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“TCSP GRANTS AWARDED AS PART OF ADMINISTRATION'S LIVABILITY AGENDA” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2965-H2966 on May 11, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TCSP GRANTS AWARDED AS PART OF ADMINISTRATION'S LIVABILITY AGENDA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Reynolds). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join a number of my colleagues this evening in reporting on the benefits to our congressional districts of the TCSP grants that were awarded last week by the Secretary of Transportation and by the Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration.
The TCSP grants stand for Transportation, Community and System Preservation grants. These are a vital part of the transportation program as part of the administration's livability agenda.
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the 13th District of Pennsylvania, received a grant of $665,000 to promote a transit-oriented development along a proposed rail line.
I would like to talk about that in some detail, but first it is clear to me in my travels around the district, in my town meetings and meetings at supermarkets, that the questions of suburban sprawl, of gridlocked traffic, of overdevelopment are the very highest issues facing the suburbs throughout this country and certainly the suburbs of Philadelphia. We need to do a better job in managing our growth, in fighting traffic gridlock, in fighting sprawl, in making sure we plan for the orderly growth and development in our suburban communities. These transportation grants are a very important way of doing that.
We are trying to restore train service that was stopped 15 years ago from the City of Philadelphia through Montgomery County, my district, out to Reading, Pennsylvania. This train service, if restored, would allow for both commuting into the city and reverse commuting from the city every day.
It would take shoppers to the largest mall on the East Coast. It would take shoppers to the Reading discount markets. It would allow access to cultural and historical benefits and assets, such as Valley Forge National Park. It would do a number of very beneficial things in my area.
The question is, why did passenger service end on this train route 15 years ago? Why was ridership so low? It is because we were not doing a very good job in promoting that service or making it attractive to people.
The Transportation Department, through its transit-oriented development grant, is trying to promote the expansion of this commuter service along what will be called the Schuylkill Valley Metro by urging municipalities to plan for adequate parking at train stations to allow dense development so that there can be residential opportunities and retail and commercial opportunities surrounding the proposed train stations. We need to make commuting by rail not only attractive to those who would drive to a station and park their car but to create an area where people would be attracted to come and live, to rent an apartment or buy a condo around a train station with all of the commercial amenities and recreational amenities that a small town can offer, so that people would be attracted to live there and drive their cars there as well, to use the transit program.
This is an exciting opportunity and one that we have to aggressively market if we are going to help reduce the traffic gridlock around Philadelphia and make people come back to trains and come back to a place of living and working, where they can walk to their train station from their apartment, they can walk to commercial and retail opportunities. If they are driving to the train station from a more remote area, they can do shopping, they can drop off their dry cleaning or get their hair cut when they come back from work, whatever it takes to make life more manageable and more livable and improve the quality of life while, at the same time, getting people off of highways.
This is the goal. This sort of transit-oriented development encouraged by the Secretary of Transportation will help to fight sprawl in the suburbs. It will encourage smart growth strategies so that we can have a more livable community. It will ease traffic congestion and help to end some of the traffic gridlock that make our suburban areas so difficult.
And it would also encourage what is called location-efficient mortgages. This is an exciting aspect of this program that will encourage lenders to lend more money to folks that live in these transit areas because they will not need to have the high expense of owning a car that many Americans have to face. So if they can live in an area where they can walk to a train station and take the train to work, a lender will be encouraged to give more money in terms of a loan to that prospective homebuyer or condominium buyer so that he or she can buy more house for the same income than they would if they had to factor into their expenses the cost of owning two or three cars and living in a remote suburban community.
Fundamentally, this will reduce pressure on green space. It will allow us to save open space, preserve farmland and make all of the suburbs a more livable area for all of us.
So the transit-oriented development to be encouraged by this transportation grant is exactly the right sort of thing that we should be promoting to improve livability throughout the suburbs and throughout this country.
General Leave
Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on the subject of my special order today.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Pennsylvania?
There was no objection.
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