James Oberstar: “This project moves us further in the direction of advancing the cause of transit in our national transportation…”

“This project moves us further in the direction of advancing the cause of transit in our national transportation intermodal system. Transit is the fastest growing sector of the transportation in America. We are adding 1 million new transit riders a day last year, for 375 million new transit trips, for 10.5 billion transit trips in America. At a time in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, New York accounted for over 60 percent of all transit trips in America. No longer. New York's share is down somewhere around 39 percent because the rest of the Nation is catching up and accelerating its use of transit. In fact, if we could, as is done in Europe, have a mode shift of 10 percent of all trips taken for all purposes by transit, in America we would save 550 million barrels of oil a year, and that is the amount we import from Saudi Arabia. The move to transit is inexorable; it is a necessary part of our overall balanced transportation system in America, and in this intensely populated area of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Metro Rail Project will make an enormous contribution to mobility and to savings in fuel consumption in America.”