(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 525: The Public Works Director for Democrats
March 19, 2025
This week on Talking Headways we’re joined by Congressman Rick Larsen of Washington State, Ranking Member for the Democrats on the House Transportation Committee. We chat about USDOT’s recent guidance for stripping sustainable projects of funding and why active transportation advocates should focus on safety.
Find committee hearing schedules here. Find the TNI Democrats page here.
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Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of this episode:
[00:01:40] Jeff Wood: Congressman Rick Larson, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast.
Rick Larsen: Thanks a lot. I appreciate being on.
Jeff Wood: Thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
[00:01:53] Rick Larsen: Sure. So I’m representing Rick Larson. That’s L A R S E N. I got confused this past week with representing John Larson from Connecticut, who took on Elon Musk and President Trump on social security, and I got a lot of credit for it. [00:02:05] So I like to remind people that there’s a Larson with an E N, that’s the Norwegian, that’s me. John Larson with an O N. We’re the Larson Caucus in Congress, the only two, but I was born and raised in my district. I’ve been in Congress 24 years, family’s been in this area for about five generations now, and it’s been a great privilege to serve in this district, which is if you want to think about it, north of Seattle, none of Seattle. [00:02:27] So all that space, when people leave Seattle to drive to Vancouver, British Columbia, that’s my district and San Juan islands are there, that Cascade mountains, the Skagit Valley, a big tulip festival in the spring. And of course the Salish Sea and Puget Sound. It’s just a beautiful place to be from and be able to represent. [00:02:44] Jeff Wood: That’s awesome. And so now, you’re on the transportation committee in the house, and I wonder if you’ve always been interested in transportation. [00:02:51] Rick Larsen: Yeah, I got on the committee in 2001 when I was first elected, and before that I was a local county council elected in Snohomish County, which the county just went to Seattle. [00:03:00] In county government, you’re doing a lot of public safety. The second most time you spend is on public works, county roads, solid waste, even parks. And so I was able to extend that interest, extend that growing expertise. When I was in Congress, I’ve been on the committee now for 24 plus years. [00:03:19] Jeff Wood: That’s quite a bit of time. So you’ve learned all the ins and outs of the committee and what people are saying and doing and where things are going. [00:03:25] Rick Larsen: I’m the top Democrat on the committee. So we call it the ranking member. You talk about learning the ins and outs. I am literally the public works director for Democrats in Congress. [00:03:34] In this job, you end up finding out a lot about individual members. And you identify them by the infrastructure project that they want, not by anything else. So when I see members of Congress that others might see on MSNBC or CNN talking about some big issues, all I see is a bridge or a sidewalk [00:03:55] Jeff Wood: that makes sense. [00:03:56] So I want to hear what the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in the House covers in terms of policy. It’s not just transportation, it runs the gamut. [00:04:03] Rick Larsen: Yeah, it’s the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, so it’s quite, quite a bit. If things or people move The responsibility of the committee is to ensure that it moves safely. [00:04:14] We have jurisdiction over pipeline safety, not the permitting of where pipelines go, but the rules around how they’re built and to ensure that oil or gas is moved safely. We have the Coast Guard in our jurisdiction because the Coast Guard is responsible for ensuring that things that move along the water. [00:04:32] Including people move safely. Of course, we have roads, bridges, highways, transit, and rail, moving people, moving goods on the surface of our roads. We’ve got aviation and the FAA, which has been a lot in the news lately, and ensuring that things, people and cargo that move through the air move safely. The list goes on. [00:04:51] I mentioned rail, pipelines, Coast Guard, and then we’ve got this other part. We call it EcoDevo, but it’s an economic development Public buildings and emergency management subcommittee. So we have a part of what FEMA does. We have a part of what the Department of Commerce does for economic development, especially in rural areas in this country. [00:05:12] And we have the public buildings park. So when the GSA comes out with an announcement, they’re going to, list 1000 public buildings and want to sell them without telling anybody, including the White House. That gets our attention and we get spun up and start asking questions to the GSA or to anyone that