[House Hearing, 110 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] TRANSIT AND RAIL SECURITY ======================================================================= (110-13) JOINT HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT AND THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON RAILROADS, PIPELINES, AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS OF THE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ MARCH 7, 2007 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure ------- U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 34-784 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2007 --------------------------------------------------------------------- For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866)512-1800 DC area (202)512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia JOHN L. MICA, Florida PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon DON YOUNG, Alaska JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina Columbia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee JERROLD NADLER, New York WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland CORRINE BROWN, Florida VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan BOB FILNER, California STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, JERRY MORAN, Kansas California GARY G. MILLER, California ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa Carolina TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois BRIAN BAIRD, Washington TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania RICK LARSEN, Washington SAM GRAVES, Missouri MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania JULIA CARSON, Indiana JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine Virginia BRIAN HIGGINS, New York JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California TED POE, Texas DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington DORIS O. MATSUI, California CONNIE MACK, Florida NICK LAMPSON, Texas JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio York MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Louisiana TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio HEATH SHULER, North Carolina CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania VERN BUCHANAN, Florida JOHN J. HALL, New York STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin STEVE COHEN, Tennessee JERRY McNERNEY, California (ii) SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee JERROLD NADLER, New York DON YOUNG, Alaska JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin California HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania GARY G. MILLER, California MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina JULIA CARSON, Indiana HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York Carolina MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois BRIAN HIGGINS, New York TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Virginia TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania HEATH SHULER, North Carolina MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania TED POE, Texas JERRY MCNERNEY, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington BOB FILNER, California CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland Louisiana BRIAN BAIRD, Washington JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan DORIS O. MATSUI, California THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia STEVE COHEN, Tennessee MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio VERN BUCHANAN, Florida BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa JOHN L. MICA, Florida HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona (Ex Officio) JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota (Ex Officio) (iii) SUBCOMMITTEE ON RAILROADS, PIPELINES, AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS CORRINE BROWN, Florida Chairwoman JERROLD NADLER, New York BILL SHUSTER, Pennylvania LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin JULIA CARSON, Indiana WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio NICK LAMPSON, Texas JERRY MORAN, Kansas ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio GARY G. MILLER, California BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota Carolina NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois SAM GRAVES, Missouri EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine LYNN A. WESTMORELND, Georgia DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JOHN L. MICA, Florida JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota (ex officio) (ex officio) (iv) CONTENTS Page Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vi TESTIMONY Durbin, Marty, Managing Director Of Federal Affairs, American Chemistry Council.............................................. 28 Hamberger, Ed, President And Chief Executive Officer, Association Of American Railroads.......................................... 28 Millar, William, President, American Public Transit Association.. 8 Pantuso, Peter, President And Chief Executive Office, American Bus Association................................................ 8 Rabkin, Norman J., Managing Director, Homeland Security And Justice, U.S. Government and Accountability Office............. 8 Siano, Michael, International Executive Vice President, Amalgamated Transit Union...................................... 8 Tolman, John P., Vice President And National Legislative Representative, Brotherhood Of Locomotive Engineers And Trainmen, A Division Of The Teamsters Rail Conference.......... 28 Weiderhold, Fred, Inspector General, Amtrak...................... 8 PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania............................. 36 Brown, Hon. Corrine, of Florida.................................. 37 Cohen, Hon. Steve, of Tennessee.................................. 41 Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois............................. 42 Millender-McDonald, Hon. Juanita, of California.................. 44 Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota............................ 48 Tauscher, Hon. Ellen O., of California........................... 54 PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES Durbin, Martin J................................................. 56 Hamberger, Edward R.............................................. 64 Millar, William W................................................ 89 Pantuso, Peter J................................................. 100 Rabkin, Norman J................................................. 107 Siano, Michael................................................... 139 Tolman, John P................................................... 150 Weiderhold, Fred E............................................... 160 SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD Hamberger, Ed, President And Chief Executive Officer, Association Of American Railroads, Comments on H.R. 1269................... 86 Millar, William, President, American Public Transit Association: Response to questions from Rep. Duncan......................... 96 Response to questions from Rep. Brown of South Carolina........ 98 Pantuso, Peter, President And Chief Executive Office, American Bus Association, response to questions from Rep. DeFazio....... 105 Rabkin, Norman J., Managing Director, Homeland Security And Justice, U.S. Government and Accountability Office, response to questions from Rep. DeFazio.................................... 135 Weiderhold, Fred, Inspector General, Amtrak: Response to questions from Rep. Duncan......................... 172 Response to questions from Rep. Brown of South Carolina........ 