Portman led Congressional Delegation Push to Help Columbus Receive the Grant

WASHINGTON, D.C. – During remarks on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) congratulated the city of Columbus for winning the Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge. Portman discussed the benefits this grant will have on the city of Columbus and his belief that the city’s transportation infrastructure will become a model for the rest of Ohio and the country, saying that this is a “win-win” for the people of Columbus because the “investment will have a positive impact on jobs” and “also on the environment.”

Transcript of his remarks can be found below and a video can be found here. 

“Mr. President, I rise to join my colleague from the other side of the aisle, Senator Brown who came to the floor earlier to congratulate Andy Ginther of Columbus, Ohio and the people of Columbus, Ohio and central Ohio for a big victory this week. We won the federal Department of Transportation Smart City grant competition. This is something we’ve been working on for months. It’s a big deal to us in central Ohio. It gives us the opportunity to get not only $40 million in terms of a grant from the Department of Transportation to be a model city, but also in combination with another grant from Vulcan Corporation of $10 million and $90 million raised in the private sector to have a total of about $140 million to reshape transportation in central Ohio to create more economic growth for the citizens of central Ohio, but also to be this model, not just for Ohio but for the rest of the country in how we can use smart transportation to help create economic growth and opportunity. 

“I want to thank U.S. Secretary of Transportation Foxx for getting this decision exactly right. As I have said to Secretary Foxx about this competition over the past several months, I believe this is the right investment for our tax dollars. I believe Columbus is the right city. I believe that we have done all the right things to be the proper recipient for this. I was honored to help set up meetings between Secretary Foxx and Mayor Andy Ginther. Secretary Foxx is always a respectful and thoughtful listener and ultimately again he made the right decision.

“It was a competition, Mr. President. We had 77 other cities submit applications and among the finalists were some very impressive cities, very innovative cities, Austin, Kansas City, Denver, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco. But it’s easy to see why the right choice was to invest in Columbus. It’s the fastest growing city in the Midwest in terms of jobs, in terms of population. It’s one of the top seven centers in the country for foreign trade now. That places, by the way, a lot of pressure on our transportation system with the growth and increase in trade. There is a need for us to be sure that our infrastructure keeps up with that success. This Smart City grant will help us ensure that that happens. I want to thank and commend the more than 100 organizations from central Ohio who were part of this who expressed interest in working with Columbus on improving this infrastructure. Organizations like the Batell research institute, the Ohio State University and their research on transportation, clean fuels Ohio, the IBM Analytics data center, the Ohio State University had other departments involved in this as well in terms of engineering and so on. Dozens of others. I also want to thank the leadership of the Columbus partnership. Alec Fisher and the partnership did a terrific job bringing the business community on this. They also put up $90 million of investment, the private sector, into this. So, it’s clearly one where the federal dollars are being leveraged and more than matched. 

“I convened a meeting in Columbus several weeks ago at the Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research with many of these organizations that are part of this grant application, and we talked about the need not just to work together on this grant but to ensure that Columbus and central Ohio was on the map in terms of being a center for transportation excellence. We had some of the companies there like Honda and some of the suppliers, but we also had a lot of the research folks there and a lot of people who are just interested in making sure that the community becomes more prosperous by helping to move people. It’s almost like physical mobility through transportation is part of economic mobility in Columbus. We see it that way. And I think it’s absolutely true.

“I was pleased to lead a letter from the entire Ohio delegation along with Sherrod Brown and all of my colleagues in the House, Democrat and Republican alike in support of this effort. It was bipartisan. It was from the entire state. We were unanimous that Columbus is a sound investment, again, that the federal government ought to make. I want to quickly thank Mayor Andy Ginther for taking the leadership role in getting this done. It was a team effort and a good example of how the private and public sector can work together to help move our country forward and, in this case, give central Ohio a chance to show the country how to move forward, literally in terms of our transportation movement. But the credit ultimately goes to the city of Columbus. They will put that $140 million to good use improving our infrastructure, spurring economic development and jobs. It’s a proposal to form a partnership with the central Ohio Transit Authority, the mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, the Ohio Department of Transportation, Ohio State Transportation Research Center I talked about earlier, and other partners in a five-part strategy, a very specific strategy. Access to jobs, logistic, connecting visitors and tourists, connecting citizens and sustainability. 

