During a House Transportation Committee hearing last week, Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) questioned witnesses about improving transit around the country and attacks on transit workers.
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NewsTranscript
00:00and I yield back. The gentleman yields, Ms. Titus.
00:04Well, thank you very much. MJ, I was proud to join you and the Federal Transit Administration
00:10when we announced the $150 million that we got from the bipartisan infrastructure law
00:16for the Maryland Parkway Corridor. Thank you for mentioning that.
00:20I've represented that area for 11 years. It goes right through the heart of the district,
00:24right through the heart of the valley. People are going to school, they're going to the hospital,
00:28they're going to the airport, they're going downtown, they're going to work on the strip.
00:34It's an amazing corridor. I can go on and on about it, but you're the representative from APTA,
00:40not just from RTC. So could you speak to the value of the CIG program for improving and providing
00:48transit options for people all over the country? Congressman, I just have to acknowledge that you
00:55know more about your district than I. It's impressive. You are right. Actually, Maryland
00:59Parkway, the BRT, without that $150 million investment, that was a match. We came up with
01:06our local match in order to receive that funding. It was a competitive grant. Your hard work helped
01:11us deliver on that. It is serving one of the busiest corridors in Nevada. It is going to
01:18revitalize the entire area, enhanced shelters, shade structures, wider sidewalks, better lighting.
01:28The CIG program is critical for ensuring that you can not only improve your existing service,
01:35but also expand and modernize. That's exactly the CIG program that transit systems around
01:40the United States are looking to use it for, again, is to expand and or improve. The FTA
01:48has more requests than they have funding available. The CIG program, the BIL, both are oversubscribed
01:54to a certain degree. Again, more transit systems need the resources than there are funding
01:59available. So it's critically important as a way to ensure that we are expanding, growing,
02:05modernizing, and improving the services that we have in our communities today.
02:09Well, thank you. Thank you for doing that. I want to talk about the attacks on transit workers.
02:15We see that increasingly. It's been mentioned. I know that the FTA has approved a general
02:21directive on transit worker assaults. Mr. Reagan, can you address that? Do you support this directive?
02:28Are there other things that Congress could do to help develop that policy or protect these people
02:34who are on the front lines and really have no control over who might get on their bus, especially?
02:41Yeah, thank you. And yes, we very much support the rule that was released just a month ago. In fact,
02:47I was happy to go join the FTA in Indianapolis for the rollout of this rule. As I mentioned
02:54earlier, I think how effective it's going to be is going to depend on the full buy-in of the
03:00agencies across the country about how seriously they're going to take these safety committees
03:04and how readily they're going to embrace their unions and their workers as partners and as
03:10valuable resources and assets in terms of developing policies that will protect both
03:14their employees as well as passengers in these systems. Some of the violence that you see on
03:19buses is between passengers, not the passenger and the bus driver, but they have to take some
03:25responsibility there and often get involved in that. That is absolutely right. And again, the
03:31workers, the bus drivers are the ones who see where these tripwires are, where you have the
03:36problems, where the potential conflicts arise from. And so their insight in terms of how we
03:40can try to address this through policy, through design, through fare services, all of that,
03:46you know, the worker voice needs to be part of it because they are the ones who see all
03:49of this stuff going down. They're the ones who can help identify where the risk factors are.
03:54Ms. Maynard, do you all, from your side of things, work with your bus drivers and people on the
04:00front lines to come up with this policy? Absolutely. You know, you've got to go to where
04:05the experts are, boots on the ground, if you will. When we make those decisions, and not just we, RTC,
04:10but the industry itself is very involved in ensuring that, again, the partnership with
04:16your employees, the partnership with law enforcement, the partnership with social services,
04:21it all matters. You can't make a decision in this silo. And so understanding what the drivers need,
04:27and the passengers too. We talk to the passengers to understand what they need to feel more safe.
04:31But certainly, we could not do, we have not only RTC, but systems around the United States
04:38have those regular meetings, safety meetings, where they talk to the drivers and the operators,
04:42what can we do to support you? So it is a partnership in addressing something,
04:47again, that's very complex. Just as a quick aside, one of the programs you have with the buses
04:53in Las Vegas, that I think is great, is in conjunction with the public libraries. So that
04:58when you get on the bus, you can connect to the public library, you can read, you can hear music,
05:03you can browse the catalog, that keeps maybe riders occupied. That's right, we have a library
05:09on the go, you can download a library book or music when you're writing our system. It's great.
05:13Thank you.