I think public service is a calling and you do it as long as the things that brought you into the office can continue getting you up in the morning and as long as there's still work to get done.
Tolling... has a place. We're not going to toll our way to prosperity as a country. It is a tool that can be used in some instances, for example, to add capacity and to pay for that capacity privately. But I don't think it is a complete solution to how we deal with our surface transportation issues.
As we look at a future where we're going to have to double our freight capacity, how do you create a freight system that's integrated across the country when you have 50 different freight systems that are built one state at a time?
Bridges and roads take years to build, but too often, states and communities haven't known if funding will be there for them more than a few months at a time.
I was in Nashville, Tennessee, and I saw - we talk about crumbling bridges - I saw one, concrete literally falling onto the underpass below, threatening auto traffic.
People are sitting in traffic longer, and the types of solutions that are needed to relieve that congestion are ones that are paid for by the Highway Trust Fund.
Today, 65 percent of America's population live in metropolitan areas - and 95 percent of all the transit miles traveled are traveled there. Metropolitan regions are the engines of our economy.
