February 20, 2025
AAWA Testifies Before the Washington State Transportation Commission
AAWA Government Affairs Director Luis Moscoso, and our coalition partner Dr. Breck Lebegue, representing Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, provided comments to the Washington State Transportation Commission in Olympia on February 20. The recording is available at
ttps://tvw.org/video/washington-state-transportation-commission-2025021047/?eventID=2025021047
Good morning Director Griffith, Chair Young, Vice Chair Restucci and Commissioners. For the record I am Luis Moscoso, Government Affairs Director for All Aboard Washington and the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates.
I am happy to speak to you today – in person, the way humans were meant to interact. AAWA is very interested in the upcoming presentation on Transportation Policy and Advocacy Update. Our organizations focus on passenger rail and are hoping to hear mention of it in that update. As you know, there is more legislation about passenger rail in both the WA and OR Legislatures this year than ever before. That, plus 3 Federal Railroad (FRA) Corridor ID projects here in Washington, show the growing interest in passenger rail in the Northwest as well as across the country.
We hope to hear that the “different perspectives,” suggested in Item 13’s summary, will mention intercity passenger rail, a state goal since 1993 (RCW 47.79). Three and one-half years ago the Commission asked AAWA to present on the JTC East-West Study about passenger rail service through Central and Eastern Washington completed the year before. Though the Legislature couldn’t follow up with further planning suggested in that study, early last year the FRA made that corridor part of a “preferred route” for restoration of long-distance service between Seattle and Chicago.
We are excited to see that the Federal Government is willing to undertake the cost of providing service and necessary infrastructure on this corridor that our state would also like to see service restored to. Cross-state connections between Seattle and Spokane, providing service through Yakima - the largest metro area in Washington without passenger rail service – is another perspective we’d like the Commission to be aware of and look into. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) put more funding into Amtrak 2 years ago than it received in the previous 50 years! Washington state must take advantage of Amtrak’s desire to restore service here. Thank you.