will show up. [00:05:30] And so it’s a very broad portfolio. If it can be built, we’re usually part of it. The TNI committee is usually part of it. [00:05:38] Jeff Wood: So a lot of those things you mentioned have been in the news a lot lately. And so I’m wondering how you deal with that fire hose of, the mess that’s. Being made of all those, things that you talked about FEMA obviously the GSA, et cetera, the buildings, transportation policy. [00:05:52] We’re going to talk about the competitive grant guidance that came out in a second, but I’m just wondering, I deal with the firehose of news every day because it’s my job, but I also now lately because of it, I’ve just, my heart’s very heavy and it feels weighted down. [00:06:04] Rick Larsen: First off, and this is not gratuitous at all, it does take good staffing, and then we’ve got great staff on our side of the aisle on the transportation committee and in my personal office as well. [00:06:16] And whereas you might have a news editor or you are your own news editor, we don’t have the luxury, honestly, of editing what we hear. And I tell people, when you run for office. You get to pick the issues you run on and when you serve the issues, pick you that is, you don’t get to say I didn’t think about that when I ran for office. [00:06:33] I don’t want to deal with you got to deal with. And so good staffing in order to sort through these issues, experts in their area. Some of these issues that we talked about. And so we’re trying to, I think the first 30 days of the administration has been, it was really throwing up a lot of spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks honestly, in the second 30. [00:06:53] Less of that spaghetti is sticking more of it’s falling off because they’re getting challenges. We’re challenging the administration on transportation issues. Other. We have the rapid response task force. The Democrats set up to support litigation and to create rapid responses to the things the administration is doing as well as a laundry list of work that they’re doing as well. [00:07:15] I’m trying to stay focused on transportation, but in the end, you still got to pick and choose what you’re going to work on. And for me, a committee. Our committee is about moving people and goods safely, right? And if there is a sniff of an action, the administration’s taking that we think is going to result in a safety problem, moving people or moving cargo, moving goods, that rises to the top of our to do list. [00:07:39] Jeff Wood: So that gets to the next question is about this competitive grant guidance. That is basically piggybacking on some executive orders some of which seem illegal, but, basically saying that the DOT will review all announced projects without grant agreements or partially fulfilled grant agreements. [00:07:53] And they specifically are targeting diversity, equity, inclusion programs, climate change, environmental justice, bike infrastructure, EV related funding. The bike’s got the community up in arms in my community anyways, the transportation community that I’m part of. And I’ve been told before not to try to make too much sense of what they’re doing. [00:08:08] But what’s your takeaway from it? [00:08:09] Rick Larsen: I hope you try to make sense of it and then tell us what you think. We’re trying to make sense of it too. I think part of the problem, this is the spaghetti on the wall approach. I think some people in the administration. Are just guessing at what might happen and not really understanding what they’re doing. [00:08:24] And there’s a caveat here. Administrations, regardless of who wins, they get to come in and try to do the things they say that we’re going to do. That’s fair. I may disagree with this administration on a lot of things. And the truth is I do. But I also know, I’ve talked to secretary Duffy more as a secretary designate and secretary than I ever talked to him as a member of the house representatives. [00:08:46] And, we came to not an agreement, but like we agreed on the language, this is called green stuff. Like they don’t like the green stuff. So I understand you don’t, but we wrote the transportation law to fund some green stuff. Now, some things the Biden administration said in order to get some grant A or B, you have to meet certain conditions that weren’t in the law. [00:09:09] But there are some things like on transit, as for instance, there’s money for transit, but there’s also money specifically for low and no emission transit, by definition, green transit, greener transit. And I told Secretary Duffy at the time, I said, what are you going to do? Because we told you in the law, you have to fund low and no emission transit with this low and no emission money. [00:09:31] You just can’t say you’re not going to do it. You have to do it. We told you to do it. And, there’s a variety of places in there in the law that say that there are other places, though, honestly, where the Biden administration put conditions and