175 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.010 JOINT HEARING ON TRANSIT AND RAIL SECURITY ---------- Wednesday, March 7, 2007 House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Highways and Transit joint with the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials, Washington, DC. The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Peter DeFazio [chairman of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit] presiding. Mr. DeFazio. The Subcommittee will come to order. This is a hearing on transit and rail security. I have some brief opening remarks. I want to apologize in advance since we had to move the hearing up, and I appreciate people accommodating that because of the joint address. I have something scheduled at 9:30 which I have to do, which is all the way over in Cannon. So I will be stepping out for a bit but will get back as quickly as I can. I have the honor of serving on both the Homeland Security Committee and this Committee, so this hearing is a bit repetitive for me, but this is a critical issue. We have to do better by transit and rail security in this Country. We have put a lot of attention and a lot of resources into aviation, and yet aviation is still a work in progress, but we have not paid adequate attention to transit and rail. Despite the fact that we know that perhaps aviation is the preferred target, we know that transit and rail are a target and have been a target, successfully attacked in other countries, and we need to do better to attempt to deter attacks here in the United States. Fourteen million people use public transit every day, nine and a half billion trips annually. Although we have estimated there is about $6 billion in needs, we have invested thus far on the Federal level only $136 million, which is obviously much less of an effort than we have made in the area of aviation. I am pleased to have our panel here today, pleased to have members here at this early hour and, with that, I would recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan. Well, thank very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for calling this hearing. Shortly after 9/11, the title of the Farm Bill in the House that year was changed to the Farm Security Act, and every department and agency in the Federal Government was suddenly attaching the word, security, to almost all of their requests. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial around that time, and they said, ``Any bill with the word, security, in it should get double the public scrutiny and maybe four times the normal weight, lest all kinds of bad legislation become law.'' About a year after 9/11, as I was driving in here one morning, I heard on NPR News that the new Department of Homeland Security had--they gave some specific figure like 3,278 or some kind of figure--well over 3,000 ideas for security devices that people had submitted around that same time that 750 lobbyists had suddenly registered as new lobbyists in this industry that had popped up around homeland security. I support homeland security grants including grants to improve security for transit and rail systems if the grants are used for activities that actually help protect the traveling public and if those activities are carried out in a cost effective manner. I agree that we haven't exactly rushed to legislate in the area of transit and rail security. The Highways and Transit Subcommittee has held similar transit security hearings in the past in June of 2004 and March of 2006, and this Committee has previously reported out, the full Committee has previously reported out, authorizing legislation for transit and over the road bus security three times. As we go down this road once again, I am concerned about whether we really have a handle on the costs of these programs. There should be an independent assessment of risk-based security needs. Not every transit system in the U.S. needs to receive a security grant. Not every activity that some agencies characterize as security will actually make riders safer. I agree that we need to do a better job of protecting the transit and rail riding public, but to do that we need better security grants management than has been provided thus far by the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Transportation, which has the in-depth knowledge of transportation programs policy and operations, should manage transportation security grants. It is really that simple. Just to summarize, I can support a DOT-administered transit and rail security grant program that ensures that funds are allocated using a fair risk-based methodology with grant activities that actually improve security. But before supporting an effort, we need to take a closer look at the price tag and we need not to just automatically approve anything that someone attaches the word, security, to. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DeFazio. With that, this is a joint hearing since it is transit and we also have the pleasure of being joined by the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials. With that, I recognize Chairwoman Brown for an opening statement. Ms. Brown. First of all, I want to thank Chairman DeFazio for joining me in holding this hearing on an issue that hasn't gotten the attention it needs and deserves. This Sunday will mark the third anniversary of the train bombing in Madrid, and we have seen terrorist attacks in London and India in each year since. Yet, the Bush Administration has done little to protect our Nation's freight rail and public transportation system and its millions of passengers. The anniversary of this terrible tragedy again raises a serious question as to whether we are prepared in this Country for a similar attack. Sadly, the answer is no, no. The Federal Government has focused most of its attention in enhancing security in the airline industry and has largely ignored the needs of public transit agencies and railroads. Yet, worldwide, more terrorist attacks have occurred on transit and rail systems since 9/11 than on airlines. In 2006, we dedicated $4.7 billion to the airline industry for security while 6,000 public transit agencies and one national passenger railroad, Amtrak, had to share a mere $136 million total for security upgrades. Nothing was provided to the 532 freight railroads for security upgrades. Fortunately, for the traveling public, the legislation that I have introduced with Chairman Oberstar and Chairman DeFazio will address the security challenges facing our Nation's transit and rail systems. Our bill requires comprehensive security plans, strengthened whistleblower protection for workers, mandates security training, improves communications and intelligence sharing, authorizes a high level of grant funding for Amtrak, the freight railroads and public transit providers, and provides funds for lifesaving improvements to the tunnels in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. Most importantly, it helps make sure our communities, our first responders and our transit and rail workers are safe and secure, and it does all of this through a coordinated effort between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation, the agent that has the expertise to deal with transportation safety issues. We are way behind many other countries in protecting our transit and rail system, but with the leadership--let me repeat--the new leadership in the Congress, we have a plan that will protect millions of transit and rail passengers and the communities through which freight railroads operate from harm while keeping the trains running on time. Once again, I want to thank the Chairman for holding this joint hearing, and I yield back the balance of time. Mr. DeFazio. With that, I would recognize Congressman Shuster from Pennsylvania, the Ranking Member on the Railroads Subcommittee. Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. We do need to focus on rail and transit security, but I think it is important to also point out that the last six years, we have not had an attack, and we need to give great credit to our law enforcement and intelligence community for, I believe, that record. As we look at our transit system and rail system, it is an open system; highway system, open system. We are not going to be able to close it off, but we do need to focus and find ways to be sure that we are enhancing and improving that security. But the best way, as I said, is intelligence sharing, intelligence gathering and making sure that our law enforcement have the tools available to be able to go out and find, arrest and take down these organizations that want to do harm to American citizens and our system. The rail system in the United States is large, the largest in the world, 200,000 miles of track and over 220,000 employees. With the commuter rail system, we are carrying over a million passengers per day. As I said, this is an open system. We can't close it, but we again have to find ways to improve our security system. The railroads in this Country, I think, have done a good job of starting off on their own. The Association of American Railroads created and funded its own security plan immediately after 9/11 and conducted risk analysis of the entire industry including train operations, communications and cyber security and hazmat transportation. The AAR created a DOD-certified 24/7 operations center working at the secret level to monitor and evaluate intelligence. They also created a surface transportation information sharing and analysis center operating at a top secret level to handle infrastructure and cyber security threats. A railroad police officer sits on the FBI's National Joint Terrorism Taskforce. Rail analysts with top security clearance sit at DHS offices also. As I said, I think they have done a good job of the private sector moving forward, making sure they are trying to protect this critical infrastructure. We in Congress have to join with them and do more, similar to what we have done in the aviation industry and make sure that we are a partner with industry so that commerce and our citizens are safe. Again, I want to thank Mr. DeFazio and Chairwoman Brown for holding this joint hearing and again welcome all of our panelists. I yield back. Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman. We want to move ahead as quickly as possible with the witnesses. Ms. Matsui, do you have an opening statement, briefly? Ms. Matsui. Thank you, Chairman DeFazio and Chairman Brown for holding this very important joint hearing. Transit and rail security is very important in my district. On the outskirts of my district is a Roseville rail yard which is the largest switching point of goods west of the Mississippi. Any spills or terrorist attacks could cause significant damage to business as well as loss of lives. Everyday trains arrive in the Roseville rail yard from California's busiest ports. Five percent of all cargo transported through Roseville has hazardous material and runs directly through my district. We really have a keen interest in securing this rail yard. Additionally, in downtown Sacramento, our transit system is making a significant contribution to our city's downtown economic development. Part of the reason why our downtown is developing is because Sacramento has a growing and vibrant public transportation system. As many of us already know, transit costs a significant investment in our community and neighborhoods. We must protect these investments, and we must make sure that the men and women who drive our buses and work on our rail lines receive adequate emergency preparedness training. They are the eyes and ears of our communities. I am really looking forward to hearing from today's witnesses, and I truly appreciate Chairman DeFazio and Chairman Brown for calling this very important hearing. Thank you. Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. Thank you for being succinct. Any others? We have Mr. Mica, the full Committee Ranking Member here, who always has some words of wisdom. Mr. Mica? Mr. Mica. Well, thank you. I did want to come this morning because I think this is an important hearing, and I think it also is going to set the tone for what we do in Congress in a very important area. We are talking about increasing the amount of funds we are going to spend in this area pretty dramatically. So what we do is important that it is effective. First of all, I think transit systems and railroads are particularly vulnerable to attack because they have open access. We just heard our Ranking Member mention that we have an open society and we have areas where there are large concentrations of people that use a public transit system. In any open society, it is almost impossible to protect everyone for every instance and every potential threat. But the threat to transit and rail security systems is very real, although again it is almost impossible to protect us against every potential attack. However, there are some things that we can do to assist transportation providers respond effectively to attacks and help our first responders. The most effective way to prevent terrorism is not by what we are going to discuss here today, but it is, as we have found, to penetrate the organization, the finance and communications of terrorist organizations. Most of what Congress has done has been to curtail, impede or limit law enforcement's and intelligence agencies' ability to obtain that information I just talked about or penetrate these organizations, and in fact that is probably our most effective use of dollars, going after those organizations and stopping the attack. Thus far, I have not seen much evidence that security grants administered by the Department of Homeland Security are particularly effective. In fact, there have been some examples of serious mismanagement of some of the grants under DHS programs such as the Urban Area Security Initiative and the Homeland Security grant program. Let me just cite a few of those examples. One was $160,000 grant to Montgomery County, Maryland, to buy eight large screen plasma TVs. They probably should have waited. The price has gone down dramatically. [Laughter.] Mr. Mica. A $3,000 grant to Converse, Texas, to buy a secure trailer to transport lawnmowers to the annual lawnmower drag race; a $100,000 grant to the Washington, D.C. Department of Public Works to pay for sanitation workers to attend a Dale Carnegie management and public speaking session. Now these are some egregious violations, and we cannot allow security grants that we create to go for frivolous activities like these. I believe that transit and rail security grants should be focused on activities that really can make a difference. First of all, better communications, systems that are interoperable-- right now, we have inoperable systems, but we need interoperable systems with our emergency responders--increased monitoring of rail and transit stations and other facilities, and basic security training for front line transit and rail workers. With 170,000 employees in DHS with responsibility over some 20 agencies, I don't believe that DHS is the best place and doesn't particularly have the best expertise or track record in grants management or in transit and rail policy operations to effectively manage, again, what we are talking about here today. If we are going to have transit and rail security grants, I would urge both sides of the aisle to consider having those grants managed by the Department of Transportation. The DHS transit and rail security program has averaged about $135 million a year for the past couple of years, and I have seen proposed legislation that authorized $1.5 billion a year for the same activities. It remains to be seen if this level of funding is justified. However, we need a risk-based estimate for transit and rail security needs that has been conducted in a disciplined manner and independently validated. Without it, we are flying blind because again we are an open society. Any terrorist, in fact, even a lame-brained terrorist could with little imagination take down our tunnels, our critical infrastructure, our subways, attack our transit systems, regardless of any grants or measures that Congress will adopt. Remember that. They can do that, no matter what you are going to adopt here today. We had a chance, I don't know. You didn't go on that one, did you, when we went to London a few months before the London attack and we saw what they put in place? They spent quite a bit of money, and they had one of the most sophisticated systems. Ms. Brown went. But all they could do--and they had the attack afterwards--all they could do when they had people who were determined to take down their transit system, was to obtain surveillance tapes. It did help them unravel the case. It is impossible to stop that type of action. If you look at London and Madrid, London had suicide bombers intent on taking them down. Anything that you provide in these grants will not do that. It might help you find them after the fact. In Madrid, you had backpacks and cell phones, again, almost impossible to eliminate backpacks and cell phones for all your people that access transit. So, again, we have to think how we are going to spend these dollars, that we spend them wisely. We put them in responsible hands and that they do the best in addressing potential risks. Sorry to take so much time, but I came this morning because this is a very important topic, and the money we spend and the programs we devise need to be very sound. Thank you. Ms. Brown. Mr. Chairman, can I ask the Ranking Member a quick question, 30 seconds? Mr. DeFazio. You know we are going to try and get done by 11:00, and we have two panels, but if the gentlelady has an urgent need. Ms. Brown. Yes, just quickly, first of all, I want you to know that as far as the grants going to the Department of Transportation, without objection. Secondly, I was with you when we went to London, and I think it is very important. They were not able to stop the bombing, but one of the things is, as you said, they were able to identify within days who bombed the trains, and we don't have that capacity as we sit here and speak. Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlelady for her comment. Again, we are trying to get in two panels by 11:00. I urge members to submit opening statements for the record, but Ms. Napolitano wishes to be recognized. Ms. