the wherewithal and the forward planning. And the larger
agencies, in many cases they can accommodate that. And the
smaller agencies, quite frankly, they cannot. And the trickle
of money does not buy a bus, and you cannot save it up that
quickly.
Senator Merkley. Well, thank you for sharing that directly
from the front line, and I am listening in with interest
through the questions my colleagues are asking, and I am going
to pass this on. Thank you.
Chairman Menendez. Senator Warren.
Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Merkley.
I would like to ask a question from a little different
direction, and that is about the economic impact of our
transportation infrastructure and the state of our
transportation infrastructure. As I see it, the economy turns
on transportation infrastructure. This is how people get to
work. This is how businesses get their goods to market. And
without a transportation infrastructure or with a decaying
transportation infrastructure, the whole economy is in trouble.
So, Dr. Scott, you mentioned the Green Line extension, and
I would like for just a minute to talk about that. This is an
extension of the T that would go to one of the most densely
populated areas in the country, principally to Somerville,
Massachusetts. I was very pleased to see that the President had
included $100 million in his fiscal year 2015 budget in order
to get this expansion of the T. But what I would like to do is
start with this question, Dr. Scott: Can you talk about what
the lack of basic infrastructure has done to the economy of
Somerville? And then we will talk about the other side.
Ms. Scott. I would tell you that what it has done is that
it has stymied it. From one standpoint, just let me talk about
the jobs portion of it. It has made it much more difficult for
people within the Somerville area to, in fact, be able to
access good employment opportunities. And so that is, both
outside as well as development within Somerville, it has made
it much more difficult for Somerville to be able to attract
employment and business opportunities.
Now, what I can say to you is that I just always look at
things are what they are, and so just with the knowledge that
this project is coming--and we are absolutely committed to this
project. Just look at the development that has started to take
place already. You go and, in fact, we--and we were delighted
that Secretary Foxx actually took a little time to come through
to actually see the project. At NorthPoint, right there where
we have Lechmere, 2.2 million in terms of development, office,
residential, multi-use. At Union Square, another 2 million
square feet of development. This is development that absolutely
would not be taking place; they are both absolutely right there
where the transit is--literally, at the Union Square, the
station is actually right there where the development is. And
then you look at what is taking place at places like MaxPak.
So the growth and the development that is just being
catalyzed, if you will, by that Green Line expansion project
are just--it is just absolutely unbelievable.
Senator Warren. Well, I have walked through and seen this,
and it really is terrific. I was going to ask you the other
half, and that is, you know, it is expensive up front to make
these investments, and yet study after study shows that when we
do, we get enormous economic impact. We get job growth. We get
economic development. So I want to thank you. And I want to
thank you for your advocacy on behalf of the Green Line, but
also your advocacy on behalf of the whole transit system.
Enormously valuable.
Ms. Scott. Thank you. Thank you. But, you know, just--the
American Public Transportation Association at the gross level
has done work on this. For every $1 that winds up going into
transit, the multiplier effect in terms of four--at least $4
that wind up coming in terms of what we call that broader
impact, and then not just in terms of property values and
residential development and all of that, but then looking at it
as well in terms of jobs creation. I have seen numbers that
have been--for every $1 billion, we are looking at something
like about 32,000 to 40,000 jobs that wind up being created.
So it is the engine. I always laugh and tell people that it
is not the infrastructure that is the ``it.'' It is actually
the outcomes and the benefits that we have for people in
communities.
Senator Warren. Yes. And, actually, let me just extend that
over to Dallas, because I have been looking at the studies
there as well. You know, you have had amazing growth, gone from
zero hard rail to miles and miles of a system in 30 years. And
I saw two recent studies by the University of North Texas that
estimated that the $4.7 billion spent between 2002 and 2013 to
expand light rail in the Dallas system has already generated
over $7.4 billion in regional economic activity, including tens
of thousands of jobs that paid in excess of $3.3 billion in
salaries, wages, and benefits; and made the point also in one
of these studies that more than 5.3 billion in private capital
transit-oriented development projects have been built or are
under construction or are planned near the DART light-rail
stations.
So we are over time, but if Mr. Chairman will indulge me
for just a minute, I wanted to give you a chance, Mr. Thomas,
to talk about, based on your experience, how capital investment
in rail transit can stimulate economic growth and whether or
not your experience in Dallas can be replicated in other places
around the country.
Mr. Thomas. You know, it has been fascinating to watch,
Senator, what has happened in Dallas, because when we first
started, we were focused on getting the rail on the line
obviously to move people safely, efficiently, and effectively.
There were other people that understood the value of that
infrastructure, the value that they could take advantage of,
quite frankly, and take advantage of in a good way for our
community. And once that started, once people started
realizing, now as we look to other areas in the expansion, it
is certainly to move people, but it is also the air quality
opportunities, the congestion mitigation opportunities, and
then the economic development opportunities.
There was a point in time when the economy got a little
soft and we had to start talking about a delay. We literally
had buses of people showing up at our board meetings to explain
to us why that was not a good idea to delay those projects. And
in large part, it was due to not just the transportation but
the economic development opportunities that had already been
thought about and already planned. As you mentioned, the study
that was recently completed by the University of North Texas
was an update of a study that had been done previously, and
that was a very, very narrowly tailored study because it only
looked at projects that were on the tax rolls. So publicly
funded projects, the big hospital expansion, the new Civic
Center, those were not even on that list. And so it is pretty
incredible to see not only the projects of economic
development, but also the rental rates is part of that study,
and it shows the increase in rental rates within a quarter mile
of the station. We are seeing it over and over, proving out the
4:1 benefits that the APTA study has also shown.
Senator Warren. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Chairman, would it be all right to ask Mr. Casey to
weigh in from SEPTA's perspective?
Chairman Menendez. Absolutely.
Senator Warren. Mr. Casey.
Mr. Casey. We have a very old system, and, unfortunately,
the last number of years we have not done a lot of expansion.
But what we are seeing is a lot of investors wanting to build
facilities, whether it is homes, you know, apartment buildings,
et cetera, around our stations and utilizing the benefits of
transit for further development because it makes it much more
attractive.
But, again, there is a lot of interest in us expanding the
system. There is one particular project, we have a Broad Street
line, one of our heaviest lines, wants to extend into the
former Navy Yard, which is attracting companies from all over
the place. So there is an expansion.
But I just want to say that more and more people in
Philadelphia are opting or wanting to take public transit. In
the last 15 years, we have had a 50-percent growth on the
regional rail system--50 percent. And the only thing really
limiting us from even further expansion is capacity. The number
of vehicles that we have on the regional rail is--has not
increased--it actually has increased a little bit, but it is
minor. Those cars are already filled up. But it is parking, it
is--you know, if I was able to invest, there is no question in
my mind you would see easily a double-digit growth in the
utilization of those services.
Senator Warren. Well, I want to thank you all very much.
Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman. And I just
want to say I think Dr. Scott makes exactly the right point.
Transportation infrastructure is powerfully important, but not
as an end in itself. It is powerfully important because this is
how we help our economy move forward.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Menendez. Thank you.
Just one last set of questions for the panel. If you were
sitting here instead of there and being able to write the new
transit provisions of MAP-21 outside of the funding issue,
which I think we collectively agree on, is there anything that
you would change or add that does not exist in the law today?
Mr. Casey. As far as I am concerned, I just think the--we
just need to invest more money into the transit, and whether it
is--we have issues from the older properties, but the smaller
operators with buses also have issues. The pot just really has
to grow. It has been insufficient for us to maintain our
current system.
Ms. Scott. What I would stress is that--and we have begun
to see the threads of it, but I think that a focus in terms of
performance and not rewarding bad behavior. I think that that
is important. I think that the connecting of the dots of state
of good repair with things like going for full funding grant
agreements, I think that the more that we do those kinds of
things that are self-reinforcing.
