Senator Harry Reid
Opening Statement
Hearing
on Freight Transportation and Intermodal Facilities
Monday,
September 9, 2002
Welcome to
today’s hearing on freight transportation issues. I am pleased to co-chair this hearing with Senator Breaux and the
Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine he
chairs. Solving America’s freight and
passenger transportation problems will require a comprehensive, intermodal, and
flexible approach. Jurisdiction over
surface transportation programs is divided between the Environment and Public
Works Committee, the Banking Committee, and the Commerce Committee, and we will
have to closely coordinate our efforts.
This joint hearing is an important example of that cooperation, and I
look forward to working closely with Senator Breaux and our other partners
throughout the TEA-21 reauthorization process.
In addition to
working with the Commerce and Banking Committees on policy issues, I intend to
work closely with the Finance, Budget, and Appropriations Committees on funding
issues. While we have a lot of
important policy work ahead of us, we cannot begin to address the significant
problems facing our nation’s surface transportation system without adequate
funding. Each of these Committees will
be an important partner in our efforts to secure the additional funding and
budget protection necessary to write a transportation bill that addresses our
nation’s significant highway, transit, and rail infrastructure needs.
One particular
funding need that we will address at our hearing today is freight
transportation. The efficient
transportation of freight is essential to our nation’s economic growth and
global competitiveness. Nearly 10
trillion dollars worth of freight is transported each year on our roads,
railroads, and waterways. We depend on
our transportation system to get everything -- from food and other agricultural
products to consumer goods to construction materials to coal -- to its
destination.
Freight
transportation is expected to double in the next twenty years, as the economy
grows and international trade increases.
This growth in freight traffic will vastly outpace the growth of our
road and rail systems and threatens to overwhelm our transportation
infrastructure.
Already, key
bottlenecks exist at road and rail connections to major U.S. seaports, at border
crossings with Canada and Mexico, and in metropolitan areas where roads and
rail infrastructures are stretched beyond their capacity.
This next
transportation bill will have to address these capacity issues and improve
access to intermodal facilities if we are to keep our economy moving and
maintain our leadership in international trade.
In addition, we
must address operational issues that impact the reliability of our
transportation system. Intelligent
Transportation Systems will play a crucial role in improving the reliability of
our transportation infrastructure and ensuring the flow of up-to-the-minute
information to users and managers.
We are
fortunate to have a number of distinguished witnesses with us today to provide
our Committees with insights into the freight challenges we face and, we hope,
some proposed solutions to these problems.
One witness I
would like to particularly thank for making the trip to be here is Katie
Dusenberry, who chairs the Arizona State Transportation Board. Ms. Dusenberry will be testifying on an
issue that is of vital importance to my state and the entire Southwestern
region -- the closure of the Hoover Dam to truck traffic due to post-September
11th security concerns.
As a result of
the closure of the Hoover Dam bridge to freight traffic, over 2,100 trucks per
day are now detoured 23 miles or more.
To address this problem, the states of Arizona and Nevada are working
together, and with the Federal government, to build a Hoover Dam Bypass
Bridge. This bridge is essential to
freight movements on the CANAMEX corridor and is a top priority for my
state. The Department of Interior has
identified the Hoover Dam bypass project as its number one national security
priority.
I am pleased
that Ms. Dusenberry has joined us to provide her expert testimony on this
project.
Again, thank you to all of our witnesses for your participation today. Our first panel will consist of Associate Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Shane, who is also the Director of the Office of Intermodalism, and Jay Etta Hecker from the U.S. General Accounting Office. Thank you for agreeing to be with us today and I look forward to your testimony.