Vice President Biden on Thursday called New York’s LaGuardia a “third world” airport.
Biden made the remark in a speech in which he warned the U.S. is falling behind other countries in airport and other infrastructure developments.
“If I blindfolded someone and took them at 2:00 in the morning into the airport in Hong Kong and said, where do you think you are, they’d say, this must be America; it’s a modern airport,” Biden said. “If I took you and blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think, I must be in some third world country.”
{mosads}Biden was speaking at Philadelphia’s 30th Street train station, where he touted an announcement by Amtrak that it was unveiling new electric locomotives for trains on its popular Northeastern U.S. routes that will run up to 125 miles per hour.
Biden said the country needed to “reinvest and modernize our whole infrastructure, especially in rail, which … plays such an essential part of our infrastructure system.”
“Why did we lead the world economically for so long,” Biden asked. “We had the most modern infrastructure in the world. Why do businesses decide to locate in a particular geographic area? Transportation.”