Frank Lautenberg: “this transportation bill comes before the Senate and before the Congress at a very sensitive moment in our discussions…”

“this transportation bill comes before the Senate and before the Congress at a very sensitive moment in our discussions and deliberations here. The image of TWA Flight 800 is fresh in our mind. We all now grieve with those who lost loved ones, horrified at the shock that families, in some cases, lost two or three members of the family. One man lost his wife and two children. We can hardly comprehend the pain and the anguish that must go with something like that. What an odd coincidence that at the moment we are considering how much money we spend on transportation, including safety in the air and safety in other modes of transportation, we face a time when, again, we wish that we could have done more, if it was possible, to prevent something like that. I think it is important as we consider what the investment is going to be in transportation infrastructure in our society we not lose sight of what took place on that fateful day when TWA 800 went down. But we also cannot easily forget the ValuJet crash, the problem with the Delta Air Lines airplane as it was taking off and the mother and child were killed even though the airplane never got into the air; the engine disintegrated and tore into the fuselage. We, unfortunately, can recall an accident in New Jersey and an accident in Maryland on the rails when Amtrak, in the Maryland instance, and, in New Jersey, the New Jersey Transit Co. lost people as a result of a crash.”