' :.' ."il$3ifi,:l,l'5FTHilil3liyifr,^0RI G IN A L HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE v IN RE: BUDGETHEARING MAJORITY CAUCUS ROOM ROOM 140 HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA MONDAY,MARCH 1, 2004, 10:03 A.M. hnn^hfi tj!,r \-/t(EJ HON DAVID G. ARGALL, CHAIRMAN HON DWTGHT EVANS HON PATRICK E. FLEAGLE HON GIBSON C. ARMSTRONG HON MATTHEW E. BAKER HON STEPHEN E. BARRAR HON STEVEN W. CAPPELLI HON CRAIG A. DALLY HON GENE D1GIROLAMO HON PATRICK E. FLEAGLE HON TERESA FORCTER HON JEFFREY E. HABAY HON JIM LYNCH HON JOHN A. MAHER HON EUGENE F. MCGILL HON STEVEN R. NICKOL HON SAMUEL E. ROHRER HON STANLEY E. SAYLOR HON CURT SCHRODER HON JERRY A. STERN HON PETER J. ZUG HILLARY M. HAZLETT, REPORTER NOTARY PUBLIC ..Sikn ARCHIVEREPORTING SERVICE e 2336 N. SecondStreet (717) 234'592L ffi Harrisburg,PA 17110 HAX(717) 234-6190 -[ UO 04 - ct t2., 1 APPEARANCES: (Cont'd) z HON. DAN. B. FRANKEL HON. FRANK LAGROTTA HON. KATHY M. MANDERINO HON. ANTHONY J. MELTO 4 HON. PHYLLIS MUNDY HON. JOHN MYERS 5 HON. MICHAEL P. STURLA HON. THOMAS A. TANGRETTI 6 HON. DON WALKO HON. JAKE WHEATLEY, JR. 7 ALSO PRESENT: I HON. ROY E. BALDWIN Y HON. KERRY A. BENNINGHOFF HON. RUSS H. FAIRCHILD 10 HON. KATE HARPER HON. DTCK L. HESS 1-l_ HON. SUSAN LAUGHLIN HON. KEITH R. MCCALL t2 13 t4 J-J _LO 77 18 L9 20 2L 22 23 24 25 I APPEARANCES: (CONIId) 2 HON. DAN B. FRANKEL HON. FRANK LAGROTTA J HON. KATHY M. MANDERINO HON. ANTHONY J. MELIO 4 HON. PHYLLIS MUNDY HON. JOHN MYERS 5 HON. MICHAEL P. STURLA HON. THOMAS A. TANGRETTI 6 HON. DON WALKO HON. JAKE WHEATLEY, JR. 7 ALSO PRESENT: B HON. ROY E.. BALDWIN Y HON. KERRY A. BENNINGHOFF HON. RUSS H. FAIRCHILD 1n HON. KATE HARPER HON. DICK L. HESS 11 HON. SUSAN LAUGHLIN HON. KEITH R. MCCALL L2 t< t4 th 16 17 18 19 20 2L 22 23 24 25 1 INDEX z 3 WITNESS PAGE 4 Al-1en .D. Biehler - Nora Dowd Eisenhower 91 6 Stephen M. Schmerin r-50 1 Dennis C. WoIff 225 I Y 1-0 11 1,2 13 r.t ir IJ 16 T7 l_B 19 20 21, 22 23 24 25 1 CHAIRMAN ARGALL: Good morning. On behalf - 2 of the House Appropriations Committee, I would Iike 3 to welcome everyone to this public hearing looking at .! the proposed budget for the Pennsylvania Department q of Transportation. o A reminder to all of our members, we I continue to abide by the five-minute ru1e. I Mr. Greenwood will have the clock. 9 Befor:e v"e introduce our presenter, I would 10 like to ask Representative Evans to make any comments 11 that he woul-d like to and then we will- go down the t2 row and make the introductions. l< REPRESENTATIVE EVANS: Good morning. L4 Dwight Evans. REPRESENTATIVE LAGROTTA: IIM FTANK 16 LaGrotta from Lawrence, Butler, and Beaver County. I 17 thought you were going to make remarks, Mr.' Chairman. I wasn't prepared for the introductions. 1-9 REPRESENTATIVE MCCALL: KCith MCCAII, 20 Democratic Chairman of the Consumer Affairs 2T Committee. 22 REPRESENTATIVE LAUGHLIN: Susan Laughlin, 23 Professional Licensure and Transportation Committee. 24 REPRESENTATIVE MELIO: Tony Melio, Bucks 25 Count y . 1 I REPRESENTATIVE WHEATLEY: Representative 2 Wheatley, Allegheny County. 3 REPRESENTATIVE WALKO: Don Wa1ko, Allegheny 4 County. REPRESENTATIVE McGILL: Gene McGiIl, 6 Montgomery CountY. t REPRESENTATIVE CAPPELLI: Steve Cappe}li' B Lycoming County. Y REPRESENTATIVE BARRAR: Steve Barrar, 10 Chester and Delaware CountY. 11- REPRESENTATIVE ROHRER: Sam Rohrer from t2 Berks County. t< REPRESENTATfVE FLEAGLE: Pat Fleagle from 1_4 Franklin County. 15 REPRESENTATIVE ZUG: Peter Zug from Lebanon 16 County. L7 REPRESENTATIVE FORCIER: Theresa Forcier, 1B Crawford County. lv REPRESENTATIVE ARMSTRONG: Keith Armstrong, 20 Lancaster County. 2L CHAfRMAN ARGALL: Secretary Biehler, we're 22 Iooking forward to your testimony. Welcome. 