David Price: “I thank my colleague for yielding. I am happy to offer support for her amendment and to take advantage of the…”

“I thank my colleague for yielding. I am happy to offer support for her amendment and to take advantage of the opportunity this offers to say something about the BUILD program. Mr. Chair, it is unique, as our colleague has stressed. It provides the kind of flexible funding to States and localities that can address complex multimodal projects. My district has benefited greatly from this. The city of Raleigh has successfully built Union Station, a state-of-the-art rail and public transit facility that is already transforming that area of downtown. Unfortunately, despite the diverse set of eligible projects, the current administration has heavily favored road projects only when awarding BUILD grants. This has most significantly affected transit. On average, it received about 32 percent of the awards during the previous administration. Under the Trump administration, this has plummeted to less than 10 percent, and at the same time, the Department has completely abandoned bicycle and pedestrian improvement projects and actually eliminated this as an option for primary project type for years 2017 and 2018. So, the underlying bill provides $1 billion for BUILD--that is a $100 million increase--but it places greater emphasis on investments in transit, passenger rail, pedestrian improvements, and multimodal projects.…”