Ladies and gentlemen:
The purpose of this particular appearance is to present not only the Secretary of Transportation, but also so that he can meet with you and introduce some of the major appointments in that agency.
These appointments I consider to be especially important to the new administration because the field of transportation offers some of our gravest problems and some of our most exciting opportunities.
We have just had a meeting in my office on these problems and I emphasized my concern that the United States look way ahead in transportation--so that looking ahead 10, 15, or 20 years from now we are not all living on freeways--looking ahead and recognizing that the problems that we see in our great cities here are reflected around the world.
I pointed out that I noted that whether you were in Tokyo, in Rome, in Paris or London, let alone the great cities here-New York, Chicago, Los Angeles--the massive problems of traffic jams choking the cities with traffic and choking the people with smog, that looking at this present problem, if we do not plan for the future we are going to reap some terrible consequences.
What is very encouraging to me is that the team that Secretary Volpe has assembled is made up of men who are thinking about these problems and are not here simply to administer the existing programs, administering the highway program and the others in the same fashion that they have been administered. We need some new approaches.
For that reason I have directed the Secretary to prepare a major report on transportation and a policy for the future.
That will not come tomorrow, and it won't come in a week or a month. We hope that within the next 6 months .that report will be available so that we can do some advance planning.
In addition, the Secretary will be able to answer some questions today on the SST and other problems in which you may be interested.
I did want to appear with the group because of the importance of the assignments that they will undertake, and I think we have some high-quality men who have a vision about the future and are not simply going to try to administer the programs of the past.
NOTE: The President spoke at 1:12 p.m. in the Fish Room at the White House. Following his remarks Secretary of Transportation John A. Volpe introduced to reporters the following presidential appointees to his Department: James M. Beggs as Under Secretary of Transportation, Dr. Paul Cherington as Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Policy and International Affairs, James D'Orma Braman, as Assistant Secretary for Urban Systems and Environment. Secretary Volpe also announced the appointment of Charles D. Baker to be Deputy Under Secretary of Transportation.
As authorized by the President, Secretary Volpe then announced that an ad hoc interdepartmental committee, to be chaired by Under Secretary of Transportation James M. Beggs, would shortly be formed to conduct, in coordination with the Bureau of the Budget, a complete review of the supersonic transport project, and to make recommendations to the President as to the continuation of the program. An announcement, dated February 27, 1969, formally establishing the committee and listing the membership is printed in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (vol. 5, P. 329). The committee's recommendations were embodied in a report (30 pp., processed), dated April 1, 1969.
Richard Nixon, Remarks on Major Appointments in the Department of Transportation Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239801
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