Obama Nominates Transportation Secretary

This week, President Obama nominated Anthony Foxx to serve as the next Secretary of Transportation. Foxx is currently serving as the Mayor of Charlotte, N.C., but announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection. Foxx is set to replace Ray LaHood, who announced his resignation soon after President Obama’s reelection. The 41-year-old Foxx, elected mayor in 2009, has expressed support for the administration's livable-cities concepts, which promote transit projects and non-motorized vehicles over motorized vehicles, as well as the expansion of high-speed passenger rail connecting major metropolitan regions. While Foxx has no national transportation experience, Charlotte built a streetcar project connecting parts of the city's downtown, as well as added a third runway at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, during Foxx’s tenure as mayor. Foxx has also been advocating an extension of the light-rail system to the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Prior to becoming mayor, he served on the Charlotte City Council for four years and served as chair of the Council’s Transportation Committee. AGC CEO Stephen Sandherr said of the nomination, “It is encouraging that President Obama has decided to nominate someone with first-hand experience of the significant challenges posed by our chronic under-investment in infrastructure and years-long and broken regulatory review process.  Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx has a unique opportunity to promote new sources of revenue to address chronic shortfalls in federal funding for our aging network of highways, bridges and transit systems.  In addition, he will be well suited to ensure that the Department of Transportation takes the steps required in the most recent surface transportation legislation to significantly reduce the time it takes for federal officials to approve new transportation infrastructure.  We will never be able to compete globally if it takes over a decade to approve new ways of moving goods and services from one point to another in this country.” For more information, please contact Brian Deery at (703) 837-5319 or deeryb@agc.org.