I am a person who, when people ask me, ``Bev, what are the
things that keep you up at night?'' I am going to come back to
workforce, OK, making sure that there is funding, intentional
funding, to help in terms of the workforce development. We put
less than probably 0.5 of a percent in terms of training and
development of our people, the kinds of things that keep me up
at night, and I can assure you, every one of the operators that
is here are the issues in terms of we are not going to have
excellence in terms of the systems without the people.
Now, I do not want to overdo this, but this is--we have
6,200 employees at the T. I can tell you today that there are
800 folks who have the time and the years to be able to retire.
Over 30 percent of those are in my specialized maintenance
areas. When I take that number 5 years from now, it becomes
1,800 people who will have the time and the years to be able to
retire; 38 percent of them are in my specialized maintenance
areas--signal, track, rail controllers. You can replace a
general manager faster than we are going to be able to do that.
So to see some synergies between this bill and education,
workforce and labor, would be absolutely unbelievable.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Thomas, do you have anything to add?
Mr. Thomas. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think it is flexibility.
As we have seen this morning, each one of our cities is
different. Each city across the country is different. We all
have different needs. We are all in different places. And so
making sure that the bill going forward offers the flexibility
to each of us to do what we need to do in our respective cities
to grow the economy, to provide opportunities to people, I
think that is critical moving forward.
Chairman Menendez. I appreciate those answers.
Mr. Casey, let me ask you, you chair the Metropolitan Rail
Discussion Group, and one of the group's principles is that
funding should be prioritized according to need and national
importance. To what extent do current Federal programs adhere
to that principle? And what changes would you make in that
line, if any?
Mr. Casey. Well, I think it is a recognition of the older
systems, and I think when you look at our system and, you know,
our needs, you know, in Philadelphia with the number of
bridges, and I think people are shocked to learn that we are
responsible for 350 bridges, and I think those infrastructure
needs are different than--you know, I hate to say maybe Dallas
might not have those infrastructure needs. So I think those
issues have to be part of the discussions.
You know, one thing I did not discuss is our substation,
power substations that are, you know, dealing with 1920
technology that is out there. They have been in operation
since, in some cases, the 1920s, 1930s. And generally they are
40, 50 years past their useful life. Those critical issues
really need to be addressed as we go forward. And it is not
just one of two of them. I mean, I have 15 of the substations
that really have to be addressed at one time. And if I have a
failure on that, I just cannot--I cannot get the parts. If I
fail, it fails, and it is down for a long time.
Chairman Menendez. Dr. Scott, my understanding is that the
MBTA has been working to develop an asset management plan for a
number of years, well before any Federal requirements were
created in MAP-21. Can you give the Committee some details on
how your asset management system works? And has it helped you
agency better target its investments? And by any chance has the
FTA asked you or talked about some best practices that can be
considered in new Federal asset management requirements?
Ms. Scott. Absolutely. First, I do want to--FTA has been
right there at the table with us from the very beginning, and
we were some of the first pilot programs that they really
helped to fund in terms of being able to develop the data bases
and things of that nature.
What I will tell you is that it has radically reshaped--I
will be quite candid in terms of how we have done our capital
plan, our capital planning. It is no longer--I mean, this is
really a robust involvement on the part of all the departments.
You have to be very, very clear in terms of exactly what is the
need, what is going to wind up being the benefit that winds up
coming from it. We are beginning now to--particularly as we
bring our maintenance management systems, we are beginning to
actually move into being able to look at life cycle so that we
can, in fact, actually change the method in terms of how we do
procurements. You have to have the data to be able to support
being able to do much more in terms of life cycle procurements.
So no capital project comes to the table without there
being a full look in terms of not only the aspects of safety
and obsolescence, but innovation, resilience, accessibility,
and also the people implications and the long-term operating
implications of those investments. None of that would have
happened if we had not been much more thoughtfully and
intentionally looking at both the data as well as just changing
our decision lens, if you will, in terms of how we do resource
allocation.
It is a work in progress, but very, very different than
what we had done in prior years.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Thomas, you state that DART's
capital program has mechanisms built in to deal with funding
volatility. Given years of trust fund instability, the
uncertainty of the annual appropriations process on the transit
New Starts account, and even in the past the Government
shutdown, how has the volatility impacted DART's ability to
provide reliable transit service? And how are you preparing for
the possible concerns as it relates to the Highway Trust Fund?
Mr. Thomas. Well, certainly as I said, we have a 20-year
financial plan, and that 20-year financial plan anticipates all
the revenues and all the expenses over the next 20 years. We
adjust that annually. Obviously, we do not know exactly what is
going to happen for the next 20 years, but we have several
economists that work with us to help us identify what is going
to happen from a local funding perspective. And then we take a
very conservative approach from the Federal participation.
However, if the trust fund is not funded into this calendar
year, then it would require us to make significant cuts as we
move forward. We are already in the process of looking at what
that would be, what those service impacts would be, and
starting to determine where that list is and to communicate
what that list might look like to our constituents in the North
Texas area.
Chairman Menendez. Let me ask you all one final question. I
do not know if Senator Warren has any others. But, you know, I
assume that in some shape or form you survey or deal with your
ridership in trying to understand both their views of
operations of your present systems, the views that they may
have about any potential expansion or curtailment. So if I were
to ask you, switching my role from this position to sitting on
the Senate Finance Committee, which has to find a way to fund
this, would your ridership support an increase in a revenue
source if it is dedicated to the transit system? What would
they say?
Mr. Casey. I would say yes. I think the bottom line, our
riders want improved service. They want more frequent service.
They want better facilities. And in the region, I think as
happened in the State of Pennsylvania, at least our region was
almost unanimous in supporting a transportation bill. And I
really think the riders and the citizens of that region would
support the same.
Chairman Menendez. Dr. Scott.
Ms. Scott. I absolutely believe that our public would. I
think that there are two pieces to that, however. I think that
they will support, but they have to be very clear about what
the outcomes are that are intended, and it is about much more
than ridership, OK?
And the other is I believe--and I just think that people
want accountability, OK? And so the issue, the focus in terms
of performance and transparency, but absolutely tied to
outcomes that they can be real clear about they want, OK, and
with real good transparency and accountability I believe it--
and I have another one I would like to just--I forgot to say,
and that is that I--you asked the question. I think that at the
Federal level, to make sure that every dollar that we do--and
you can force this, OK--is to make sure that we make smart
investments. So for every dollar, let us make it be a smart
dollar, and so that means that everything we can do in terms of
technology we need to be looking at, and also what we can do in
terms of resilience.
Along our corridor, anything that we do, I tell--this is in
the capital program. The water tables are changing. Don't you
bring me stuff that was built for 100 years ago, OK? We have to
be looking for the future, and so those are, once again, themes
in terms of outcomes that you can drive at the Federal level to
make every investment we make smart, and also that means that
on the research and development end, we are woefully behind in
this country, and making investments, because there have been
slashes in our research and development funding for
transportation, and it is sorely, sorely needed.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. The voters within our service area certainly
have proven over the years that they are supportive of transit
and dedicated funding. When they initially voted to approve a
1-percent sales tax in 1983 to create an organization that at
the time they had no idea what it would do or what it would be
capable of doing, and then subsequently have voted by large
margins to allow us to issue long-term debt and other
opportunities. So, yes, sir, I believe so.
Chairman Menendez. Senator Warren.
Senator Warren. No. Thank you.
Chairman Menendez. Well, let me take advantage of one
final. I promise this will be the final.
You know, we have a debate in the Committee as it relates
to gas tax dollars, which the advocates for highway--and, of
course, we are always going to have highways as part of our
overall system. But they say, well, a gas tax dollar should not
be used for a transit purpose because, you know, it is the
drivers who pay the gas tax who ultimately are funding transit
systems. Increasingly, however, we have been seeing general
fund dollars be used in this respect for funding the overall
transportation bill. And it seems to me that as we use more
general fund dollars, that argument is increasingly dissipated
at the end of the day because general fund dollars are paid by
everybody.