grants that weren’t in the law. What we are facing now is competitive grants is that some of those grants. [00:09:51] We’re not just awarded. They were signed by the federal government and by the local jurisdiction. And it’s concerning to me if, again, we’re trying to figure this out. If this administration is now saying you had four years to obligate that money. You had four years to basically spend the money that was awarded to you and we signed away to you. [00:10:13] But since it’s only been two years, we’re a little curious about whether or not you should get the next two years, if your project included bike. Or pet infrastructure or included outreach to underserved communities because we don’t like those kinds of things. And that’s 1 category. The other category is grants that have been awarded, but nothing’s been signed yet. [00:10:35] So we got to be sure we’re fighting for those folks who put the time and money into getting this money. And then the announcement came out, but they just haven’t got an agreement signed yet. So we’re working on that. There’s this third pot of money, Jeff. It’s the money that’s left in the bipartisan infrastructure law. [00:10:51] That hasn’t been obligated. It hasn’t been awarded. It has, there’s no contract sign. The administration, frankly, is fairly free to address that money. The way they want to consistent with the language in the law, but they could develop conditions that are very different than what the Biden folks did. And I don’t know, we have a big argument. [00:11:10] I don’t know if we could win that argument from that money. He disagrees with it, but it’s the other. It’s the awarded money and the awarded and then contract has been signed. If the federal government signature is on a piece of paper, it should count for something regardless of who the president is. [00:11:25] And we’re really concerned about that. [00:11:27] Jeff Wood: It feels like they want to go even deeper, too. We saw recently where they wanted to review every MPO’s five year STIP, and they got pushback from that, and I imagine that came from the states that are friendly to them. But going into every single MPO’s STIP is somewhat ridiculous, saying that you have to have those approved, the changes approved, in order to, and for folks that might not know that are listening to this, the STIP is the five year transportation plan that goes through the MPOs, and those, Are thousands and thousands of projects long. [00:11:52] And so can you imagine trying to figure out whether there was a bike lane in there or trying to use AI to go and find out whether the word equity means what it actually means. And so in the Seattle area, subway area equity means something totally different than the idea of equity. [00:12:05] Right. [00:12:05] Rick Larsen: Yeah. So yeah, so very equity in this area, especially for sound transit for your listeners, which is our regional light rail. And commuter rail and commuter bus system means that Snohomish County doesn’t get screwed over by having too much money put into King County or into Pierce County. [00:12:22] That’s some area equity that just ensures that the money that taxpayers are paying in are getting the money out. That seems a fair. Definition of equity that would get wrapped up into some AI algorithm that must develop because it’s looking for the word equity. It also doesn’t make any sense when you think about equity in terms of talking about these competitive grants and bike and pet infrastructure, where the highest rate of pedestrian or bike deaths actually is on tribal reservations around the country. [00:12:51] Second highest rate of these deaths and accidents is in rural areas. Third is suburban and fourth, that is last. Is in urban areas, it just seems to me that equity in this definition would be the opportunity for Native Americans who live on travel reservations where the roads are in horrible shape, sadly, because of years and years of neglect and a rural areas where you don’t have safe places to walk that it seemed equitable to try to lower the death rate. [00:13:22] In those areas from bike and pedestrian accidents that are brought on by where cars and trucks, unfortunately, hit people at a higher rate than in other places, that’s a benefit to rural areas. And that’s another definition of equity and equitable distribution of these dollars all getting lost in an ideological debate about what equity is about. [00:13:44] Jeff Wood: Yeah, it’s just frustrating. So what’s the way to combat this? What is the way to push back? What would you say to the folks who are, waiting for their grants to come in, who are frustrated by this, and then they see what’s happening in other parts of the country and other subject matter where, congressional intent is being ignored and there’s a lot of, fear out there about what’s going to actually happen with their money. [00:14:02] Rick Larsen: When we just think about this competitive grants and bike and ped infrastructure, I think