“Maybe these are the same cynics or skeptics that existed when Eisenhower signed the Interstate Bill,” says LaHood. “Fifty years later we have a state-of-the-art Interstate system.
“Maybe they’re the same people that were around when Lincoln got the freight rail system going, the railroad system going in America. Look at what we have today. We have a great freight rail system. Class 1 freight rails are doing very well; they bring a lot of goods around America.”
“When they started building the Interstate system, they built it in sections, it wasn’t necessarily connected,” LaHood says. “They didn’t know where all of the lines were going to be, they didn’t know where all the money was going to come from, but they knew this, if they built it, the people would use it. If you build high-speed rail, Americans will use it.”
Though they didn’t know exactly where all the routes were going or where every last bit of funding was coming from, Eisenhower set a goal. Through 10 administrations and 28 sessions of Congress, they got it done.
“It didn’t make a difference who the president or members of Congress were,” LaHood says. “What made a different is the American people kept prodding and making sure that whoever the president was, whoever the congressmen were, they carried out this vision. That’s what we’re asking now; carry out the vision for high-speed rail.”
And he said they’re telling Congress to not be dissuaded from doing anything because we’re in tough times. At the USHSR conference he reminded the audience that as a nation, we’ve invested in big things when times were good and when times are tough.
“We built the Trans-Continental Railroad; we connected the coasts during the bloodiest war in American history,” he said. “Abraham Lincoln’s vision.
“We built the Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge during the Great Depression. We built the Interstate Highway System through decades of stagflation.” He said, “These are the transportation projects that made America the greatest country in the world; we’re the envy of the world when it comes to our freight rail system and our highway system. These are projects that make our life and our way of life and our commerce possible.”
He continued, “Our parents and grandparents sacrificed and they struggled courageously so we might have a chance to lead the life that we do by building a rail network. We can pay back our debt to them and we can give to our children and grandchildren the opportunity to connect to a new century of opportunity, a new century of transportation, the next generation of transportation.
“We want to put Americans to work; let’s put them to work building the high-speed rail.”
LaHood said, “Without a modern, up-to-date high-speed rail system, we will not do what our ancestors did for us, which is to take us to the next generation of transportation. That’s what we have to keep in mind.
America’s Aging Infrastructure
When I met with LaHood at the DOT offices and at the USHSR conference, LaHood stressed that the investment in infrastructure and high-speed rail he’s looking for isn’t about status quo.
“Between Kentucky and Ohio they just closed a bridge because it was not safe for people,” he says. “Thousands of people travel that bridge and our people are out there right now inspecting the bridge, trying to figure out what it will cost to fix it up.”
This is one illustration of the unmet needs in America’s infrastructure. “The bridge is an important infrastructure for people to get back and forth across the river to go to work and go to church and go to school or whatever. But it’s closed.” He says, “That’s symbolic of the crumbling infrastructure in America and we need to do what other Congress’ have done; we need to do what other administrations have done.”
As for transit funding, LaHood says they’ve listened to transit officials around the county and enabled them to use part of the money that they have for operating. “Currently we allow transit systems to use up to 10 percent for operating, but in our legislation,” he says, “we talk about a formula that would allow them to use 25-15 and then ultimately, based on what the economy looks like, maybe a lesser percentage.