Robert Menendez

As the Chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development, which helps shape mass transit policy, I am working to reduce traffic congestion, reduce energy costs, make our country more energy independent, and clean the air we breathe.  Throughout my career in public service, I have emphad that transportation is about more than simply moving goods and people from one place to another. It’s about economic security in both the short and long terms, good paying jobs and national security. It's about cleaning the air we breathe. And it's about improving quality of life by helping families spend less money and less time in traffic and more quality time with our loved ones.

Highlights

• New Trans-Hudson Mass Transit Tunnel -- Helped secure a federal commitment to fully fund its portion of the new Mass Transit Tunnel across the Hudson -- a project which is now underway. This project helps create jobs, save commuters time and money and clean the air we breathe. The tunnel is expected to create 44,000 permanent jobs, in addition to 6,00 construction jobs. With train traffic into New York at maximum capacity, the tunnel project would double commuter rail capacity between New Jersey and New York and improve rail service across the Garden State and reduce congestion on roadways.

• Lowered PATH fare hike -- Successfully persuaded the Port Authority to reduce an announced 2007 fare hike on PATH trains.

• Combating flight delays -- Leader in the effort to reduce flight delays. Helped enact into law a 2007 provision requiring the federal government to provide a plan to Congress to reduce flight delays in the New Jersey/New York region, the nation’s most densely congested airspace. Also helped enact a 2007 provision requiring the Government Accountability Office to investigate the FAA’s Airspace Redesign Plan, as well as the effectiveness of a variety of approaches used nationwide to reduce flight delays.

• Working to end texting while driving -- A lead co-sponsor of the ALERT Drivers Act, which would ban texting while operating a moving vehicle nationwide in a manner similar to the nationwide ban on drunk driving. The legislation would require states to bar the sending of text or email messages while operating a car, truck or mass transit vehicle, or else risk losing federal highway funds.
  

• Creation of Liberty Corridor -- Congressional champion of Liberty Corridor project, having established it as a Project of National and Regional Significance and secured tens of millions of dollars in federal investment since 2005. An area of seven northeastern counties and one western county, the Liberty Corridor of New Jersey is where multi-modal transportation systems, such as ports, highways, airports, rail lines and research facilities, play a vital role in linking and nurturing an historic base economy of manufacturing and commerce with global implications.

• Transit villages -- Lead co-sponsor of the Livable Communities Act to help towns and regions plan and implement development projects that integrate their community's needs for transportation, housing, land use and economic development. In New Jersey, the Department of Transportation and NJ TRANSIT have led a Smart Growth partnership known as the Transit Village Initiative for municipalities to redevelop or revitalize the areas around transit stations using design standards of transit-oriented development.
  

• Flight slot auctions -- Successfully fought against and overcame a federal plan to auction off prime flight slots at New Jersey/New York area airports, which had the potention to price middle class families out of flying at the more desirable times. The plan was originally implemented in 2008 and was ended under the Obama administration in 2009.

• Air safety -- A champion for air safety, including pressing the federal government to take action upon reports that an unusual amount of flights into Newark Liberty International Airport were landing with low levels of fuel remaining.