the focus should be on, sadly, the national epidemic of highway and roadway deaths. Over 40, 000 people died in 2023 from roadway and highway deaths. Some of that is car on car, truck on truck on car, and so on. [00:14:20] But about 20 percent of those deaths are related to bike. And pedestrian accidents as well. And so to address this issue of this national epidemic of highway deaths and preventable deaths, it would seem wise to invest in sidewalks to give people a safer place to walk to invest in a separation to get bikers a safer place to bike and cars. [00:14:47] The assurance that they don’t have to worry about sharing that road in some circumstances with the biker, because there is an investment to separate the two. It is, it’s not about equity and it’s not about the environment and it’s not about green infrastructure. It’s about saving lives and preventing deaths. [00:15:07] That’s the first thing I would point out and I would point out to the administration that taking this approach is actually going to result in infrastructure being built. That is not actually safe for people to use that I hope is an argument that would work. If it doesn’t, I don’t know what’s going to work with these folks, but preventing deaths and saving lives by investing in sidewalks, by investing in bike separation, it seems to me a logical step to take. [00:15:39] Jeff Wood: It feels like in some of these earlier memos that Secretary Duffy released that, we talk a lot about the sensational stuff like the birth rates and marriage rates, but hidden in there was also some stuff about projects of local interest. And so a lot of that times when you hear that from a conservative side, that means no bike lanes, no transit, no active transportation, those types of things, because they have coded that as local interest. [00:15:59] And so do you feel like those specific projects getting targeted become something that happens, further down the road where. The transportation bill gets enacted the next time it rolls around with this type of verbiage, as well as, trickling down to the states. I saw recently that Utah had tried to cut off Salt Lake City from designing roads that reduced EMT. [00:16:19] Arizona had a bill that went through the House of Representatives there that basically said they were going to stop using VMT for any metric gathering at all. And so I’m wondering how this like bleeds down into lawmaking at the state level, but also how it gets into future lawmaking that might happen along these lines. [00:16:35] Rick Larsen: I think first it gets to reestablishing what this argument, what this basic argument is about. If it is about a national epidemic of over 40, 000 highway deaths in 2023, there is a federal interest in decreasing that number, and that includes, therefore. The federal interest in ensuring there are safe places to walk, whether you’re on a tribal reservation or in a rural area or suburban or urban area that there’s a federal interest in separating people on bikes from cars. [00:17:11] So you’re decreasing the opportunities. For accidents between the 2 and so this argument about what is a local interest or a federal interest is really quite people may think it’s a really clean line. I do think it’s a clean line. It’s a clean through line from let’s prevent deaths. And accidents among pedestrians and bikers by helping at the federal level to fund infrastructure that includes sidewalks and bike lanes to help prevent those deaths and decrease that national number as part of a much broader effort to get to vision 00 deaths on our roadways and highways. [00:17:51] I do think that some of this debate right now is going to be part of the debate we have going forward in the surface transportation bill. For those tracking, when we passed the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021, half of that 1. 2 trillion was in the jurisdiction of the Transportation Infrastructure Committee. [00:18:09] So we don’t do broadband. We don’t do a lot of things. We do roads, bridges, highways, transit, rail. We do ports. We do just a lot. We do a lot of things. Port infrastructure and a lot of things. And so we’re doing the roads, bridges, highways, transit, rail, and the cats and dogs part. And we need to get that done by September 30, 2026. [00:18:29] Now I won’t make any predictions, but I do believe we’re started well on our hearings. We want to build this bill from the ground up, and that gives the opportunity for Sam Graves, the chair of the committee and me to try to find bipartisan. Solutions to where we have differences, and I think we need to give this process some chance, but I also I’ll be clear to him about what I think is a federal interest. [00:18:54] And some of the things where I think people in his party don’t think there’s a federal interest. [00:18:59] Jeff Wood: Do you think you’ll be talking about safe systems approaches? Obviously, Vision Zero just mentioned vehicle sizes, traffic safety for folks outside of