{mosads}Foxx’s visit to Connecticut followed up on a promise he made during his Senate confirmation hearing, which took place days after a crash on the Metro North network that connects New York City to its suburbs in Connecticut.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked Foxx to visit New Haven to see the state of railways in the northeast U.S. after the Metro North crash.
“Our rail lines are deteriorated, outdated and decrepit in many areas, especially our northeast corridor,” Blumenthal said during the May confirmation hearing.
Foxx said he did not want to speculate about a possible cause of the Metro North accident, but he promised to visit Connecticut after he was sworn-in as DOT chief, which he fulfilled on Monday.
Foxx said in his blog post on Monday that he went to the site of the Metro North crash to demonstrate that “as secretary, my overriding priority is to make our transportation system the safest in the world—and that’s exactly what we’re doing at DOT.
“By working together with private industry, state DOTs and other stakeholders, we can save lives,” the new transportation secretary wrote. “Through our oversight of the nation’s rail and transit systems, we are providing continuous safety improvements across the country and working to ensure that when someone steps aboard a train in this country, that train is safe.”
Foxx is scheduled to visit the site of a 2007 interstate bridge collapse that has since been rebuilt in Minneapolis, Minn. on Monday.
The new DOT chief is also scheduled to offer his first testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.