Pelosi, Costa, Biden Administration and State Officials and Leaders Applaud Landmark Investment in California High-Speed Rail
San Francisco — This morning, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi joined Congressman Jim Costa, Senior Advisor to the President and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu, Governor Jerry Brown, General President of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Doug McCarron, and California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Brian Kelly held a virtual press conference on the landmark $3.07 billion new federal investment in California High-Speed Rail.
Watch the full press conference here.
Read key quotes below:
Remarks by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi:
"In our state, we have to make choices. Forty million people, fourth largest economy in the world, and we have infrastructure challenges. We can hardly build any more runways at San Francisco Airport. So people want to go to LA. We need other options. And we do know that we want to have transportation, whether it's air or ground or whatever it is. But we don't want to continue to build highways to pollute the air. We want to build high-speed rail to improve the quality of life time-wise, but also air-wise. So again, oversight, transparency, accountability. That's part of what we're pitching here with climate change in the twenty-first century, a multimodal transportation system is absolutely essential to be a key economic leader. And that's what we're creating, a multimodal transportation system with this high-speed rail effort."
Remarks by Congressman Jim Costa:
"This is a game changer, because this allows us not only to bring state of the art high-speed rail trains going 220 miles an hour that are a fair comparison to what they've done in Europe and in Asia, but it connects the San Joaquin Valley to the powerhouse of the economic centers of the Bay Area, San Francisco, Nancy's beloved city, as well as Los Angeles. And it really, too often the San Joaquin Valley has been kind of the stepchild in California. But in this instance, we are being connected with the key economic centers."
Remarks by Senior Advisor to the President and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu:
"Overall, the nation is now investing $66 billion under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law into the rail systems that we're talking about today. And as has been said, it's going to create lots of jobs, high-paying union jobs. It's going to clean up the air. It's going to move people faster. It's going to improve people's lives."
Remarks by Governor Jerry Brown:
"But the big deal here is we all know that we got to get off fossil fuels, reduce them dramatically. This is an electrified train system that in California will derive most of the electricity from renewable sources. Eventually, it will all be renewable. Right now, we've had a few days where it has been one hundred percent renewable energy in the electrical grid of California. So this makes sense from comfort, from new technology linking one part of the state with the other, and, quite frankly, catching up with the rest of the world."
Remarks by General President of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Doug McCarron:
"The middle class jobs that this train is supplying is just great. And the resources it's going to bring, not only Central Valley, but the whole state of California is just going to be great. So jobs, jobs, jobs."
Remarks by California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Brian Kelly:
"This investment allows us to move forward with purchasing electrified, high speed trains built in America. It allows us to move forward with the construction of the Fresno downtown station. That will be a bridge between two neighborhoods that forever have been separated in Fresno. We'll be linking them together with that bridge, and we will move forward on construction.
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Look, we have plenty of more work to do, but this investment has concrete benefits that will keep us on schedule to open that initial operating line. It could not be done without this investment. It's huge."
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