Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I am Shelley Poticha, President of Reconnecting America, a national non-profit dedicated to using transit investments to spur a new wave of development that improves housing affordability and choice, revitalizes downtowns and urban and suburban neighborhoods, and creates lasting value for our communities. We host the Center for Transit-Oriented Development, and thanks to language included by this Committee in SAFETEA-LU, receive federal funding to provide standards, guidance, and research on transitoriented development (TOD). The Center for TOD includes a web-based resource of best practices and cutting edge research, as well as the National TOD Database, the only database of every fixed transit station in America, and we provide technical assistance to the 40 regions that either have transit or are planning to build new transit lines. We study…