
INFRASTRUCTURE
The 10th District is home to significant bridges, highways, ports, railway lines, and air infrastructure. However, many of these have been neglected for decades. Train tunnels between New Jersey and New York are century-old with severely antiquated rail tracks. Our district’s old piping has left our water filled with lead levels so high they failed to meet the national safety standard.
To fully maximize our district’s infrastructure’s efficiency and economic potential, we need to guarantee that all parts of our transportation and infrastructure are operating to their best ability while creating jobs and keeping our environment clean and safe.
All my life, I’ve traveled on our roads and ridden our railways. As a graduate student commuting to class at NYU, I depended on trains that often did not arrive on time and were sometimes inoperable altogether during the winter. When I worked in Trenton — and before I could afford a car — I would take the train there every day. What should be a short ride consistently took so long I would have to wake up at dawn to arrive at work on time. When I could finally afford a car, I dreaded driving on our road. The potholes were so big, I was afraid they’d damage my car, and I couldn’t afford the repairs.
As your Congresswoman, I will guarantee that our district receives the support it needs to create and maintain efficient and green infrastructure, boosting our economy in the process. I will:
- Secure federal funds to fix the untreated sewage flows and aging pipes that have resulted in dangerously high lead levels in our drinking water.
- Launch a Clean Infrastructure Bank (CIB) to assist cities and municipalities with low-cost investment for clean energy infrastructure projects in areas where the private sector is underinvesting. These include supporting zero-carbon technology manufacturing and expediting the retirement of fossil fuel infrastructure.
- Spearhead re-investment in safer, healthier, and more productive communities by strengthening the electricity grid, modernizing our sewage systems to protect vulnerable areas from flooding and drought, expanding electric vehicle charging, and innovating a host of community-based infrastructure.
- Revitalize communities consistent with the Green New Deal and require that out-of-pocket energy bills for low-income and working-class families do not surpass 6% of gross household income.
- Work with local, regional, and federal transit agencies to fund their transition to 100 percent electric-powered city and school bus fleets.