Rep. Payne, Jr. Holds Hearing to Discuss Increased Intercity Passenger Rail Service   

Washington, D.C. — Rep. Donald M. Payne, Jr., Chairman of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, chaired a hearing today to discuss how the new Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) will allow an unprecedented national expansion of intercity passenger rail.  The hearing, titled “Leveraging IIJA: Plans for Expanding Intercity Passenger Rail,” examined how Amtrak and other passenger railroads could use the funding from the new law to increase service to urban communities and how the funding could create millions of good-paying jobs.

“The new infrastructure law makes historic investments in our nation’s rail system,” said Rep. Donald M. Payne, Jr.  “But there are still too many urban and rural communities that lack access to that system.  I held this hearing to learn how the funding from this new law can be used to expand access into those communities.  As Chairman of the Rail Subcommittee, I am committed to increasing the number of Americans who can use America’s rail system.”

The Subcommittee heard from six different witnesses who talked about how the funding from the new law could be used to expand the rail system into more American communities.  Then they discussed the methods to build the new rail lines.  A few witnesses said they would have expanded earlier, but they lacked the funding to do so.  The witnesses were Stephen Gardner, President of Amtrak; David Kim, Secretary of the California State Transportation Agency; Kevin Corbett, President and CEO of New Jersey Transit; Julie White, Deputy Secretary for Multimodal Transportation for the North Carolina Department of Transportation; Donna DeMartino, Managing Director of the Los Angeles-San Diego- San Luis Obispo Rail Corridor Agency; and Knox Ross, Mississippi Commissioner and Chair of the Southern Rail Commission.

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