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I associate myself with the remarks of my colleagues. I, too, am very concerned about the level of security along the railroads since the Alameda Corridor East in Los Angeles, the whole quarter runs through my district. It has more than 150 trains through there a day, probably 15, 20,000 contains or upwards. A lot of them contain hazardous material, and there are two million people in that area that just live along that one corridor. I have no open space. Streets define cities, so I am extremely populated. When there are 54 rail crossings, which makes it an even worse scenario for some kind of derailment, I still contend that the railroads should work with us, with the Nation to ensure the safety and security. I know there is an issue with the hazmat placarding. We need to address that. We need to address the security of the employees and the people that we traverse through. Of course, we have got to ensure that we have a good training program for your employees who will then deliver the goods intact. With that, thank you, Mr. Chair. That is my two bits. Mr. Duncan. I have just been told there is no one else on our side that wishes to make an opening statement, is that correct? All right, thank you. Ms. Brown. [Presiding] Thank you. Are there any other opening statements on our side? Okay, we will proceed with the first panel. Mr. Norman Rabkin with Homeland Security and Justice, U.S. Government Accountability Office, Managing Director, Washington, D.C., welcome. Mr. William Millar, American Public Transit Association, President, welcome. Mr. Peter Pantuso, American Bus Association, we really haven't done anything in that area, and Mr. Fred Weiderhold, Amtrak Inspector General and Michael Siano, the Amalgamated Transit Union International Executive Vice President, welcome to the Committee, and you can straighten out your names as you go forward. TESTIMONY OF NORMAN J. RABKIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE, U.S. GOVERNMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; WILLIAM MILLAR, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSIT ASSOCIATION; PETER PANTUSO, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICE, AMERICAN BUS ASSOCIATION; FRED WEIDERHOLD, INSPECTOR GENERAL, AMTRAK; MICHAEL SIANO, INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, AMALGAMATED TRANSIT UNION. Mr. Rabkin. Thank you, Ms. Brown. I am Norm Rabkin with the GAO, the Government Accountability Office. Ms. Brown, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Shuster, Mr. Mica, members of the Subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this discussion on the security of the Nation's transportation systems. In September, 2005, we reported on the efforts to secure the Nation's passage of rails systems. We have recently initiated work on the security of commercial vehicles and freight rail and will soon initiate a review of highway infrastructure and will follow up on our report on the passenger rail system. The decisions on how to secure surface transportation systems, what should be done, where it should be done, who should do it, how much should it cost, who should maintain it, all need to be made in the context of the fact that the Country cannot sustain the current fiscal policy. The Comptroller General has been telling the Congress and the Country that among the solutions to this impending crisis is strengthening the Federal budget and legislative processes and controls. Today, as we talk about investing hundreds of millions of additional Federal dollars, perhaps even billions of dollars, in needed security for surface transportation systems, we need to keep in mind that resources are limited and that there are many other worthy claims on each dollar. In this light, it is very important that Congress, the Administration and the other stakeholders in this process be in agreement with the national strategy for securing the passenger rail system as well as the rest of the transportation sector. The problem, of course, is that there is no national strategy to agree to. DHS has not fully met the expectations of Congress and the President. DHS has not yet issued its transportation sector-specific plan and supporting plans which are to identify their TSA strategy for securing all transportation modes including passenger rail. These plans are important for establishing and clearly communicating the roles and responsibilities of all transportation stakeholders. They also provide a basis for DHS to allocate limited resources among competing demands. Regarding risk assessments, both DHS and DOT have completed numerous risk assessments of passenger rail systems around the Country and have provided technical assistance and training to rail operators to help them assess the risks that they face. DHS has also begun to develop an overall framework to help agencies in the private sector develop a consistent approach for analyzing and comparing risks to transportation and other sectors. However, although progress has been made, these risk assessment efforts have not yet been completed or fully coordinated. Until they are, it will be difficult to compare risks within the rail sector and across the different sectors and to allocate resources accordingly. Regarding Federal actions after the 9/11 attacks, the Transportation Department took a number of efforts to strengthen the security of rail systems including providing security training and technical assistance to rail operators. DHS has issued security directives, piloted explosive detection technology for use in the rail system and recently issued a proposed rule addressing passenger freight rail security. DHS has also provided hundreds of millions of dollars to help enhance rail security through several grant programs, and its fiscal year 2008 request for the transit security grant program is $175 million. Although not all of these activities have been well coordinated or well received, they have enabled system operators to implement programs to better protect their systems and their passengers against terrorist attacks and to be better prepared to recover from any attacks that occur. Finally, DHS and DOT have signed a memorandum of understanding, and their relevant components have agreed to specific annexes that delineate roles and responsibilities regarding passenger and freight rail security. We have not yet examined how DHS and DOT are implementing these agreements but plan to do so this year. In summary, we are encouraged by the increased Federal focus on the security of surface transportation modes. A clear strategy, strong Federal coordination and continued leadership from the Congress, DHS and DOT will be needed to help ensure that actions and investments are designed to enhance security and are appropriately focused and prioritized. Madam Chairwoman, this concludes my opening statement. I will be prepared to answer questions at the appropriate time. Ms. Brown. Thank you. Mr. Millar. Chairwoman Brown, Mr. Oberstar, Mr. Mica, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Shuster and all the members of the Committee, thank you so much for inviting us to be with you today. I am William Millar. I am the President of the American Public Transportation Association and, on behalf of our 1,500 members, we are pleased to be testified on the Rail and Public Transportation Act of 2007, H.R. 1269. We appreciate that you have made the security of the tens of millions of Americans who use public transit every day and the hundreds and thousands of workers who work in our industry, make their security a high priority, and we look forward to working with you as you move to complete this bill. As Mr. Duncan said, this Committee has acted on several other occasions in these areas. Unfortunately, the rest of the Congress has not seen fit to go forward. I hope this is our time when the train pulls out of the station and makes it successfully to its destination. Now today is a weekday and, as a weekday, 34 million times, Americans will board public transportation vehicles. That compares with less than two million times that they will board the Nation's airlines. So you can see it is an important part of our transportation network and one that is heavily used. Unfortunately, security has been a priority with our industry for many years, long before that fateful day in September of 2001 because, as our friends from the GAO have reported on several occasions, public transit is among the most frequent target of terrorist activity around the world. We have stepped up our activities since September 11th, and transit systems have spent more than $2.5 billion out of their own budgets with only a pittance of Federal assistance to encourage the development