(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Frederic J. Frommer on November 22.)
WASHINGTON — With Democrats taking control of Congress, Rep. Jim Oberstar is set to become chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The Minnesota Democrat has served as the panel’s ranking minority member for more than a decade.
Oberstar, the longest-serving member of the Minnesota congressional delegation, has a long history in transportation issues. Before becoming a congressman, he worked in the early 1970s as the top staff member of the House Public Works Committee, the precursor to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Oberstar spoke with The Associated Press this week about his priorities for the committee, which include more funding for Amtrak and possibly new high-speed rail lines serving the Midwest.
Q. First off, tell me how it feels to take the reigns of the committee.
A. It’s a good feeling. I’m ready. … During these years of service in the minority, I began to understand how Moses felt wandering in the desert. But the day after the election, I felt more like his lieutenant, Joshua, who led the Israelites into the Promised Land.
Q. You’ve said you’d like to see more funding for Amtrak. Tell me why you think this is a priority, and how much of an increase you’d like to see.
A. My view of transportation is that it must be balanced. That means supporting each mode to the fullest to accomplish its unique role in our overall mosaic of transportation. …
With that as a background my purpose is not to favor one over another, but to more fully develop the unique role that each mode brings: international maritime shipping, the inland waterways, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system, freight rail, passenger rail, transit, highways, aviation. Each has a unique role to play, and we have to nurture those modes to get the best out of them.
And Amtrak is a critical part of our national transportation mosaic. … And it has been desperately underfunded for the purposes for which it was intended – that is, to move passengers at sustainable speeds on dependable schedules.
We have to find a way to achieve that goal of high-quality, intercity passenger rail service. The French have done it, Germany has done it, Spain, Japan have done it. … Look at what the Chinese have done. They have just completed a rail line from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet, with pressurized rail cars operating at altitudes in excess of 12,000 feet. …
Why are we lagging behind? Because we have not exhibited the will to make the investments necessary to raise the standard for Amtrak to a world-class level.
Q. Do you have a sense of what you’d like Amtrak to realistically look like – for example, how fast these trains could run?
A. There are several Amtraks. You have the Northeast Corridor; you have the southern route; the high western route; and then you have the highly successful system in California. Each of those has to be looked at in its unique perspective.
On the East Coast, you have to think Washington, D.C., to Boston in about four hours. … We ought to be able to do 125 mph average speed in that corridor.
Q. How much funding is necessary, and where would you get the funding?
A. You don’t do it all in one bite, and you prioritize the capital investments to those that are going to yield the greatest short-term immediate benefit. And you have a short-term and long-term investment plan. And it’s going to come out of general revenue. We have to program for it.
Q. Do you have any sense of what it would cost?
A. I don’t have that figure. We’ve had so many numbers thrown out over the years, that I think we need a new assessment of cost.
Q. Will you commission studies on how you go about doing this?
A. Yeah, we have to get some realistic figures that are dependable, workable, and decide, do you want 90 mph speed? That gives you one set of investments. You want 125 mph speed with two-a-day express service? That gives you another set of investments.
Q. Earlier this year, you talked about developing high-speed rail lines connecting Midwest cities – either run by Amtrak or someone else. Is that something you’re still interested in doing?
A. Very much … You could establish, for example, rail service from St. Louis to Chicago in roughly 2 1/2 hours, where a passenger could buy a rail ticket to Chicago, continuing to (London’s) Heathrow Airport. Your bags would be screened, checked, sealed in baggage compartments in St. Louis. The train would take you right into the O’Hare (International Airport) air terminal, and you move directly on to your flight. …
Q. Would this be all federal funds, or would states participate as well?
A. There can be a combination – there have been many proposals for financing it. State participation with the federal government, some sort of a revenue bond proposal. It hasn’t gone past the conceptual stage. And I’d like to bring a group together who could flesh this idea out, put some financing proposals together, find ways to make a project of this nature happen. The more rail service we can provide on short-haul operations, the better it is for aviation, which can concentrate on what it does best – long-haul service. …
Q. Talk about some of your plans to improve port security.
A. I think we should have a revenue stream for port security as we have for aviation security. … We’re doing very little in the way of screening of containers, when we should be pushing the security border further out from United States, as we do in aviation. …
What we should have is perhaps a one-time security fee of $50 or so per container. Those containers generally hold $200,000 worth of goods, weigh generally 20 tons. A $50 – even $100 – fee would be minimal. …
The worst nightmare is a device located in one of those containers blowing up not just in the port city but at some other point in the U.S. where that container is destined. …
Q. What kind of areas do you plan to do oversight hearings on?
A. Oh, there’s a lot of work to be done in oversight. … First off, we have to look at maintenance in aviation. The tendency of airlines to contract out their maintenance to third-party providers, and to change their provider from time to time when they get a lower-cost bid, means that aircraft maintenance is at risk. Is FAA devoting sufficient personnel to overseeing the work of third-party maintenance providers – both at home and abroad?
Q. Any others?
A. On highway safety, we should review the effectiveness of state programs to implement the very substantial funds that we’ve allocated for state safety programs. The fatality rate is increasing. … I think we have to have a good assessment of programs that states are implementing to reduce the incidence of alcohol and drugs in highway fatalities and accidents.