New York City, New York Remarks at the Annual Convention of the American Public Transit Association

Senator Moynihan, Governor Hugh Carey, Mayor Ed Koch, Secretary of Transportation Neil Goldschmidt, Members of Congress from this State and from others, Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuprap, Chairman Harold Fisher, my good friend and partners with me in a great future for mass transit, rapid transit, public transportation, public transit:

We're all in it together, and we're going to prevail.

Thank you. I'm glad to be with you. I'm particularly glad to be back in New York—this great city which has, among so many other superlatives, the title of the "mass transit capital of the world." With 45 percent of all the riders of public transportation in our Nation, it's obvious that I should come here, first of all, and say that there is absolutely no way that New York would lose Federal funds for public transportation because of any technicality or lack of adequate preparation between the Federal Government and New York, and no one need worry about that.

And I'm glad to be in the same room with so many people, from all over this Nation, who agree with me that public transit is one of the keys to the future of the United States of America.

We can no longer afford to think of public transportation as something that we might some day get around to developing adequately for the people who look to me and you for public leadership, once all the superhighways and cloverleafs have been completed. We must address the problems of public transportation now, and we will address those problems together.

This has always been a problem and a challenge. But this Nation is now in the throes of an energy crisis, a crisis of dangerous overdependence on foreign oil—a challenge and overdependence which directly threatens the security of our very Nation, a crisis that affects every single person who lives in this country. In a few blunt words, that is why public transit is important to all citizens of this country., regardless of where they might live.

In cities and small towns, among suburbanites and rural dwellers, subway riders and pickup truck drivers—we all have an interest in public transit—even though some may not ever ride in a public transportation vehicle—because we all have an interest in solving the problem of energy. And we will solve that problem. The subways, the buses, and the trolleys of America will help to carry America to a time of energy security.

In my first energy speech to America, I told the American people bluntly that the era of cheap and abundant energy and wasteful consumption was gone. I was warned that this would not be good politics. Nobody likes bad news. And when I made that evening address to the American people, I said in that talk that it would undoubtedly cost me 15 percent in the public polls. That was the underestimation— [laughter] - of my first year.

I called the energy crisis the moral equivalent of war, a statement that was ignored by some and ridiculed by others. But I was determined then and I'm determined now to level with the American people. It has not been easy to get that message across, but today, 2 1/2 years after that speech, millions of Americans now know from hard experience and careful analysis that I was not exaggerating. Not too long ago the United States was a net exporting country for oil. By 1973, when the OPEC nations' oil embargo hit with a massive increase in prices, we were importing about one-third of all the oil we used, sometimes at less than $2 a barrel. But we failed to come to grips with the underlying problem that OPEC began to exploit. We were given fair warning; we did not listen. Instead, through a complicated system' of price controls, we tried to insulate ourselves from the realities of a global economic change.

This policy, or absence of a policy, did not work. In fact, it encouraged our illusions about cheap energy and actually made our dependence worse, so that this year we are importing about one-half all the oil we use. And because OPEC has taken advantage of this industrial world's thirst for oil at any price, OPEC has continued to jack up the prices. The dollars have flowed out even faster than oil has flowed in. In 1973, for instance, we were paying in American dollars, for foreign oil, $7 billion. Next year we will pay $70 billion—a tenfold increase.

When those billions of dollars flow out of our country, American jobs flow out with them. And when those millions of barrels of foreign oil flow in, we import inflation. Without the astronomical rise in energy costs, in fact, the inflation rate would be at least one-third lower than it is now. The last 3 months, the inflation rate would have increased only one-fourth of 1 percent, if you don't count energy. But energy has been increasing in price at an average of 100 percent per year.

Our economic well-being is at stake and so is our political freedom of action. We are vulnerable to interruptions in oil supply at any time from very uncertain sources, and we are mandated to pay whatever prices are asked. And the competition for oil supplies tends to weaken our political alliances, because we and our friends are in competition to buy the same scarce and expensive barrel of oil.

The production of oil by the OPEC nations is highly unlikely to increase. The trend is probably going to be downward because of several reasons. Some OPEC nations are now producing more oil than they would like to produce for their own benefit and for the benefit of their people. Other OPEC nations have recently begun to reduce oil exports because their supplies are running out. And others, as you well know, tend to use oil as a political weapon, attempting, unsuccessfully so far, to blackmail or to attempt blackmail by the threat of withholding their oil from the world market.