of better security. We can do more, we should do more, and we urge the Congress to increase Federal investment in transit security. Our industry has identified some 6 billion worth of needs that ought to be done to improve security. Some of these are very complex. Some of them are very simple: capital investments such as interoperable radio systems and communications systems, more security cameras, automatic vehicle locator systems and simple things like better fencing and protection at the facilities where our employees work. We also need investment in so-called soft costs such as better law enforcement, overtime costs, extra security, more extensive training of workers, to just name a few of these. We also ask that the Congress provide funds to sustain an increase of the very successful Transit Security Standards program that our organization has developed in cooperation with DHS and DOT. We also urge the Congress to provide a funding mechanism for the Public Transit Information Analysis Center, the so-called ISAC, which allows effective communication of important intelligence information with public transit systems across the Country, also, interestingly enough, allows reverse communication back to DHS so that they can be aware of what is going on in the field. These are common sense improvements that should be made and should be funded by the Federal Government as part of the larger war on terrorism. Now let me turn to the specifics of the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act. We strongly support the proposed $3.36 billion that would be invested over a three year period under this bill. It would go a long way in plugging some of the holes that I have outlined here. We appreciate that the bill is designed to cover both some of the operational costs and capital costs that I have referred to. We do want to encourage the Congress to allow flexibility. Needs vary substantially, different cities, different transit agencies. Large rail systems may have different needs than large bus systems. Both have different needs than commuter rail systems have. We need some level of flexibility in how they are implemented. We strongly support the notion of coordination between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation as envisioned in this bill. We are very pleased that the bill and, from what I can take, the members' opening statements, that there is strong support to make sure that the grant-making mechanisms of the Federal Transit Administration are used to make sure that whatever money the Congress makes available is distributed quickly, fairly and that the appropriate checks and balances, the audit and all those things that are required are in place and should be used, and we do appreciate this Committee's recognition of that. While there are many things to like in this bill, it won't surprise you that there are a couple of things that we have some concerns about. The bill, as we understand was originally drafted, requires a local match. We can see no possible justification for a local match in a national security issue. We do wonder what 500 additional rail inspectors, many of whom do not understand the transit operating environment, will do. We worry about the negative impact of potential civil and criminal penalties on public employees. We want to be sure that the grant funds are delivered quickly and properly and spent right. We think by running it through the Department of Transportation, using their existing mechanisms, is adequate protection. I see my light is blinking, and I could go on and on. So let me just summarize by saying thank you very much. We appreciate the strong position you have taken and look forward to working with you in the enactment and administration of this bill. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Brown. Mr. Pantuso? Mr. Pantuso. Yes, thank you, my thanks to the Committee. My name is Pete Pantuso. I am the CEO of the American Bus Association. We appreciate your scheduling this hearing. We also appreciate your consideration of H.R. 1269, the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007. The American Bus Association and our members take very seriously the security of our passengers, our equipment, our facilities and our personnel, and we will greatly be aided in the efforts to protect our industry and our 650 million passengers with further security funding. In the time I have today, I would like to accomplish a couple of things: number one, to tell you about the ABA membership, who we are, what we do and what our interests are in transportation and in security; second, detail the efforts that ABA and its members have undertaken in security since 9/ 11; and third, give you ABA's view of H.R. 1269 and its provisions. The American Bus Association is the primary trade association representing the private over the road bus industry as well as thousands of tourism attractions and icons in places like Washington, D.C., New York City, Oklahoma City and every city throughout the Country. As I mentioned, the private bus industry transports approximately 650 million passengers every year, a total that compares favorably with the number of passengers carried by the Nation's airlines. Moreover, ABA members link some 4,000 communities across the Country. The difference between the private bus industry and airlines is that bus operators are in every community. They are small mom and pop businesses. They operate with little or no Federal, state or local subsidy. As the Federal Government continues to fund, and well deservedly, the airlines from terrorist attacks, funds should also be provided to the private bus industry who similarly move hundreds of millions of passengers and whose funding mechanisms have been lacking from this Congress. Indeed, the private bus industry's minimal security funding has been limited to modest amounts through the appropriations process, typically averaging less than $10 million per year since 9/11 and typically overseen by the Department of Homeland Security. For fiscal year 2007, for example, the Department of Homeland Security has divided the funding mechanism into two tiers, the larger share of resources only available for larger companies. In fact, only four companies have received approximately 80 percent of the limited amount of funding in current fiscal year 2007. ABA's operators have made effective use of past funds, limited though they were, and operators priorities are certainly training and threat assessment, threat recognition, crisis management. They have also identified that in the future, they need equipment. They need emergency phones, GPS devices and other communications systems that will link them to first responders. They need driver shields. They need cameras in bus facilities and cameras on board buses and in staging areas--all equipment necessary to protect the passengers that they move. That is why the funds provided by the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act are so necessary. When the average ABA member has five to eight motor coaches, the industry lacks the wherewithal to support even modest security enhancements without Federal funding. ABA did help develop a training program for bus industry personnel in 2003 and 2007 with the help of DHS funding. That program trained personnel in threat assessment, threat recognition, crisis management. It trained security and safety directors of bus companies and had them go back and train other employees. The ABA distributed security training materials, instructional CDs, provided information on a security web site, all of which was available to assist the private industry. We trained hundreds of individuals. We trained 700 companies out of a total of 3,500 companies. But despite those promising results, that program has been halted because of a lack of DHS funding for the future. With all I have said, it should be clear that the American Bus Association and its members support H.R. 1269. The bill authorizes $87 million over 4 years for bus security grants for the private industry. While the increase in bus security funds is certainly appreciated, equally important is Section 9 of the bill which details the use of the funding for construction, for modifying terminals, for protecting drivers, for installing cameras and video surveillance systems, for establishing and improving emergency communications and for passenger screening where appropriate. Subsection C allows private operators who are eligible for grants to receive those grants from the department with consultation from the Department of Transportation, and we think that is critically important. There are other provisions of the bill that we are very, very happy with and, as Mr. Millar pointed out, there are some things that we would like to see changed. But, in conclusion, we want to offer our thanks for your considering this bill and putting this bill together. We hope that it will receive favorable consideration from the full House at the earliest opportunity, and the ABA looks forward to working with both Committees and the Chairmen and Ranking Members from both Committees to make sure that security for the private over the road bus industry is top of mind. Thank you for your assistance. Ms. Brown. Thank you. Mr. Weiderhold. Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the Committee. The Rail and Public Transportation Security Act, H.R. 1269, is a significant piece of legislation, probably the most important legislation affecting rail and transit security since 9/11. I thank you, just as Mr. Millar and others on this panel have thanked you, for listening to the passenger rail community and for working with the DHS committee in moving this legislation forward. I know that there were some missed opportunities in the Congress, and I thank you for those efforts as well. I want to be the first witness who tells you that you cannot act quickly enough. Madrid, London, Mumbai are wakeup calls. In using that metaphor, I think some people have just pushed the snooze alarm. We need to wake up. We do not have the time that we think we have to address these serious problems. I cannot and will not tell you that the passenger rail sector is fully prepared. It is not. Certainly, in locations like New York City, very much to the credit of Commissioner Ray Kelly and others, we have made inroads. We have made real progress, and progress has been made in substantive pockets in other areas of transit and the freight side, but I cannot say the same is true for all of the critical properties used by Amtrak. We do not have enough K-9 units at our stations, we do not have police and security on our trains, and we have not put into place many of the physical countermeasures that our vulnerability assessments have concluded are needed. Amtrak plans to do more. This does not mean that we do not know what to do. I think to Mr. Duncan's and Mr. Mica's comments, if after five years, gentlemen, we don't know what to do and we are not smart about how we invest that money, then shame on us. I think we can learn a lot from what was done correctly and what was done incorrectly on the aviation side. You cannot pick up a lot of what has been done in aviation and move it over to our open system, but there are lessons learned there, and I think we can be very smart about the money that would be authorized for rail and transit security. I would also urge you to find a way to exact the best kind of cooperation between DHS and DOT to get the real synergisms. I know that is not an easy task. The simple fact is that passenger rail and transit have familiarity with the grand processes and regulatory and safety oversight roles played by DOT. There is a comfort level there. The sector's experiences with DHS, quite frankly, are mixed partly because of the newness of the Department, the reorganizations of the Department. I don't know what iteration we are on right now, but when you meet with a lot of DHS folks, they don't have business cards that have their current title and organization. This does mean that they are not good people. This means they are trying to hang in and do a difficult job under difficult circumstances. Also, TSA traditionally has been aviation-centric. In the early days after Madrid when I went over and met with DHS and TSA representatives to hammer together the security directives, I met with people from the aviation sector and from the Coast Guard. There was no one present from the rail business and, at that time, they did not know our business well. With respect to the specific provisions of the bill, I want to highlight just a couple of points from my written testimony. First, in Section 4 with respect to the risk tiers, again to the members' comments, you cannot cover all the bases; you should not try to cover all the bases. You need to assign those risk tiers that are out there. The language you have in the bill right now refers to providers, and I would recommend to you strongly that you also look to critical assets or systems. You look at a station like Washington, Union Station over here, which is probably in everybody's target folder, high iconic value in the shadow of the Capitol. Yet, we have a station that if you just assign vulnerability, if you just require vulnerability assessments and risks on a provider basis, you have got Virginia Railway Express, you have got the MARC trains, you have got Amtrak, you have got WMATA that would be coming in--of which, what is their status? How would they be prioritized? It would be far better to prioritize that station, that locale as an intermodal point that needs to be prioritized. The other thing I would recommend is that you ought to mandate linkage between vulnerability and security plans between and among providers. Amtrak shares property with 23 different transit organizations across the Country, and yet in none of those plans are the security plans and vulnerability assessments linked together. That is an oversight, and that needs to be fixed. With respect to Section 7 of the bill, the rail security assistance, most of you know that Amtrak has received $22 million from DHS over the last three years. I think this bill goes a long way in allowing Amtrak the opportunity to have access to a far greater amount of funds, and I want to give you my assurances from an IG perspective that we will do everything we can to protect those funds. Section 10, fire and life safety, most of you know that we have a large fire and life safety project underway in New York City. If you have not been up here to see it, I would invite you to come see it because it will show you what we can do with those monies. It is extremely important to protect those tunnels. I see my time is up. Madam Chair, I appreciate the opportunity to testify today, and I am ready for your questions. Ms. Brown. Thank you. We do have questions for you. Mr. Siano, welcome. Mr. Siano. Chairman DeFazio, Chairwoman Brown and Ranking Members Duncan and Shuster and members of the Committee, on behalf of more than 180,000 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. I also want to applaud this Committee's continuing focus on this important and urgent issue. The issue of transportation security is one that our members are confronted with on a daily basis. As vehicle operators and mechanics, our members are responsible for protection, safety and security of not only themselves but also their passengers. This is an awesome responsibility and one our members are ready to live up to so long as they are provided with the tools and training necessary to equip them to prevent or, if necessary, respond to terrorist or other emergency incidents. Faced with the reality of terrorist attacks against public transportation, the ATU has, for years, worked to raise awareness of our members and their employers to this danger and to advance real concerted solutions and initiatives to enhance the safety and security of the systems operated and maintained by ATU members. We strongly believe that the labor community must be a part in any effort to address the security threats facings our industry. For that reason, we have worked with our members, the transit and bus industries and officials in all levels of Government including many members of this Committee. The transit and over the road bus industries have taken admirable steps toward securing their operations, but due in a large part to funding constraints, they have not gone far enough. The reality is that these industries and the ATU cannot do this alone. The Federal Government must step up to the plate and provide the necessary funding, guidance and even mandates to provide the level of security that transit and over the road bus passengers and employees deserve. On the issue on funding, the ATU supports the figures presented by Mr. Millar in his written statement to the Committee. In addition, we join our partners at APTA in urging the Committee to reconsider the issues of matching funds for transit or over the road bus security grants. I would like to focus my comments today on another aspect of security which my members consider to be the most important thing that we can do to enhance the security of our public transportation system, front line employee training. While we should not abandon research and development, the new technologies we need to recognize that have been proven to be the most cost effective security measures is employee