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This week in transportation: Lawmakers eye Sandy impact
Lawmakers in the House and Senate will review Hurricane Sandy's impact on Northeast U.S. transportation systems in a pair of hearings scheduled for this week.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will go first Tuesday morning with a review of the "preparedness, response to and recovery from" the superstorm that badly damaged roads and public transit systems in several Northeastern states.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will follow Thursday with a Sandy review of its own, which officials said would focus on the storm's "devastating impact on the nation's largest transportation systems."
The GOP-led House panel will also hear from officials from Gulf Coast states like Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana that have dealt with other large storms.
Earlier in the week, the Senate Transportation Committee will consider on Tuesday a pair of President Obama's nominees to sit on the Amtrak Board of Directors as a part of a large package of appointment reviews.
Elsewhere, the House Transportation Committee will hold a hearing Thursday to review "mistakes made and lessons learned" from previous high-speed rail plans. The president offered $8 billion from the 2009 economic stimulus package to states to build high-speed railways, but Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin memorably turned down the money.
The hearing is part of a series of GOP-led sessions that have been sharply critical of Amtrak, which has its own proposal for 220-mile-per-hour high-speed rail lines by the year 2040.