So, dependence on foreign oil threatens our economy, and it also threatens our security. It threatens our very future. Therefore, we must stop and then reverse this growth in imported oil. And public transit can help us do that.

Thirty-five years ago, at the close of the Second World War, this country could claim some of the finest public transit systems on Earth. Those transit systems were more than just a way to get people from one place to another. They helped to structure a compact and efficient pattern of land development where people lived, where people worked, and this contributed to a sense of community, of unity, of sharing, of interrelationships, a feeling that brought neighbors together in a common sense of place. Our transit systems were a vital connecting link that helped to form our own way of life.

But in the years after World War II, we let that connecting link begin to erode. Because we did not recognize its worth, we valued it too little; because we did not measure its contribution to our lives, we ignored it too much: and because we could not imagine its absence, we hardly noticed its decline in quality.

As we turned our attention to the construction of a vast network of superhighways, we began to operate on a set of unspoken, unacknowledged, untenable assumptions. We assumed, for instance, that the United States was afloat on a sea of 20-cent-a-gallon gasoline. We assumed that bigger always meant better and that nothing could be better than a long, chrome-plated convertible with a gas-guzzling V-8 engine under the hood. We assumed that urban sprawl was a law of nature, not a logical outcome of transportation and development policies. We assumed that the only respectable way to get a 160-pound human from point A to point B was to wrap him in 2 tons of metal with an engine powerful enough to drive an army tank.

So, we began to lose our public transportation systems. One by one, city by city, the systems fell prey to decay and to neglect.

Now we know that was a mistake. Now we recognize the value of mass transit, and now, as the battle for American energy security is joined, we stand committed to the rediscovery and the revitalization of America's public transportation systems. You and I together have embarked on that rediscovery. We have begun that revitalization. Federal support for public transportation now stands at the highest point in history.

I proposed, and the Congress passed, the most far-reaching surface transportation bill in our history, giving it a higher priority than it has ever had before.

Under our comprehensive urban policy, which many of you helped to evolve—the Nation's first, by the way—cities and towns are now working along with private enterprise and with the Federal Government to make transit an integral part of urban development and urban redevelopment. There's a good example just a few blocks from here at the Grand Central Terminal, where a $10 million Federal grant will help tie in several forms of public transit with a new mall, a new hotel, and a surrounding area of shops and

Offices.

During the fuel shortage this summer, which shook our Nation up, we kept the trains running and the buses fueled and roiling. And we will keep them rolling in the future if we have additional energy shortages. America's public transportation systems will continue to have the fuel that they need.

When I was looking for a new Secretary of Transportation, some of you came forward and made suggestions which I took. I looked all over America for a person who could come to Washington as a strong advocate of public transit and who understood very clearly the role that public transportation must play in the life of a community. I found that person in Neil Goldschmidt, who worked as a leader in our Nation's transportation problems, working with other mayors and local and State officials all over this country, and whose commitment to mass transit produced extraordinary results in Portland during his term as mayor.

And since he's been there, he's made some very wise decisions, one of which I'm pleased to announce today. And that is that the new administrator of our urban mass transit program will be Ted Lutz, who's one of you. And he was chosen, as a matter of fact, the Rail Man of the Year. And I'm very proud of him, because he's got practical experience on how to coordinate government programs with local needs, how to cut through redtape, how to get to the heart of a program and a problem and to find a resolution and an answer.

We've made a strong start, but I'm here today, after 2 1/2 years in office, to tell you that we've got a long way to go, a. lot more to do, much more.

Our Nation's investment in public transit during the 1970's came to a total of $15 billion, and now we must take a quantum jump. With the energy proposals that I have presented to the Congress, the Nation, our Nation, will invest $50 billion in public transportation during the decade of the 1980's. We need it, and we will have it. Our goal during that time is to add 15 million passengers per day to the buses, the streetcars, and the trolleys and subways of our cities and our communities.

We will double the production of buses, the only form of mass transit in 97 percent of America's cities. We will step up the modernization and the refurbishment of existing rapid transit systems. For example, New York: Its subway system is the senior citizen of underground rail travel. The IRT is 75 years old this year. It has survived, and we are proud of our senior citizens. But when Ed Koch and Harold Fisher and I get through with it, with the tools we are fighting to get from the Congress, it's not going to look a day over sweet 16. [Laughter] And we will also speed up the construction of new rail lines already approved or underway in other major American cities.

We'll build subways and elevated trains, trolleys, people-movers, commuter trains. We'll repair track beds, modernize stations, improve signaling and control stations, replace aging railcars, expand the size of fleets, extend lines into new areas and encourage new technologies. In short, we will reclaim and we will revitalize America's transit systems.