“Let me briefly talk about some of the parts of the strategy. As I mentioned, we’re creating a lot of jobs in Columbus. With these new jobs we got to be sure workers can commute easily and safely. So we’re going to study ways in which to move people, not just from suburb to suburb but also to ensure that people who are living in neighborhoods that have high rates of poverty are improving access to jobs through this transportation improvement. We have a neighborhood in Columbus called Linden, it’s one that will be particularly impacted positively by this. The Linden neighborhood has its challenges. I have visited many neighborhoods in Columbus that have challenges despite the economic growth we’ve talked about. Franklin would be one. The south side would be another. There we talk about our efforts to help spur economic growth, how to fight drug abuse, how to help people who deserve a second chance get one, how to bring jobs to those communities. The one thing I do hear about is the difficulty with transportation, how literally to find a job and then get to that job. People don’t have cars. People have difficulty finding the bus routes that work for these jobs. Some of the jobs unfortunately are not close to these neighborhoods. So this is an opportunity through this new innovative transportation plan to connect people to the jobs that are there. 

“By making it easier for residents to travel to and from jobs and school we can improve the future of these communities and these families. Credit is another issue that this proposal will help with. A lot of people have lack of access to credit who live in these neighborhoods. You think about it, whether it is getting on the metro bus or using some other transportation like the car to go or other transportation methods, a credit is really important. So this project will include looking for innovative ways to bring people off the sidelines and enable them to get around easier by providing credit for transportation. Columbus also plans to use the grant funds to improve travel information, broadband internet access and employ self-driving cars to connect the east transit center to local employers. 

“In Columbus, we’ve got one of the only cargo-dedicated airports in the world. A lot of freight moves through central Ohio. We’ve got the most truck stops of any state in the union. 60 percent of U.S. manufacturing facilities and 50 percent of U.S. consumers can be reached within a day’s drive of Columbus. It is a big transportation hub. I have met with a number of companies like Avnet who anticipate more and more trucks on the road to and from the Rickenbacker inland port, our air freight center for Columbus, because of this continuing growth. So the city of Columbus plans to build a smartphone app for trucks with real time traffic conditions, routing delivery for freight to better ensure safety and efficiency on our roads. This is good for everyone. It is good for our transportation companies and the trucks but also in terms of safety and efficiency, good for commuters, good for all drivers. 

“Another reason to the city’s success is in the way we have so many visitors that are now coming to Columbus. And because visitors spend about $5.7 billion every year in Columbus, totaling the economic impact of $8.7 billion, to support jobs for 71,000 Ohioans, we need to be sure we continue to find ways to have the smart transportation project work with this increasing number of visitors. We plan to work with organizations like Experience Columbus to build a smartphone app to provide real-time information for visitors in the city for parking, transit options. By helping visitors get around easier, we can help improve their experience of the city but also make Columbus even more attractive to more visitors and increase economic activity and jobs. These are some of the things that are going to happen as part of the smart cities grant. We also intend to focus on sustainability, to increase the use of cleaner ways of transporting goods and people. We will be expanding electric vehicle charging infrastructure, converting more of the city’s bus system to compressed natural gas or electric vehicles to reduce carbon emissions even as we’re increasing transportation capabilities. So this investment will have a positive impact on jobs but also on the environment. It is a win-win. 

“So Mr. President, I congratulate Secretary Foxx on making a good investment decision, one that will help Columbus make history and create opportunities for Ohioans and congratulations again most importantly for all of central Ohio, those who put together this incredible application and I look forward to working with them closely in ensuring that the money is well-spent and this project does indeed become a model for the rest of Ohio and the rest of the country.”

Note: Senator Portman has worked with federal, state, and local leaders throughout the process in the effort to help the mayor and city land the multi-million dollar grant, including:

• Portman led an entire Ohio Congressional delegation letter in support of the final round.
• Portman also wrote a letter of support for the initial round of the challenge to help the city of Columbus in their effort to be selected as one out of seven finalists, out of 70 applicants.
• Portman’s office facilitated a one-on-one meeting with Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther and U.S. Secretary Foxx. 
• Portman held a roundtable at the OSU Center for Automotive Research where he brought together Central Ohio auto experts together to discuss strategy around the Smart Cities Final Application.
• Portman's office and staff attended several staff meetings in Washington, D.C. and Columbus to advocate for the city of Columbus.  

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