training. Each and very front line transit employee, including rail and bus operators, customer service personnel and maintenance employees, must receive security and emergency preparedness and response training. Security experts, Government officials and transit and over the road bus industry officials have all agreed that training is the most essential element on an effective security regime. In fact, just last week, the TSA Office of Grants and Training issued a bulletin which highlighted the importance of annual front line employee training and announced that the decision of the Agency to elevated priority to applications for grants for security training. We are pleased that the Agency has recognized the importance of training. Experience tells us that without the adequate funding and mandates, the necessary training will not be provided. The National Transit Institute which is funded by the Federal Transportation Administration has developed numerous mode and employee-specific training programs that have been widely approved and tested by union, industry and Government officials. Unfortunately, these programs, which are available free of charge to any U.S. transit agency, have only been provided to less than a quarter of our Nation's transit employees. Unfortunately, transit systems continue to resist calls for training because of the operating costs to pay employees and keep the buses and trains running during training sessions. It is time for the Federal Government to step in and provide funding for the operating costs associated with training and to further require all transit systems to train all front line employees. I want to applaud the members and leaders of this Committee for recognizing the need for Federal Government action in this realm. The recent introduction of the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007 as well as legislation passed by this Committee in the previous session will go a long way towards addressing the needs of our Nation's transit systems and their employees. Not only will this legislation provide significant funding resources directly to transit agencies and over the road bus companies for crucial capital enhancements, but it also recognizes the need for training by requiring that all front line employees receive the necessary training. The bill will further require consultation with employees and representatives in the development and implementation of security priorities and measures. The ATU is very supportive of these provisions. I thank you again for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the ATU. I cannot stress enough how important it is to include the input of transportation labor in this discussion. It is our members who are on the front line of these battles and who know best what dangers they face every day on the job. I appreciate your recognition of this fact and look forward to working with you to address the important issues raised here today, and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Ms. Brown. Thank you and thank all of the panelists. Now we will go to the Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Oberstar, for his opening remarks or comments or begin the questioning. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you and Mr. DeFazio for laying the groundwork for this hearing and working together cooperatively and for the Ranking Members as well participating in what is a very critical subject matter for us, transit security and rail security. I have a statement which I will submit for the record. Mr. Siano, you really touched a sensitive chord. Your members are front line. We need your thoughts and suggestions as you speak for those who are the first ones to be struck when terrorism hits us wherever, in the Heartland, in the air, on the ground, on the waterways. In fact, just last week as I was participating in an Amtrak conference in Philadelphia and talking with the engineer on the Acela, discussing security issues, what do you see as a locomotive engineer, things that are a concern to you. I got an earful from one of your members or one of your brothers in Transportation. One of those concerns was fencing. Mr. Millar and other members, yes, we do need to put fencing up. It is an obvious deterrent. But that, in and of itself, is insufficient. I don't want to go into it, but we looked at fencing on port security, for example, and putting miles and miles of fencing around the Nation's ports and how quickly they can be penetrated. It is an obvious deterrent, sure. In Northern Minnesota, in my district at airports, there are fences put up, several miles of fences around those rural airports, and they keep out the deer and the timber wolves, a really good job with that, but I think a determined terrorist could get through those things very quickly. So what supplementary, what overriding types of security do your members need? Your transit agencies are on the front line. Siano's members are running the buses and the transit vehicles, and they see it first hand. What additional do you need? Mr. Weiderhold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your comments and understanding very much. We completely agree it is a whole series of things that need to be done. Certainly, it starts with the employees and the management and having a good plan and educating all at the authority as well as the law enforcement and the first responders in the area as to what that plan is and what is needed. Second, it is physical things. Sometimes it is simple, like fencing, but it is not just fencing. It is then making sure there are proper cameras and things that can watch that perimeter. It is making sure that our vehicles can be tracked and located. We now have very sophisticated technology available to us, but many transit systems can't afford it, automated vehicle locations, things of that sort. For our larger members who operate extremely sophisticated facilities such as extensive systems of tunnels, it is making sure about what is called intrusion detection systems that are up to date. It is making sure that the chemical and biological detection systems are developed for our industry and deployed as appropriate in the number of places that are there. It also about working with our customers. Along with our employees, they are the people who are going to see what is going to happen first. So making sure that we have proper outreach to our customers, that they know what to do if they see something out of place, on and on. Mr. Oberstar. I am going to interrupt you there. That is an excellent catalogue, if you will--training, surveillance, tracking of transit vehicles, intrusion detection systems and passenger awareness, if you will. Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, sir. Mr. Oberstar. May I ask the GAO representative, Mr. Rabkin, your reaction to that, just very briefly, very quickly, your response to those, to that catalogue, if you will? Mr. Rabkin. I think that an integrated approach to rail and transit safety is certainly called for. I think it all starts with coordination and the Federal Government taking the leadership. I think Congress has already spoken on that, and the President, the Administration also. The DHS has the leadership. They ought to come out with their strategies of how the various sectors ought to work together, what are the principles of security, and then industry and the Federal Government can take it from there. I think there has got to be some discussion of balance and, as I said earlier, who is going to pay what for what kind of investments, both capital and operating. Once those decisions are made, I think that applying the security needs at the local level on a risk-based approach can be done. It can be done a lot more easily. Mr. Oberstar. Mr. Pantuso, do you think the DOT and DHS are applying best industry practices to security as to your members? Mr. Pantuso. In the case of our members, sir, no, absolutely not. Each one of our members are, for the most part, very small business people. They are all very different in terms of the types of services that they offer. There is very little opportunity for them outside of some limited DHS funds and what we have done to access training, to access threat awareness, to put together a plan, to understand what the assessment needs to be . The fact that we have only trained a few thousand people out of 150,000 employees is a problem in our industry. The biggest challenge I think that we have, that I think DHS and DOT haven't been able to overcome so far is coordination between the two organizations and with other modes. I have testified before your Committee, Mr. Oberstar. For example, FTA in working with Mr. Millar's