Tom Carper: “the bill before us is the Amtrak reauthorization bill. Each year it seems we find ourselves fighting increasing gridlock…”

“the bill before us is the Amtrak reauthorization bill. Each year it seems we find ourselves fighting increasing gridlock on our highways, whether it is Iowa, Delaware, New Hampshire, or Vermont. We face growing threats of smog in our skies, polluted air, crowded conditions at our Nation's airports, and financial challenges facing our aviation industry. If we don't broaden our investment in transportation infrastructure across our Nation, we are headed for a crisis. Each year an outfit called the Texas Transportation Institute releases something they call the Urban Mobility Report. It continues to show traffic congestion growing across our Nation in cities of all sizes, consuming more hours of the day and affecting more travelers and shipments of goods than ever before. The annual financial cost of traffic congestion has ballooned. In 1982 it was about $14 billion; today, $78 billion. There is a personal cost as well--the time lost to traffic. The same Urban Mobility Report quantifies this loss at 4.2 billion lost hours. That is not commuting time. This is just sitting in traffic not going anywhere, 4.2 billion lost hours and almost 3 billion gallons of wasted fuel. That is the equivalent on the one hand of 105 million weeks of people's lives and 58 fully loaded supertankers. Rail remains the most underdeveloped opportunity to reshape our national transportation network.”