So any perspectives on that? I do not know how you deal
with it in your respective States.
Mr. Casey. Well, I have two comments. The vast majority of
our riders also drive automobiles, and they are paying the tax
also. But the investment in transit----
Chairman Menendez. So they take the transit, let us say, to
go to work, but then they have their car for----
Mr. Casey. Or they drive to the parking lot and then take
the train coming in. But the vast majority of the people that
still use, benefit from transit, from a congestion standpoint,
getting riders off the road, it works hand in hand. And I can
tell you there is not sufficient highways within Philadelphia
currently to handle all the automobile traffic. Without
transit, you know, it would be literally a parking lot.
So the transit benefits everyone, everyone in the region,
whether it is the people riding transit or the people on the
highways.
Chairman Menendez. But that would have its own economic
consequence. If you end in a parking lot, you are not getting
your sales force to their sales; you are not getting your
workers to work on time, and so many other iterations.
Does anybody else want to comment on this last question?
Ms. Scott. I would just say, ``Ditto.'' I tell them, I say,
``Get out of that old thinking,'' OK? All this silo and this is
a road dollar and this is a transit dollar and this is a ped
dollar. We are all talking about mobility and access. Nothing
is free. Everybody--and we are also integrated and
interconnected that I just think that that is totally old
thinking and that we just need to step it up and move it up and
not disregard it, but do not get stuck in it.
Chairman Menendez. Well, we may have you visit some of our
colleagues.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Menendez. You might want to think about how you
answer in that regard. Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. Some of our strongest partners in North Texas
are TxDOT and North Texas Tollway Authority, understanding, as
Mr. Casey said, it is a collaborative opportunity.
Ms. Scott. It is, absolutely.
Chairman Menendez. Well, let me thank all of our witnesses
for appearing before the Committee. It is very helpful in
developing record, and some of the issues that will undoubtedly
be debated among Members, I think the testimony makes a
powerful case for the need for strong investments to bring our
transit system to a state of good repair. I look forward to
working with all of you and others to develop a transit title
that can begin to meet some of these needs for the next surface
transportation bill.
This record is going to remain open until a week from today
if any Senators wish to submit questions for the record. We
would ask our witnesses, if you do receive questions, to please
respond to them as expeditiously as possible. They are helpful
in dealing with some of the questions that we have.
With that, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:48 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Prepared statements and additional material supplied for
the record follow:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DORVAL CARTER
Chief Counsel, Federal Transit Administration
May 22, 2014
Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Moran, and Members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the
urgent need to address our Nation's serious public transportation
infrastructure deficit and to highlight the Obama administration's plan
to bring our aging rail and bus systems and facilities into a state of
good repair as part of the GROW AMERICA Act. Transit ridership is at
its highest level in generations--exceeding 10 billion trips annually
for 7 years in a row. This trend is likely to continue, as the United
States' population increases up to an estimated 400 million people by
2050; as a large segment of aging Americans seek to remain independent
and mobile without the use of a car; as more people choose to settle in
urbanized areas where private automobiles are less necessary; and as
younger Americans continue to generally spend less time behind the
wheel and more time taking public transportation.
It is absolutely essential for our Nation to invest in safe,
modern, reliable, efficient, and affordable public transportation
networks that tens of millions of Americans increasingly depend on
every day to reach jobs and job training, education, health care, and
other opportunities. This means striking a responsible balance between
investing in new capital transit construction while also preserving and
modernizing existing infrastructure--portions of which were built over
a century or more ago--and which continues to serve the public on a
daily basis.
On the preservation side of this ledger, we have clearly documented
an urgent need to address a transit maintenance and replacement backlog
that stands conservatively at $86 billion (in 2010 dollars)--10 percent
higher since the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Federal
Highway Administration (FHWA) last reported in March 2012 (using 2008
data). This backlog is expected to grow by $2.5 billion each year--
unless we make the investments now to slow or stop the growing
maintenance deficit. This updated backlog is based on an analysis
conducted for the 2013 Status of the Nation's Highways, Bridges and
Transit: Conditions and Performance (known as the C&P report), issued
jointly by FTA and FHWA in February, 2014.
While transit remains one of the safest ways to travel, the
Nation's aging transit infrastructure carries hidden costs that we
cannot and should not ignore. Aging transit assets compromise system
resiliency. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, for example, the damaged
PATH commuter rail system, which operates critical service between New
York and New Jersey, had to replace antiquated circuit breakers and
other parts that are no longer manufactured, in order to restore
service between Journal Square and Newark Penn Station. PATH literally
had to truck in parts from the Chicago Transit Authority--which also
uses comparably aged parts in its system. This example serves to
illustrate that there are significant costs to maintaining equipment
that has exceeded its useful life, with sacrifices made in flexibility,
fuel efficiency, and reliability.
Above all, the transit industry's serious deferred maintenance and
replacement backlog directly affects average transit riders every day--
including transit systems in States represented by Members of this
Subcommittee. For example:
In New Jersey, roughly a third of countywide community
transit vehicles (over 300 vehicles) have each logged at least
175,000 miles--a point at which repair bills mount and
breakdowns occur more frequently.
In downstate Illinois, nearly 600 buses and paratransit
vehicles that serve riders with disabilities are operating well
past their recommended retirement date.
In West Virginia, 11 locally operating transit systems rely
on vehicles that exceed FTA's recommended retirement date, with
more than half the vehicles in two of these agencies in this
condition, and the others well on the way.
In State College, Pennsylvania, if funding is not secured
to replace 66 buses running on compressed natural gas (CNG)
that have exceeded the FTA-recommended retirement date (many of
them upwards of 18 years old), then the Centre Area
Transportation Authority will need to install new CNG tanks
that cost more than the value of these aging buses.
In Kansas, the City of Paola provides nearly 45,000 rides
per year on a single 10-year-old bus, while in Ottaway County,
10,400 passengers annually depend on two buses that are each
more than 14 years old.
In Cleveland, Ohio, 100 percent of the Greater Cleveland
Regional Transit Authority's heavy rail vehicles are 30 years
old. And in Butler County, Ohio, the local Regional Transit
Authority is cannibalizing broken buses for parts to keep a
small fleet of buses operating--in the face of rising demand
for bus service.
In Oakland, California, nearly a quarter of the transit
buses are 14 years old--past FTA's recommended retirement date.
Nationwide, about 28 percent of the facilities used by
local transit agencies to house their operations staff and
service their vehicles are in a marginal or poor state of
repair. Inadequate capital funding to replace this type of
infrastructure affects maintenance efficiency and the welfare
of the workforce.
In these States, and many more, millions of transit dependent
senior citizens, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and others
take transit to work and school, and to seek the services and care they
require on a daily basis--and as those transit vehicles age, their
dependability decreases and gaps in service grow larger, leaving many
riders stranded, unable to reach the doctor's office or the grocery
store. For riders who take transit by choice, transit systems thrive
when they are able to offer a convenient and reliable alternative to
driving to work and other destinations. Maintaining and preserving
these systems is critical to ensuring they live up to their potential
to serve their communities and meet the needs of future riders.
We recognize that the Senate Banking Committee has generally been
responsive to FTA's needs for adequate resources to help capitalize the
construction of the Nation's transit assets. It is important to bear in
mind, nevertheless, that the transit industry's marginal or poor
infrastructure condition exists today despite FTA's ongoing financial
support of rehabilitation and replacement activities, primarily through
the former Section 5309 Fixed Guideway Modernization funds (replaced
under MAP-21 with State of Good Repair Formula Grants) and Section 5307
Urbanized Area Formula Grant funds. Yet the scope of the infrastructure
deficit persists, and additional resources are needed to address the
challenge in a meaningful way. Consider, for example, Chicago's transit
environment. Chicago's transit systems (CTA, Metra, and Pace) received
about $2.2 billion in Federal funding from FY2009 to FY2013, largely
through the above-mentioned FTA programs. These operators also received
about $242 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009 (ARRA) (Pub.L. 111-5), which helped to replace buses and conduct
overdue preventive maintenance and subway rehabilitation. Despite this
level of investment from multiple sources, according to CTA, these
transit systems collectively face a $24 billion backlog over 10 years,
requiring a sustained annual investment of $2 billion to address the
need.