23 SECRETARY BIEHLER: Thank you very much, 24 Mr. Chairma.n and members of the.Commj-ttee. Can you 25 hear? 1 CHAIRMAN ARGALL: Itrs not on. 2 SECRETARY BIEHLER: AII TiqhI. There we go. WeII, 1et me just say thank you for inviting me; 4 and I'm very pleased to be with you. 5 I would like to give just a few highlights. I believe you have my opening statement. Let me give I you in my own words some hiqhlights of our progress U from last year and hopefully our good direction for 9 the coming year 10 Looking through some of the modes, I would 1l- l-i ke to talk about highways and bridges f irst. We t2 had a target last year of putting out for l-3 construction a total of a billion and a quarter 14 doll-ars worth of work. 15 Irm pleased to be able to say that we met IO that target and slightly exceeded it. We were able 1,7 to put out a little over $1.3 billion worth'of work. 18 It's an important part of our entire 1_9 highway program along with our maintenance efforts" 20 and when you couple the new and reconstruction 2T efforts with our maintenance, we are abLe to improve 22 something in the neighborhood of almost 6500 miles of 23 road. That's been a fairly steady number in recent 24 years, 63 to 6500. We've been about on par through a 25 series of special efforts that f'11- talk about in a 1r second. '04-'05, 2 As .we l-ook f orward to FY w€r J again, dt the moment are targeting, againr. about a 4 billion and a quarter dollars as our construction 5 contracting target f or pro j ects across t.he Commonwealth. I On the bridge side of our business, due to B some programs that you folks have had a hand in 9 startj-ng going way back into Lhe '80sr we spent 10 something in the neighborhood of $a billion 11 cumulative j-n that period of time on our bridge t2 q rr q I am 1J This yearr we have been targeting we T4 targeted around $300 million for our piece of work on the bridges. .Werve been able to hold to that, but I 16 also need to tel-l you straight.forward that bridges 17 continue to be a real- dif f icul-t arena f or us. 1B We've got depending on whether you're 19 measuring bridges over 8 feet or 20 feet, we've got 20 somewhere between L6r 00O and 25r 0OO bridges. 2L They continue to be a struggle for us. 22 They continue to be a struggle trying to get ahead of 23 the curve, if you wi11, indemnity bridges and giving 24 the various kinds of funding programs about not 25 quite, but about one out of every four bridges has I some sort of structural deterioration. They may not 2 be weight restricted. Some are. In fact, a few are 1 cl-osed. 4 It's enough to. cause us concern trying to continue to campaign our bridge system as we go forward, and we will continue to do that. 1 Under the heading of Rail- Freight Grants, v obviously, our as I have come to our railway 9 programs, j-t's a critical program. We've got 10 something like 5r000 miles of rail Iines, freight l_1 rail- lines in Pennsylvania. About half of them are t2 the big Class 1 systems and the other half are the 1? smaller systems; short lines, and whatnot. They're a l-+ critical part of our business and assets in industry and keeping ourselves in a competitive position, none 16 the least of which is a concern to make sure that l7 we're helping where we can within the bounds of our l-8 grant programs to keep infrastructure in good shape, IY so that we also not. only remain economically 20 competitiver:but also do all we can to make sure we 2T have as much balance with moving freight between 22 highways and trucks and rail- and rail vehicles. 23 I'm pleased that we have proposed in next zLl year's budget to increase the rail freight grant 25 program back to its traditional 1evel of a 1itt1e 10 1 over $ B mil-1ion. 2 We've been in the last three or more J years, we've had a program of about four and a 4 quarter million dollars. I'm pleased we are proposing with '04-'05 budget to increase it to eight 6 and a half million dollars. 7 There's been a significant number of grant I requests to be able to do that. Again, the more we Y can I think given the incredibl-e growth of truck 10 traffic on our highway system, the more we can do to l_1 encourage a better balance between rail and highways, t2 it's going to be good for a1I of us. 13 Another big effort, just a minor note to 74 you folks, is the grant application process. We have 15 expedited the grant application process. We're doing J-O as much as we can electronically to get these L7 requests in on time and get them programmed in such a 18 wdy, so that once the grant amounts are approved, 19 that we can deliver the dollars as quickly as 20 possible. 21 We're doing a similar thing on the aviation 22 side to determine the grant cost.