Frank Lautenberg: “If we keep that focus in mind, I think we can help our country achieve some of the goals that we need to examine. Look…”

“If we keep that focus in mind, I think we can help our country achieve some of the goals that we need to examine. Look at the conditions that have overtaken America--I will use that word--and look back at the population. In 1970--1971, when AMTRAK was taken over as a quasi-public corporation, the country had 200 million people. Now, barely 35 years later, we have 300 million in this country of ours. Imagine, 100 million more people, and we are still depending on a rail system that was largely developed far earlier than the 1970s. I think Senator Lott was absolutely right when he spoke about our need to bring the aviation system up to date as well. We have narrowed the separation between airplanes to one thousand feet vertically. That is not designed to scare anybody because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can handle it, but the FAA does say we are squeezing whatever spare air we have to fill the airspace. When we look at the lighter jets coming into service, it is expected that there will be some 5,000 new very light jets in the sky in the next 10 years.”