We believe the data in the latest C&P Report makes a clear case for
a sustained, and sustainable, investment plan to address the
deteriorating condition of our Nation's transit assets and ensure the
safety and viability of public transportation nationwide for future
generations.
FTA's Consistent Call for Transit Asset Improvements
It was before this Subcommittee almost 5 years ago, in August 2009,
that Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff testified on the need
for public transit agencies to achieve and maintain a state of good
repair in order to provide safe and reliable service to tens of
millions of daily riders.
At that time, FTA pledged to make transit infrastructure repair a
policy priority and a key component of the agency's annual budget
request. FTA's initial state-of-good-repair initiative included
encouraging the industry to share ideas on recapitalization and
maintenance; asset management practices; and innovative financing
strategies. Over the course of 2008 and 2009, FTA formed a working
group with the transit industry, convened a state-of-good-repair
roundtable, and published a seminal Rail Modernization Study in 2009 in
response to the conference report accompanying the FY2008
Transportation-HUD Appropriations Act and at the request of a dozen
senators. That initial study found that more than one-third of the
assets at the seven major rail transit systems analyzed (Chicago's CTA,
Boston's MBTA, New York's MTA, New Jersey Transit, San Francisco's Bay
Area Rapid Transit System, Philadelphia's SEPTA system, and Washington,
DC's WMATA system) were in marginal or poor condition. Many of these
systems' assets were near or had exceeded their expected useful life
and collectively faced an estimated $50 billion maintenance and repair
backlog. Given that these systems account for about 80 percent of the
Nation's rail transit ridership, the need for action was clear. An
expanded version of the study released in 2010 estimated the cost of
bringing all of the Nation's rail and bus transit systems into a state
of good repair at $77.7 billion--a snapshot in time that further
confirmed that serious, targeted investments in this deteriorating
infrastructure had to be made as soon as possible. Though the numbers
differ slightly, this estimated need is consistent with the C&P
Report's estimate--different numbers, same story.
FTA's Rail Modernization Study also found the transit industry's
asset management practices were far weaker than they should be.
Practices such as the use of decision support tools that rank and
prioritize reinvestment needs, and conducting comprehensive asset
condition assessments, were largely absent from the industry's regular
strategic planning processes.
Every year since the release of these assessments quantifying the
Nation's transit state-of-good-repair needs, FTA has worked diligently
to help transit agencies improve their transit asset management
practices--which is integral to keeping transit safe--and to make a
clear case for additional resources for state-of-good-repair needs
through the annual appropriations process. Our success culminated in
the inclusion of FTA's first formula-based State of Good Repair (SGR)
Formula Grant Program as part of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the
21st Century (MAP-21) Act, which is set to expire on September 30,
2014. This program was an important step forward because it provided
for the first time 2 years of predictable funding to help transit
agencies replace and rehabilitate existing assets or undertake capital
projects required to maintain their systems in a state of good repair.
The SGR formula program under MAP-21 grew by over $500 million compared
to the former fixed guideway modernization program. On the other hand,
funding for bus and bus facility replacement and repair went from $984
million under SAFETEA-LU to $428 million in MAP-21, which caused a
devastating blow to transit providers' ability to replace aging buses
and rehabilitate facilities because of a lack of funds.
FTA's Current Activities To Improve the State of Good Repair of Transit
Infrastructure
Under MAP-21, transit agencies are required to develop a transit
asset management plan to help them strike a better and more informed
balance between preservation and expansion needs--in the context of a
safety-first performance culture. To this end, FTA is actively
implementing a new National Transit Asset Management System through the
rulemaking process, supplemented by technical assistance and outreach
to grantees. This approach represents an innovative and important step
toward helping the transit industry to obtain better metrics, through
performance-based planning, which will yield a more accurate picture of
true need--and thereby enable local decision makers to allocate
resources more effectively and efficiently systemwide. An Advanced
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that aligns the transit asset management
process with the need for strengthening transit safety was published in
October 2013. FTA is now reviewing the extensive comments received and
plans to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking guided by this input
by early 2015. The purpose of a National Transit Asset Management
System is to:
Define a state of good repair.
Establish a state-of-good-repair performance measure, and
require funding recipients to set state-of-good-repair
performance targets.
Require recipients and subrecipients to develop a transit
asset management plan.
Add the reporting of capital asset inventories and
conditions to the National Transit Database.
MAP-21 provided FTA additional tools to help the transit industry
come to grips with its state-of-good-repair challenges. We fully
recognize that to address the scope and complexity of this challenge,
we need a range of policy tools at our disposal, including not only
transit asset management, but also public-private partnerships such as
the Denver Eagle project and innovative financing mechanisms, such as
the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA)
and the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing Program (RRIF).
All of these actions, taken together, reflect the U.S. Department
of Transportation's strategic commitment to address the infrastructure
deficit in a holistic fashion--and to help the industry employ better
metrics that enable them, in turn, to be better stewards of their
assets. However, under MAP-21, our efforts still do not go far enough.
The current State of Good Repair Formula Grant Program focuses on rail
and bus rapid transit (BRT) systems that are at least 7 years old. The
preservation needs of non-BRT bus services are not addressed in MAP-21.
The need for additional investments and innovative policies that
address the backlog for all bus and rail maintenance still exists, and
much more work remains to be done--as the data in the C&P Report
indicates, and as the President's FY2015 Budget and GROW AMERICA Act
proposal make clear.
2013 C&P Report Substantiates Need for Further Investment
The 2013 C&P Report, which is based on 2010 data, makes a case
rooted in facts that our Nation is falling behind on its obligation to
maintain, preserve, and protect the transit assets serving thousands of
communities nationwide today. The report finds that:
Significant funding commitments are needed. As much as
$24.5 billion in capital spending is needed per year from
FY2011-FY2030 to improve the condition of transit rail and bus
systems and support expansion to meet growing ridership needs.
This is a nearly 50 percent increase over current capital
spending levels from all government sources (Federal, State,
and local).
Removing expansion investment from the equation, we need
$18.5 billion in average annual investments (from all
government sources) during the same period just to eliminate
the current $86 billion maintenance backlog.
A minimum of $2.5 billion annually is needed just to
maintain the status quo, that is, to prevent the current
backlog from escalating further.
Our current rate of reinvestment (about $10.3 billion
from all sources) is not sufficient to reduce the backlog in
any meaningful way.
Rail systems are heavily affected by the backlog. Rail
systems collectively account for about 63 percent of the total
state-of-good-repair backlog. Some transit systems are still
operating rail cars that are over 30 years old, but the report
also highlights that over 75 percent of the need for repairs
affects other facets of transit rail infrastructure, such as
rail stations, trestles, and power substations. Indeed,
nonvehicle rail assets pose the biggest challenge to achieving
a state of good repair.
State and local governments bear the burden. State and
local governments are shouldering more than half the cost of
annual investments to preserve and grow the Nation's transit
systems. Indeed, public funds made up nearly 75 percent of
dollars expended on investments in capital projects and transit
operations in 2010, with State and local sources leading the
way.
Preventive maintenance expenditures increasingly consume
Federal grant funds. From 2000 to 2010, Federal funding for
transit operating needs increased 360 percent. More than half
of that--56 percent--was driven by capital grant funds used for
preventive maintenance needs.