Over the long term—and this is very important—the energy savings will be massive. Those savings will result not only from getting folks out of cars and onto buses and trains but also from the patterns of development that the public transit system can encourage.

Public transit means good living for people in downtown areas and more efficient housing development patterns, which in turn means less waste of energy for fuel and also for heating and cooling. And better mass transit will give us an insurance policy against the lack of mobility in the future. If gasoline crunches come-and I think they will surely come—better mass transit will help us attack a whole range of critical, interrelated problems, not just energy but also inflation, unemployment, the health of our environment, and the vitality of our cities.

Public transit means cleaner air. Public transit means less noise. Public transit means stronger, more livable cities. It means more mobility and more opportunity for everybody, and especially those who need it most—the poor, the aged, the young, the handicapped, minorities.

And public transit means jobs, a lot of jobs. The energy mass transit initiative that I've proposed to the Congress will put Americans to work. I'm not talking about a few hundred jobs for bureaucrats in Washington, along with administrators, but I'm talking about an average of at least 40,000 jobs a year, at all levels of skills, throughout the 1980's.

Clearly, public transportation is a critical part of the overall assault that I've directed against this Nation's energy dilemma. And just as clearly, our transit investments cannot do the job alone. Those investments must be a part of a comprehensive program. And that's exactly what I've proposed—a program that develops alternative forms of energy, especially those plentiful ones that are ours to control, such as coal, and the most plentiful source of all, the Sun; a program that lets vital energy projects be built without endless redtape and confusion and delay and also without compromising our commitment to a clean environment and a good quality of life; a program that offers some help for the poor among us, on whom the most cruel blows of skyrocketing costs inevitably fall. And public transit can encourage people to do the most important thing of all—stop wasting energy.

Conservation must become a part of our lives, and this need not be an onerous part or an unpleasant part of our lives. It can be an exciting and enjoyable thing to stop wasting what God has given us. It can bind families together. It can make us look around and see how we and our neighbors can have a more productive and more enjoyable life. And at the same time, we can contribute greatly to the health and well-being of our country. It's a patriotic gesture.

This program, along with our transit initiative, can take us to our energy goal of energy security. But for all this program to succeed, the Congress absolutely must approve the one major element, which Chairman Fisher has already named—the windfall profits tax.

A train needs an engine. A bus needs an engine. A pickup truck needs an engine. And the windfall profits tax will be the engine of American energy security. Through it, we will use the unavoidable rises in oil prices as a lever, as kind of a crowbar, to pry ourselves loose from the dilemma that our overreliance of oil got us into in the first place.

Right now lobbyists are swarming all over Capitol Hill, working to devastate the windfall profits tax. In fact, their proposed amendments would put a total of well over $100 billion in the pockets of the oil companies. And what would they do with this money? Would they develop renewable energy sources? Would they push for a national energy conservation program? Would they winterize homes? Would they help poor people pay their fuel bills? Would they devote $13 billion to public transportation? Of course not, of course not.

These crucial steps are not their business, but they're the public's business. They're the Nation's business. And the Nation needs these funds to make our energy future secure.

I have traveled the length and the breadth of this country, fighting for a tough, permanent, fair windfall profits tax, and I will continue to fight for it. I do not intend to lose this fight, and if you will help me, we will not lose.

And finally, I would like to say this: I deeply appreciate the support that the American Public Transit Association has given me in this fight so far. Today I call upon you collectively, as an association and as individuals, to redouble your support as the crucial votes in the Senate, and then the Senate and House, on windfall profits draw near. With your help, we can gain this tax and drive our program forward.

Cutting our reliance on foreign oil will curb inflation, strengthen the dollar, stimulate new jobs, give Americans a better life. Public transportation is part of this chain of support—saving energy, adding jobs, and improving the overall quality of life in our Nation's history-one of the most important challenges that we have faced in our Nation's history.

We're about to enter a new decade, carrying with us the lessons of the past, the good lessons and the bad lessons, and the hopes and the dreams and aspirations of all Americans.

The choices ahead are difficult, and we cannot avoid making them, but Americans have never looked for an easy way out when we were faced with a challenge that threatened our country. I believe in the decency and in the courage of the American people. I believe that we have the material and the moral and the spiritual strength to meet any challenge.

Together, in the years ahead, we can seize control again of our own destiny, and we can make sure that America will remain what America is today—the greatest nation on Earth.

Thank you very much.