Biden says Houston sets example for other cities
Vice president praises use of federal grants
Vice President Joe Biden called for continued national investment in infrastructure Wednesday, pointing to Houston as a model of how to use federal grant dollars to boost urban connectivity.
Joined in Houston by Mayor Annise Parker, Biden touted the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant program, or TIGER, created in 2009 as part of the economic stimulus package.
“We’re in danger of losing this vital tool that has done so much since we initiated it,” Biden said of the funding mechanism. “You cannot plan, you cannot look long term, if you can’t look beyond one or two or three months of funding.”
The transportation, housing and urban development appropriations bill passed by the House in June authorizes $100 million for TIGER grants, $400 million less than was allocated in fiscal year 2015. As of Wednesday, the Senate still was reviewing the spending bill.
Biden said he visited Houston to look at the hike and bike trials running through Buffalo Bayou Park, part of the city’s Bayou Greenways 2020 initiative to build 150 miles of hike and bike trails along city waterways. The project was bolstered by a $15 million TIGER grant, awarded in 2012, and aimed at closing gaps in the city’s trail system as well as connecting users to light rail stations.
“Nothing has occurred quite like you’re doing here,” Biden said. “It is a model for other cities around the country to follow.”
Parker discussed how the city has used the federal money.
“We’ve been able to leverage federal TIGER grants to make key connectors so that our local dollars go further,” Parker said, noting the city’s other funding partners. “If we put in hike and bike trails, and bridges connecting trails, that, too, is part of transportation.”
Biden also referenced the proposed high-speed rail connecting Houston and Dallas.
“It’s not all about a highspeed rail, which I’m going to go to Dallas from here, because you’re going to have a connector that goes over 200 miles an hour between Dallas and Houston, the first truly high-speed rail in the United States of America,” Biden said, standing above Buffalo Bayou Park. “It goes all the way from that to be able to ride your bicycle, jog or walk through every sector of this city, connecting every neighborhood in this city.”
Biden closed with a call for bipartisanship.
“I come from a day when Democrats and Republicans liked one another,” Biden said, recalling how former President George H.W. Bush visited Biden in his Houston hotel to welcome him and say, “‘That’s how it used to be. We made a lot more progress when it was that way.’”
Biden also discussed infrastructure in Dallas Wednesday afternoon and was later scheduled to attend a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in San Antonio.