A key question that arises from the C&P Report data is why the
transit maintenance backlog continues to grow, despite concerted
efforts to chip away at it over the last several years. Various factors
contribute to the continued increase, including the fact that, as
transit agencies implement asset management best practices and improve
their ability to conduct more detailed and accurate needs assessments,
their reported data reveals a more fine-grained analysis of asset
replacement needs and their costs. Additionally, the targeted
investments made in recent years to address this problem simply do not
match the depth of the infrastructure deficit overall, which has built
up over decades of underinvestment.
The Administration Remains Committed To Addressing the Infrastructure
Deficit
In his FY2015 budget request for the U.S. Department of
Transportation and the FTA, President Obama builds on the commitment
begun in MAP-21 with a request of $7.7 billion for the existing State
of Good Repair Formula Grant Program and the Bus and Bus Facilities
Grant Program. This represents an increase of $5.1 billion over the
FY2014 funding levels for these two programs.
The Administration believes, in light of the history and data
presented here and the progress made to date, that this increase is
essential to help bring our national rail transit infrastructure into a
state of good repair--while also enabling transit agencies to replace
aging buses and bus facilities. (The increase on the rail side is $3.6
billion, or 164 percent, over FY2014 enacted levels; the increase on
the bus side is $1.5 billion, or 353 percent, over FY2014 enacted
levels.)
The FY2015 budget is a downpayment on a 4-year, $302 billion
reauthorization proposal, known as the GROW AMERICA Act, which will
strengthen surface transportation nationwide. The GROW AMERICA Act
commits more than $72 billion over 4 years to address the urgent
transit challenges facing urban, suburban and rural communities. The
Act represents a nearly 70 percent increase in authorized transit
funding over MAP-21.
In keeping with the momentum of MAP-21, the GROW AMERICA Act would
provide $23 billion over 4 years (FY2015-FY2018) to continue efforts to
address the transit industry's infrastructure deficit and maintenance
backlog. By increasing the level of predictable funding for state-of-
good-repair needs, transit agencies--along with State and local
governments already shouldering more than half the cost of the annual
investments to preserve and grow the Nation's transit systems--will be
better positioned to provide safe, reliable transportation services to
meet rising demand.
In addition, to address the critical need to replace aging bus
fleets, which provide transportation to nearly half the transit riders
in America, the GROW AMERICA Act would provide $7.8 billion in formula
and discretionary funds over 4 years to ensure that communities have
the resources needed to modernize bus fleets and facilities, lower
repair bills, improve fuel efficiency, and better serve millions of
riders. Nearly 40 percent of the Nation's buses and bus facilities are
in marginal or poor condition--as the examples cited above illustrate--
and significant investment is needed to bring them into a state of good
repair. This proposal remedies an acknowledged shortfall in MAP-21 and
helps put bus fleets on the path to modernization.
In closing, the investment in public transportation's future that
we need to make is an investment in thousands of good jobs in
communities nationwide that help to strengthen middle-class families;
an investment in local economic growth and neighborhood revitalization;
an investment in reducing roadway congestion that plagues so many
metropolitan areas; an investment in lowering our dependence on foreign
oil; and an investment in helping our Nation compete with the rest of
the world as we find new and better ways to move people efficiently and
safely.
We recognize that striking an appropriate balance between growing
our transportation infrastructure to meet future demand and reinvesting
in our current system is not easy to achieve. It will require targeted
investments from all sources--Federal, State, local, and the private
sector--to make meaningful changes.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony and I would be happy to
answer any questions.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOSEPH M. CASEY
General Manager, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
May 22, 2014
Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Moran, and Members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Federal
role in bringing the Nation's public transportation infrastructure to a
state of good repair. I am Joseph Casey, General Manager of the
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA).
About SEPTA
SEPTA was formed by an act of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to
provide public transportation services to the five counties of
southeastern Pennsylvania (Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and
Philadelphia). Between 1964 and 1983, SEPTA assumed ownership and
operation of various transportation companies, including the
Philadelphia Transit Company (PTC), the Philadelphia and Western
Railroad (the P&W or Red Arrow), and a commuter railroad system from
Conrail that was originally constructed by the Pennsylvania and Reading
Railroads. Today, SEPTA is the sixth largest public transportation
operator in the country, and the largest in Pennsylvania.
SEPTA's service territory covers 2,220 square miles and four
million residents living in the five-county region, with service
extending to Trenton and West Trenton, New Jersey and Newark, Delaware.
SEPTA is a multimodal transit system which provides a vast network of
fixed-route services including 119 bus routes, two subway/subway
elevated lines, 13 Regional Rail lines, eight trolley lines, three
trackless trolley routes, an interurban high-speed rail line, and
paratransit service. SEPTA provides more than one million daily
passenger trips, and during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2013,
SEPTA recorded 337.3 million (unlinked) passenger trips. Regional Rail
ridership has increased 50 percent, over the last 15 years, with annual
ridership up from 24 million to an all-time record 36 million trips
last year. Ridership continues to grow across all modes, with average
annual increases of 1.9 percent over the last 7 years, and total annual
trips up by more than 40 million since 2006.
Our Nation's economic competitiveness and long-term prosperity rely
upon the ability of its extensive and interconnected transportation
network to safely and efficiently move people and commerce throughout
the country, and connect U.S. markets to the world. Maintaining the
infrastructure that supports the Nation's highway, transit, freight and
intercity passenger rail systems is an established national priority,
and Congress must preserve the Federal Government's 50-plus year
commitment to public transportation, and preserve and strengthen the
Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund.
Last year, Americans took 10.7 billion trips on public
transportation. Yet, at a time when transit ridership reached its
highest levels in 57 years, the industry continues to fall behind in
the investment required to bring our transit systems to a state of good
repair.
According to the 2013 Conditions and Performance Report released by
the U.S. Department of Transportation in February, the state-of-good-
repair backlog for transit systems nationwide has risen to $86
billion--an increase of $9 billion, or nearly 12 percent, since the
FTA's 2010 National State of Good Repair Assessment. This number is
projected to grow by $2.5 billion per year, and the Report states that
total spending on state of good repair from all sources must increase
by $8.2 billion per year to address this backlog.
The funding and operational pressures related to state of good
repair are particularly acute for large urban transit systems with
aging rail infrastructure. Infrastructure related to rail
transportation--track, power equipment, bridges and tunnels, stations
and vehicles--accounts for roughly three quarters of the national
transit state-of-good-repair backlog. It is important to note that
older systems--such as ours in Philadelphia--were built largely without
the benefit of Federal support.
In MAP-21, Congress responded to the rail state-of-good-repair
crisis by creating the new state-of-good-repair grant program and
increasing funding for the Nation's rail transit systems to invest in
their critical state-of-good-repair needs.
On behalf of transit riders in our region, I want to thank this
Committee for its role in making that program a reality. Creating that
program was a major goal for SEPTA and our colleagues in other regions.
In pursuit of that goal, leaders of the Nation's largest transit
systems formed in 2007 an informal group we call the Metropolitan Rail
Discussion Group (MRDG). Since 2010, I have served as Chair of MRDG.
Our basic principles include the following:
Passage of a 6-year transportation authorization with
predictable, growing sources of funding.
Increased Federal investment to modernize our Nation's
public rail transportation systems given their significant
impact on issues of national importance such as jobs, economic
development, congestion relief, and air quality.
Funding within the Federal transit program should be
prioritized according to need and with consideration of the
impact of that funding on the issues of national importance.
It is important to emphasize that first principle--a predictable
and growing source of funding. As I noted earlier, the state-of-good-
repair backlog is growing quickly at our Nation's transit systems. Our
investment, therefore, must also increase so we do not fall farther
behind.
Our experience at SEPTA demonstrates the need for investment and
the cost of not investing. Our current backlog of unmet infrastructure
needs is now more than $5 billion dollars--nearly three-quarters of
which is concentrated in SEPTA's aging rail infrastructure. SEPTA's
Regional Rail and rail transit network is extensive, and much of the
infrastructure that supports it has exceeded its useful life and
requires replacement. For example:
Much of SEPTA's Regional Rail system was originally built
in the mid-to-late-19th century. The average age of SEPTA's
railroad bridges is more than 80 years old, with 103 bridges
that are more than 100 years old.
