During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) spoke about $50 million in railroad grants.
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00:00Senator Duckworth. Thank you, Chairman Cruz. Gentlemen, the Chicago Hub Improvement Program,
00:06or CHIP, is a once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-generation transformative project that will enhance rail
00:12service across the Midwest and across the nation. It will improve service in Minnesota, Wisconsin,
00:17Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri, not just in Illinois, which is why there is bipartisan support
00:22for it. CHIP is making critical investments in rail infrastructure and facilities that will
00:27upgrade connectivity, enhance accessibility, reduce travel times, improve safety, and support good
00:32paying jobs. Chicago is Amtrak's busiest station outside of the Northeast region, and more than
00:3950 percent of Amtrak's long-distance services travel through Chicago Union Station, and trains that
00:45begin or end in Chicago Union Station make up more than 90 percent of Amtrak's services outside the
00:50East and West Coast. In 2023, the FRA awarded Amtrak nearly $50 million from the Federal-State
00:56Partnership for Inter-City Passenger Rail to improve passenger rail efficiency at Chicago
01:01Union Station to benefit the national rail network. Mr. Fink, if you are confirmed, will
01:06you commit to working with Amtrak to ensure that all of those awarded funds get delivered
01:10to CHIP without undue delay? Thank you for the question, Senator. I enjoyed sitting and going
01:15over many of the issues we talked about around Chicago. I am not, right now, up to speed on that. I am going to,
01:22if confirmed, when I get down and hit the ground running and sit down and talk about these issues
01:27when I get to FRA, if confirmed, and we can get to the bottom of the issues that you came up with in the
01:32meetings I've had. If there are no issues, will you confirm that, will you ensure that all these
01:37awarded funds will get delivered without undue delay? If there's no issues, yes. All right, thank you.
01:41Furthermore, Mr. Fink, Chicago is a national hub for freight rail, in addition to passenger rail. One of,
01:48out of every four freight trains in the United States passes through Chicago. That is about 500 freight
01:54trains per day. If you're moving anything via rail from coast to coast, there's a good chance it will
01:59go through Chicago, which has more tracks radiating in more direction than any other city in North America.
02:04But bottlenecks in Chicago causes delay in the shipment of goods across the country. That is why
02:10freight rail companies, passenger rail companies like Amtrak, Metra, the state of Illinois, and the
02:15city of Chicago are partnering on the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency
02:20Program, or CREATE, project, which is unclogging the rail network for the nation by building crucial
02:27underpasses and overpasses and upgrading tracks, switches, and signals. The first Trump administration
02:32recognized the importance of CREATE to our nation's economy and national security, which is why
02:37President Trump, in his first term, awarded $132 million to the program. Mr. Fink, if you are
02:44confirmed, will you commit to giving full and fair grant consideration for applications for projects
02:49like CREATE? Thank you for the question, Senator. If confirmed, I will look and work towards making
02:57sure that these grants that are scored and for Chicago or other places are put out. That's one
03:04of my goals as FRA Administrator. There's a lot of grants. There's a lot of things that haven't
03:08gotten out. Let's get them out and let's get things built. Thank you. Will you also commit that you will
03:13not delay funding that has been awarded to projects like CREATE if there are no extenuating circumstances?
03:18Again, I'm not there yet. So when I get there, I'm going to sit down and hopefully I've heard a lot of
03:22these grants have been released in the last few weeks. Hopefully by the time I get there, those
03:27issues will be behind us and we will be working on sending out new programs if you authorize them
03:32for grants in the future. Will you commit to making yourself available to me to follow up on any of
03:37these questions? Absolutely. Thank you. And I now recognize Senator Markey. And I thank you.