vehicles. Those are some of the things that we know that the Biden administration was starting to look at, but didn’t quite get to. [00:19:12] Rick Larsen: I think there’s a way to move the argument forward because I, if you put it in the context of safety, put it in the context of decreasing this 40, 000 number down to something less than 40, 000, this 20 percent or so, maybe, I think it’s national, but it might be just my state, but 20 percent of those deaths and accidents occurring in bike and ped, if you got that to zero, and then suddenly you’re at 32, 000, if I got my math preventable deaths, it just seems if you can drive that number Lower by investing in infrastructure where pedestrians can walk safely, where bikers can bike safely, where cars can be on the road and not be as concerned about someone biking or someone who’s on a sidewalk, as opposed to the side of the road. [00:19:55] And I have a district with a lot of those areas. I grew up in a town with a lot of that and around the area, and we’re walking on Kackman road up near Bryant with my cousin. Go visit someone and like probably one of the most, I’ve done crazy things, but just walking in a country road, that curvy country road is not a safe thing at all. [00:20:15] So I know what it’s like, and we can make these places safer for people in cars and for pedestrians and for bikers. [00:20:23] Jeff Wood: So what should folks that are listening to the show do? What should we do to help, try to figure out how to move forward on this in ways that we feel are productive for, the community that we talked about, the folks that are mostly focused on active transportation, but do care about traffic deaths and the way that our roads are safe or for now, not safe. [00:20:40] Rick Larsen: Yeah, we’ve got, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, shorthand is TNI. We have our website, the TNI Democrats have a website, we have social media platforms, so I’ll be communicating to folks, but be looking for any hearings that start with America Builds. That is the moniker the Republicans have chosen to highlight. [00:21:00] The hearings that they’re doing with regards to reauthorizing of the surface transportation bill and look for those America builds when they talk about safety or we’re going to talk about roads or talk about transit or whatever, listen in and be sure you connect with your member of Congress who might be on that committee that 31 members 30, including myself, Democrats on that committee and. [00:21:21] My guess, you got people who probably live in Republican districts, and there are a few, there are a few Republicans who I know will be on board with this approach as well, because they’ve got either concerns in rural communities or suburban communities. I also know for a fact that some of these projects are going to get reviewed. [00:21:37] It may be a tap on a Democratic priority. It is not an attack on Democratic districts. I know what this list is that the DOT is looking at. First off, it’s very long, and there’s not a lot of people in the DOT to review them. Second, I know this list has projects that are in districts like mine, a Democratic district that won with 65%. [00:21:59] And I also know that there’s projects on this list that are in districts where Republicans won by 65%, or in blue states, or in red states. This is going to hit in a very nonpartisan way. And I think you’re going to have members talk about Why do you want to take away this multi million dollar project or make us redesign and replan this whole thing? [00:22:20] It’s going to, who’s going to pay for that? Why are you doing this to us? So I think that look for those names on that list of the, on the TNI committee on both sides of the aisle and communicate, especially when you see this America builds hearing, that’s going to be about the surface transportation bill. [00:22:38] So they can engage that way. Also, it’s just a matter of engaging with members. I think. Making it about safety first, it’s hard to argue with it. I bike too, and I also know that if I make an argument about biking because I like to bike, or what have you, it’s going to be a harder argument to make than biking because I need a safe place. [00:23:02] This is how I get around. This is how my kids get around. To go to school, or to go to the park, or what have you. It’s got to be about safety first. I think that’s a broader message. And I encourage your listeners who are interested to use that. Start there with your message. [00:23:19] Jeff Wood: We’ll put that in the show notes the links to the committee website and all that stuff. [00:23:23] Thanks for joining us Congressman and good luck. [00:23:26] Rick Larsen: Luck never hurts in this business, but say luck plus preparation equals opportunity and opportunity can get you success. So everyone should help us prepare so we can take advantage of the opportunities. [00:23:38] Jeff Wood: Awesome. Thanks so much. [00:23:39] Rick Larsen: Thanks a lot.