Fifteen of SEPTA's 20 traction power substations
responsible for powering large segments of the Regional Rail
system have been in continuous operation for more than 80
years, and are still relying on technology originally developed
in the 1920s.
The Authority's 231 Silverliner IV railcars (representing
approximately two-thirds of SEPTA's Regional Rail fleet) are
nearly 40 years old. More than 150 city and suburban trolley
cars have already exceeded their 30-year useful life, and will
need to be replaced within 10 years.
Over the next decade, SEPTA will need to invest $6.5 billion--
approximately $650 million per year--just to bring the system to a
state of good repair, including:
$572 million to repair power substations and other power
infrastructure
$716 million on systemwide track and tie renewal
$1.2 billion on systemwide Regional Rail and rail transit
station rehabilitation and ADA improvements
$976 million for critical bridge replacement,
rehabilitation, and maintenance
$2 billion on rail vehicle replacement
These cost realities are further exacerbated by funding pressures
created by several unfunded Federal mandates, including Positive Train
Control (PTC), and changes included in the Passenger Rail Investment
and Improvement Act (PRIIA) that increase fees paid to Amtrak.
SEPTA made a commitment to achieving full compliance with
the PTC mandate and is on schedule to make the December 31,
2015, implementation deadline. However, in doing so, SEPTA will
ultimately divert more than $305 million away from critical
state-of-good-repair projects, including bridge and power
substation rehabilitation.
Starting in Federal Fiscal Year 2015, SEPTA's annual
capital and operating contribution requirements for rights to
operate over Amtrak territory were increased as a result of
language in PRIIA.
The cumulative effect of growing needs and level funding creates
challenges to maintaining safe and efficient transit operations. By
focusing on safety and adopting a ``fix-it-first'' approach, the
Authority has been successful in sustaining service levels and ontime
performance by directing capital resources to its most critically
deficient infrastructure. This investment approach has guided our use
of Federal funds in recent years from MAP-21 and the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Here are some examples of how we have
invested the funds Congress has made available to us:
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act--SEPTA has a strong track
record of implementing capital projects quickly, especially after being
awarded Federal funding from nontraditional sources. This is best
exemplified by SEPTA's execution of its American Reinvestment and
Recovery Act (ARRA) projects. SEPTA received $191 million in ARRA funds
and advanced 32 projects. All major construction contracts were awarded
within 1 year; and all projects were completed in less than 3 years.
Wayne Junction Regional Rail Substation--Built in 1931 for the old
Reading Railroad lines, Wayne Junction Substation is a central facility
that distributes electricity to 11 outlying substations and feeds
catenary wires for half of SEPTA's Regional Rail lines. A failure at
the Wayne Junction Substation would cause major disruption throughout
the entire regional rail network. In partnership with the City of
Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
(PennDOT), SEPTA was awarded $12.8 million in funding through the
Federal 2012 Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery
(TIGER) program for the renovation of the 80-year-old Substation. State
and local sources provided matching funding in the amount of $12.9.
Construction is underway on this critical project.
Hybrid Bus Replacement--SEPTA's current fleet of more than 1,400
buses includes 472 diesel-electric hybrid buses--approximately one-
third of the total fleet. SEPTA was successful in securing Federal
competitive grants to assist in funding its hybrid bus replacement
program. SEPTA expects to take delivery of an additional 205 hybrid
buses, continuing to make SEPTA one of the largest public transit
operators of this cleaner more efficient engine technology.
Silverliner V Railcar Procurement--SEPTA was able to leverage
former FTA Section 5309 formula funding to secure the issuance of
GARVEE Bonds that financed the purchase of 120 new Regional Rail cars
to replace cars which were more than 40 years old and exceeded their
useful life. The new railcars fully comply with American with
Disabilities (ADA) requirements and meet Federal Railroad
Administration (FRA) passenger car strength and safety requirements.
Final assembly of the new cars took place at the Hyundai-Rotem facility
in South Philadelphia where up to 300 jobs, including those of
mechanics and electricians, were created to assemble the cars. Without
a long-term Federal formula program, SEPTA would not have been able to
utilize this funding mechanism to make this important safety and
efficiency upgrade to its rail fleet.
Climate Change Adaptation Assessment Pilot Program--In 2011, SEPTA
was selected for funding as one of seven pilot projects undertaken
through the Federal Transit Administration's Climate Change Adaptation
Assessment Pilot Program. The recommendations of the FTA Pilot Program
report, which are now codified within SEPTA's ``Standard Readiness Plan
for Hurricanes'', are the foundation of SEPTA's Hurricane Sandy
Resiliency Grant application. The grant application included 15
selected projects which will reinforce power systems for critical
facilities, stabilize embankments prone to erosion, restore track
integrity, improve hydrologic conditions, and prevent infrastructure
degradation due to water infiltration. The application reflects SEPTA's
overarching goal to improve resilience against costly damage and
passenger delays, and to ensure ongoing continuity of operations, in
the event of known and emergent vulnerabilities associated with extreme
weather.
Of course, the Federal Government provides only a portion of the
funds required to maintain and improve our transit system. The
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a critical partner for us as well.
In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Corbett and bipartisan leaders in the
Pennsylvania General Assembly authored a comprehensive transportation
funding plan that provides dedicated and growing investment in the
State's transportation infrastructure. Transit infrastructure
rehabilitation was one of the cornerstones of the bill, and funding was
made available for SEPTA to begin to address its most urgent
infrastructure needs.
Our story in Pennsylvania is not unique. My colleagues in other
regions are working to address the state-of-good-repair backlog through
the resources of their own State and local governments as well. Indeed,
the DOT report referenced previously notes that in 2013, State and
local governments shouldered more than half the burden for investment
in state of good repair for public transportation. Our leaders are
doing this because they recognize the high cost of inaction.
We had to illustrate clearly the cost of inaction in order to build
support for the Pennsylvania funding plan. As the bill was being
discussed, the Authority was developing a plan that would have
realigned the SEPTA system to service levels that could be safely
supported under the constraints of persistent, long-term capital
funding shortfalls. This realignment plan was necessary because of 4
years of severely reduced capital budgets and long-range funding
uncertainty. If the plan had been implemented, more than 88,000 daily
rail passenger trips would have been eliminated over the next decade.
The congestion impacts would have been staggering.
The legislature recognized this was not a ``Chicken Little'' plan.
It was a sober look at the cost of not investing in our transportation
networks. That is a key point I want to make to this Subcommittee
today: we spend too much time focusing on the cost of Government
programs for infrastructure and not enough time focusing on the
crippling cost of NOT investing in infrastructure.
In southeastern Pennsylvania, SEPTA is the engine of the regional
and State economy, providing more than one million daily passenger
trips. SEPTA has achieved record ridership during a national economic
downturn, in spite of stagnant capital funding that has delayed
systemwide improvements, and without expanding service. This ridership
growth reveals two things: residents of southeastern Pennsylvania are
increasingly choosing public transportation as their principal mobility
option, and SEPTA's effective use of public investment is paying great
dividends in customer satisfaction and rider retention.
To understand the entire cost of not investing, though, we need to
look beyond ridership impact to the broader economic benefits of public
transportation in our major metro areas. These areas rely on public
transportation to fuel economic growth and competitiveness by
connecting employees to their jobs, allowing freight and vehicle
commuters to move on less congested highways, and providing important
mobility options for all members of the community.
While the benefits of investing in our system are mostly felt by
the people and businesses in our service area, the economic impact of
SEPTA transcends our regional boundaries.
SEPTA's capital and operating expenditures contribute $3.21 billion
in economic output, supporting nearly 26,000 jobs. Hundreds of
companies--large and small--across Pennsylvania and the country also
benefit from doing business with SEPTA. Each year, SEPTA procurement
returns hundreds of millions of dollars to the national economy,
supporting business and creating jobs. Between 2009 and 2012, SEPTA
purchased more than $1 billion in goods and services from Pennsylvania
companies, and an additional $850 million from businesses throughout
the country.