members have a tremendous amount of information and resources and training materials. Since we are very similar systems, we are open door bus systems, if some of that could even be shared with those that we work with DHS, that would be a big step in the right direction. Mr. Oberstar. Amtrak could certainly use metal detectors at check points and entry points, not as extensive as for aviation but certainly they could use some of the aviation technology, Mr. Weiderhold. Mr. Weiderhold. I think there is some opportunity. We, obviously, have had a couple of tests of those types of equipment on our properties and found for the most part that they really can't handle all of the volumetric flow that we have going into the stations at certain times, but I would say during periods of heightened threat alert or if there has been an attack that is close to home, then yes, something must be done around screening, absolutely. Mr. Oberstar. And intrusion detection systems as well? Mr. Weiderhold. Well, I can tell you tunnels have come up several times this morning, and I share the concern in and around tunnels, especially tunnels underwater. As an IG, I go out and I try to look for best practices because a lot of the way we evaluate how well the company is performing is we want to look at what the best practice is and do a gap analysis around that best practice. I can tell you that there is no standard for best practices for tunnels. As an engineer, I can tell you that a lot of these tunnels that were built into the 19th Century were what we call built to last. They were built with granite. You go to the Baltimore Potomac tunnel, the First Street tunnel, trust me, those things are very substantial. If you go to the underwater tunnels in New York in the Hudson and East Rivers, those are cut and fill tunnels. They have greater vulnerabilities. We are very concerned about that, and we are trying to do things to mitigate that exposure, but we need intrusion detection. You also need, if you have someone coming in, you need to take that person down, and we are looking at means and methods to do that too. Mr. Oberstar. Thank you. My last question, Mr. Millar and I think other members as well, one of the issues we are going to face as we move into the legislation, as we move the legislation forward between our Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, is grant administration. Your experience has been that DOT has computer software to track and monitor the flow of dollars and to prioritize needs. On the other hand, Homeland Security has had four separate offices that they shifted in the course. That is really extraordinary in such a short lifetime of this agency, to have changed the servicing of transit agencies with these security grants. Your very firm recommendation, would that be concurred by others, that the grant administration be run through the Department of Transportation? Mr. Millar. Yes, sir, that is. I mean the policy should be set by the Congress. If the judgment of the Congress is to centralize it at DHS, that is fine, but let us use the other resources of the Government. The Federal Transit Administration has been giving out grants for 40 years. They have a well developed system. They have a system of checks and balances. They have, after the grant has been made, the ability for audit systems, things of that sort. Why not make use of what works? DHS, as you said, four different arrangements in five different years, there are still grants from 2004 that haven't yet been fully utilized because the rules keep changing, a very difficult, complicated process. Mr. Oberstar. Mr. Pantuso, do you have a comment to make? Mr. Pantuso. No. We would agree very much with what Mr. Millar said. Obviously, the system isn't working right now. To the extent that moving it somewhere else or at least better coordination between the two departments will help tremendously in our own members' efforts. Mr. Oberstar. Mr. Weiderhold, do you have any comments? Mr. Weiderhold. In my oral testimony, Mr. Oberstar, I pointed out that there is a lot of familiarity with passenger rail and transit with DOT and some comfort level that exists on that plane. It is a tough call because clearly DHS is here and DHS has certainly, I would call it, security policy drivers in this organization. But with a gun to my head, this is like asking a child of divorced parents, who do you like more, mommy or daddy; we have to live with both of them. It is a tough question. [Laughter.] Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much. My time is well beyond the point, and I am grateful, Madam Chair, for this time, and thank you very much, Mr. Shuster and Mr. Duncan also for your corresponding participation in these areas and your work in the past Congress on these subject matters. Ms. Brown. Thank you. Mr. Duncan? Mr. Duncan. Since this is a joint hearing, I want to go first to Mr. Shuster for questions. Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Duncan, and thank you Chairwoman Brown. Because we have a time schedule, I am just going to ask one question, but I would like to submit several other questions to the panelists to get their responses. Mr. Millar, your frustration came through, and you started to talk about and didn't have time. My question is concerning the grant programs at DHS, can you elaborate on some of the frustrations you have had with dealing with DHS in getting these grants? Mr. Millar. Yes, well, first there is knowing what their policy is and they change it every year, so it starts at that very basic level. Second, it is the structure that they use. Once the Congress sets some money for this purpose, then DHS puts its spin on it. Then it sends direction to each of the 50 States to the security offices there. Then from there, it goes down to a regional level. Then our transit systems have to participate in a competition at the regional level. Then it goes back up the chain. If there is something that gets back up that they don't like, it goes back down the chain. Six months goes by. Twelve months goes by. Eighteen months goes by, the money that you thought was being invested in security to improve things for the American public doesn't happen. So it is a very frustrating thing for our members. I have a quote. I did a little survey work, knowing I was coming here. I had my staff call our members. Let me just read you a couple quotes from a couple of transit systems this week: For the sake of five to six million dollars, we go through an incredible bureaucratic process that is unlike any other program, that from one of our major systems that has high quality staff people. They know what they are doing, and this is their assessment of what it is. I could go on and on and on with quotes from many other people. It is not a good system, sir. Mr. Shuster. Is that through TSA or DHS. Mr. Millar. This comes through DHS. It is the Office of Grants and Training, I believe is what it is called this week. Mr. Shuster. Thank you. I yield back. Ms. Brown. Before I ask my first question, let me just say that I have asked my Jacksonville Transit Authority Director, Michael Blaylock, to join us today, and he is here. Welcome, Mike. Mr. Weiderhold, Amtrak? Mr. Weiderhold. You can just say Amtrak. That is fine. [Laughter.] Ms. Brown. Okay, in a conversation the other day in the hearing, you mentioned that DHS and DOT have done little to help Amtrak improve security. You stated that Amtrak is not even on the DHS radar screen. What has been done and what are some of your recommendations? Mr. Weiderhold. Well, I think I may overspoken a little bit there. Clearly, we are on the DHS radar screen, and we talk to DHS. In fact, our new Chief Risk Officer is a former high ranking DHS infrastructure protection person. We are certainly glad to have him on staff. I testified earlier that Amtrak has only received $22 million over the last 3 years, and Amtrak also committed a lot of its own monies to doing things around safety and security, but I think a lot more could be done. I think we are getting smarter about how we need to spend the money that is out there. We would like to see kind of a firmer, stronger handshake between DHS and DOT and be a party to that handshake. Ms. Brown. Okay, the next question is very important. The AAR have opposed limiting freight railroad liability for accidents involving hazardous material. I understand that under current law, Amtrak is liable for all train accidents even if the accidents were due to the freight railroads' negligence. Not counting grade crossing accidents, would you say that most accidents involving Amtrak are the fault of the freight railroads and, if so, what impact has that had on Amtrak? Mr. