Concord Ledger

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently took the Biden administration’s infrastructure sales pitch on the road.

On Dec. 13, Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig and Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess joined local business, labor and environmental leaders to talk with Buttigieg about a project intended to create a passenger rail line connecting Boston and Southern New Hampshire.

“Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visits Manchester to highlight how bipartisan infrastructure delivers for New Hampshire, expands opportunities to build passenger rail,” New Hampshire Rep. Mary Sullivan Heath (D-Manchester) posted on Twitter Dec. 14.

While in town, Buttigieg wasted little time before singing the praises of the new infrastructure law.

"Whether it's a new rail proposal or the next grant project that comes along, infrastructure will be so important to the future of this community and this region," he told New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR). Buttigieg later went on to announce the funds New Hampshire would receive, including $1.4 billion to improve roads and bridges and $126 million to improve public transportation.

Buttigieg says he has no doubt the plan is right for New Hampshire.

“Whatever we can do to simplify the ability of people and goods to move where they need to be, we should be doing it. Commuter rail can be a big, big part of that,” he said, according to NHPR. ”The more that story is told, the more we can move past the idea that there's anything political or partisan about the idea that Americans deserve to have excellent rail service, just like people in pretty much every other developed country take for granted.”

Overall, the infrastructure law steers $66 billion to passenger rail, representing the largest investment since the founding of Amtrak, which has proposed a commuter train linking Boston, Manchester and Concord.

In the state’s 2021-2030 transportation improvement plans, rail received less than 1% of program funds, prompting Buttigieg to say that he’s convinced, in a state like New Hampshire where commuters heavily rely on cars, he sees electric vehicles as a promising option to make the transportation system more green.

“Americans will always be drivers, so we also have to make sure that we're supporting a transition to electric vehicles,” he told NHPR. “We’ve got to have more charging infrastructure, and we’ve got to act to make them (electric vehicles) more affordable, which is part of what’s in the Build Back Better plan.”