The Nation's economy is damaged when our major metro areas cease to
function efficiently as gateways for the movement of goods and people
between U.S. and international destinations. A short-term ``patch'' on
the Highway Trust Fund highway and transit accounts will not address
the crucial shortfall in investment. If Congress takes that approach--
either for 6 months, a year, or 2 years--it will be sending a signal to
State and local officials that they do not have a partner in
Washington.
Now more than ever, States need to know they have a strong and
committed Federal partner in the preservation of the Nation's
transportation infrastructure.
With all these points in mind, I urge this Subcommittee and the
full Committee to develop a plan for a multiyear public transportation
investment program with funding levels that show increases from year-
to-year to reflect the growing needs across the country. A robust and
growing state-of-good-repair program should be a centerpiece of the
national transit program.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look forward
to answering your questions.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF BEVERLY A. SCOTT
General Manager and Chief Executive Officer, Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Authority
May 22, 2014
Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Moran, and Members of the
Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify before you today on
this important issue. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is
the fifth largest transit provider in the United States, with more than
1.3 million passenger trips per day and in excess of 395 million trips
per year. The MBTA system is the original and oldest transit network in
the U.S., with the subway opening in 1897 and expanding throughout the
20th century. The commuter rail system was originally laid out in the
1830s as some of the first railroads in the U.S. Some of the MBTA bus
facilities date to the early 20th century, having been initially
designed to serve horse-drawn omnibuses. With this great history in
transit comes some of the oldest and in many cases outdated
infrastructure. Operating this important network in a State of Good
Repair (SGR) is a significant challenge for the MBTA and for which we
are heavily engaged with our Federal partners at the FTA to work with
us to keep this system operating in a safe, reliable, accessible, and
sustainable manner.
Under the leadership of Governor Patrick, Massachusetts has taken
great steps to address the growing SGR backlog that existed at the
MBTA. The backlog encompasses all those assets that are past their
useful lives and in need of investment for replacement/renewal (e.g.,
vehicles, bridges, tracks, stations, facilities, power, signal, and
communication systems, etc.). When Governor Patrick came into office in
2007, the MBTA's SGR backlog was upwards of $5 billion, with only a
small portion of that funded annually through our capital program. The
Patrick administration recognized that this issue is one that cannot be
further deferred and has taken action to implement important
transportation reforms. These reforms include employee health care,
retirement benefits, and other administrative programs that are
designed to maximize efficiencies, eliminate redundancy, incorporate
innovative technology, and focus on sustainability to bring stability
to rising transit costs and limited revenues.
After launching these comprehensive transportation reforms,
Governor Patrick proposed the Way Forward program to provide the
necessary funding for the transportation system. Governor Patrick
worked with the Massachusetts Legislature to implement strategies that
generate new State revenues dedicated to funding transportation. These
new revenues include the first increase in over 20 years of the State
gasoline tax. This increase is aligned with inflation to ensure that
the level of funding will keep pace over time. The plan was approved by
the Legislature in 2013 and will generate over $800 million in new
revenue for transportation, which, when leveraged, will support $2.6
billion to address the MBTA's SGR backlog over the next decade. The Way
Forward Program provides reliable and predictable revenue to address
the most pressing needs of the MBTA, which include new vehicles,
upgraded track, electric traction power, signal and communications
improvements as well as investments in bridges and facilities.
While focusing on the present, the Governor has continued to look
toward the future by investing in new projects. One notable project is
the Green Line Extension, which we anticipate will receive a 50 percent
funding grant from the FTA's New Starts Program. This transformative
project will bring transportation, land use, environmental and economic
development benefits to areas currently under served by transit.
The MBTA has allocated funding with a focus on safety, security,
and service reliability. We have also focused our investments to create
secondary benefits, such as promoting private commercial and
residential development at transit stations. We have also focused on
developing infrastructure that will consume less energy, investments to
make the system more accessible to people with disabilities and to an
aging population, and making the system more resilient to extreme
storms and the oncoming effects of climate change.
Additionally, the MBTA has changed the way we make decisions on
future investments, and implemented systems to track and measure those
investments. We have developed tools to focus our long term capital
investment decisions, including a strong asset management program and
SGR database. Consistent with MAP-21, we have integrated an overall
focus on investment outcomes, using performance metrics and other tools
to measure the value of investments.
It is important not to lose site of the nexus between our SGR and a
skilled future workforce. We need to ensure that tomorrow's workers
have the skills and training necessary to build, install and maintain
this equipment, such as signals and communications, power systems,
engineering, information technology and the other fields that we will
rely on even more in the future to build and maintain this
infrastructure.
The MBTA recognizes the need for fiscal responsibility when it
comes to funding our SGR backlog. We anticipate spending nearly $6
billion over the next 5 years, with more than 60 percent of those funds
being local funds. Despite the significant local investment, there is a
critical need--particularly for older rail agencies--for a strong and
robust Federal investment in SGR. As we face record-high transit
ridership on increasingly aging systems, reaffirming the Federal
commitment to the millions of Americans who ride public transportation
is more essential than ever. Transit agencies across the country see an
increased need for vigorous Federal funding in the next surface
transportation authorization bill given that Federal investment in
transportation is an investment in American jobs, American communities,
American strategies to address climate change and American economic
competitiveness.
Delivering safe, reliable, and accessible public transit has always
been a partnership between public sector agencies at all levels of
government working with communities and stakeholders. While the MBTA
and many other transit agencies have made significant investments using
local funds, a reliable and predictable level of Federal funding is
needed if we are going to seriously address the significant SGR backlog
faced by transit agencies such as the MBTA. We are hopeful that this
Congress, through its upcoming Transportation Reauthorization Bill, can
begin to address this critical need by supporting the funding levels
that were proposed in the Administration's reauthorization proposal.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify and I am happy to take
any questions you may have.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF GARY THOMAS
President and Executive Director, Dallas Area Rapid Transit
May 22, 2014
Thank you Mr. Chairman. My name is Gary Thomas and I am the
President/Executive Director of Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART). DART
was created on August 13, 1983, when North Texans in and around the
city of Dallas voted to commit 1 percent local sales taxes to fund
public transportation. Today DART is a multimodal transit agency
operating North America's longest light rail system in the fourth
largest metropolitan area in the United States. DART provided
approximately 2.3 million people inside its 13 city, 700-square mile
service area with around 107 million total transit trips in FY2013
through our bus, light rail, commuter rail, HOV, Paratransit, and Van
Pool programs.
State of Good Repair Is a DART Priority
As DART continues maturing as a transit operator, a significant
portion of the agency's expenses will shift to the maintenance and
replacement of infrastructure and vehicles. In fact, approximately 73
percent of DART's capital spending over the next 20 years is dedicated
to State-of-Good-Repair (SGR) projects. This is due to an agency
policy--in place since our creation--that mandates we balance the
expenses of operations, asset management, and capital expansion through
a 20-Year Financial Plan.
The financial planning parameters provide the foundation for the
ongoing balance and recalibration of capital systems expansion,
operating costs, and asset condition and replacement. This has allowed
DART to meet the challenge of both maintaining the operational
readiness of our current assets while meeting our commitments to the
region for further expansion of the transportation network. Between
2001 and 2010, DART doubled its light rail system twice, despite a
regional economy that was experiencing double-digit unemployment and
flat or lesser sales tax revenue. In other words, the expansion was
carried out, and infrastructure maintained, with no growth in the
source that represents approximately 75 percent of the agency's annual
revenue.
Even amidst the worst national economic crisis since the Great
Depression, DART has been fortunate to continue to move forward with
major capital projects by following the guidance of its financial plan
developed by these sound planning parameters. The 28-mile Green Line,
which received a $700 million Full Funding Grant Agreement under the
Federal Transit Administration's New Starts program in 2006, was
completed and in revenue service by late 2010. Additionally, both the
Orange Line and Blue Line extensions were completed and in revenue
service in 2012. Improving local economic conditions and the success of
our multiyear financial and budgetary initiatives have made possible
the acceleration by three years of the South Oak Cliff Blue Line
extension to the University of North Texas-Dallas campus. Finally, DART
is currently replacing our entire bus fleet with new compressed natural
gas fueled vehicles. This began in the fall of 2012 and will be
complete in 2016.
The DART Approach to State of Good Repair
DART has well over 15 years of asset condition assessment
experience. The commitment to a regular interval of assessment by a
trained team of internal assessors has provided DART with sound
comparative data to determine adequacy of our long range financial,
maintenance, and asset replacement plans.
One of the key elements of DART's SGR program is the Asset
Condition Study. The goals of this regularly scheduled asset assessment
are: to obtain high level assessment of the inventory of assets;
provide comparative results to previous assessments; ensure rate of
physical degradation is consistent with plan; validate maintenance and
financial plans are aligned with assessment results; and support
adjustment of maintenance and financial plans where necessary. Included
in any successful SGR program is the assessment of technology and
reconciling the need for its replacement due to obsolescence.
In addition, DART's capital program request process employs a
multidimensional assessment of each project request based on industry
standard risk analysis concepts modified to consider factors of
financial and operational risk, as well as, customer risk/benefits.
This multidimensional analysis is used to prioritize each project
request and is particularly useful in times of volatile funding levels
like those experienced over the past decade. DART is currently
evaluating software which allows for modeling of the various future
program requirements against differing future revenue streams to aid
leadership team decisions going forward.
Lessons learned from this experience include, but are not limited
to: using consistent process and scoring systems; documentation of the
method of data capture, storage and analysis of the data; and, analysis
of assets from an overall subgroup perspective.
MAP-21 SGR Policy Implementation
Even before the enactment of MAP-21, which made SGR national
transit policy, DART has worked side-by-side with the FTA and our
transit industry partners to improve the understanding and practice of
transit asset management. In its 2010 National State of Good Repair
Assessment, the FTA found that more than 40 percent of bus assets and
25 percent of rail transit assets were in marginal or poor condition.
Additionally, there is an estimated backlog of $50 to $80 billion in
deferred maintenance and replacement needs, of which the vast majority
is rail related. This backlog continues to grow at a rate of
approximately $3.5B annually.
The enactment of MAP-21 places the requirement on transit agencies
to prepare a Transit Asset Management Plan. Transit agency customers,
policy makers, and public agencies are holding agency management
accountable for performance and increasingly expect more business-like
management practices. The magnitude of capital needs, performance
expectations, and increased accountability requires transit agency
managers to enhance their approach to asset management.
To advance the practice of transit asset management, the FTA
created the ``Asset Management Guide''. This guide provides a transit
specific asset management framework for managing assets individually
and as a portfolio of assets that comprise an integrated system. The
guide provides flexible, yet targeted guidance to advance the practice
and implementation of transit asset management.
MAP-21 made SGR national policy and the FTA has sought comments
from industry partners through the administrative rulemaking process.
DART believes the Federal Government should allow the FTA to implement
the policy as mandated by MAP-21, and allow the industry time to adjust
to the new policies as implemented, prior to making any major policy
revisions in a new surface transportation bill.
The Need for a Core Capacity Program
State of Good Repair. Capital investments are not always about
system additions or expansions. DART has significantly increased light
rail infrastructure over the past 10 years, we have also increased our
SGR obligations to maintain and replace those assets. DART's current
light rail system configuration merges all rail lines (Red, Blue,
Orange, and Green) within Dallas' Central Business District. As a
consequence of heavy use and growth of the light rail system since DART
first began light rail operations in 1996, the track condition along
this 1.25-mile long rail corridor has deteriorated more quickly than
DART had previously anticipated.
Coupled with the rapid growth of the light rail system and
passenger loads reaching approximately 100,000 passengers per day, we
have determined that to maintain a State of Good Repair, the rail in
our downtown core will need to be replaced within the next 2 years,
well ahead of what was previously thought to be its useful life. This
project, which directly impacts the ongoing reliability of the existing
network, will require an investment approaching $45 to $50 million, and
funding has been provided within the FY2014 Budget and 20-Year
Financial Plan.
Core Capacity. While DART will continue to aggressively invest
annually to ensure a SGR, we recognize the need for a program designed
to provide congestion relief and help address capacity needs of a rail
corridor. Let me be very clear, DART is a strong advocate for a
federally funded core capacity program and very interested in
preserving it as a part of the Capital Investment Program as authorized
by MAP-21. DART has been developing a core capacity strategy that could
be advanced through the FTA Capital Investment Program. This strategy
develops a program of interrelated projects which will be critical to
respond to continued high regional growth trends, demands for system
accessibility, expansion of new rail corridors outside our Service
Area, and the development of a privately funded high speed rail system
between Dallas and Houston, which is anticipated to open in 2021.
The DART Board of Directors is currently in the process of
initiating a long-range (2040) system plan update to outline future
capital programs in addition to the core capacity program of
interrelated projects. This update will strive to meet future regional
growth expectations. In order for our system to fully integrate and
accommodate the expected passenger demand, DART will need to advance
both a second light rail alignment in the Dallas central business
district and extend many of its current station platforms along the Red
and Blue lines to accommodate longer trains. These projects will
increase the core capacity of our system and enable it to be more
sustainable and flexible in the long-term. Both of these projects are
typical of core capacity needs not only in Dallas but across the
country. We need a strong Federal core capacity program to support our
efforts.
As our ridership continues to grow, we will be operating near or in
excess of our physical capacity, and above a level that provides
acceptable passenger comfort and convenience. Without significant
capital investment to expand the core capacity of the system, it is
likely that DART will be unable to address growing demands in a fashion
suitable to our customers and stakeholders.
Conclusion
With the enactment of MAP-21 in 2012, the Federal Government
identified the need for sound financial planning and asset management
practices throughout the transit industry. The FTA estimated in its
2010 National State of Good Repair Assessment that the Nation's transit
systems have a state-of-good-repair backlog of almost $78 billion in
deferred maintenance and replacement needs. DART has worked diligently
with the FTA, other key transportation authorities, and the American
Public Transportation Association to craft national guidelines for this
Federal policy based substantially on the practices DART has employed
since its inception in 1983. MAP-21 also created a specific ``State of
Good Repair'' grant program to help fund this mandate. DART recommends
the continuation and growth of the program in the next surface
transportation authorization.
Finally, DART supports any and all efforts made by the Federal
Government to provide more stable funding to support national
transportation programs. DART applauds the bipartisan leadership of the
Senate Environment and Works Committee for its 6-year highway bill and
we look forward to working with the Banking Committee as it develops
its transit title in the next bill. Toward that end, we appreciate the
leadership of Transportation Secretary Foxx in the proposed ``GROW
America'' legislation and hope the Committee will give it
consideration, as well as the recommendations of the American Public
Transportation Association, as you draft the transit title. Stable,
predictable, and dedicated transit funding is critical to DART
services. The most relevant challenge to DART's financial approach has
been the volatility in the predictability of future revenues. DART
relies heavily on transit formula funds, which are used to purchase
rail cars and buses, improve maintenance and passenger facilities, as
well as rebuild vehicles, track, and signalization systems. These funds
also put decision making in the hands of local officials, allowing for
focused investment where it is needed most in order to maintain
passenger safety and improve efficiency.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the 3,700 employees at
DART, I would like to thank you for the opportunity you have given me
here today. I stand ready to answer any questions you or any of the
other Members of the Subcommittee may have.
Additional Material Supplied for the Record
STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY LEANNE P. REDDEN, ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
CHICAGO REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]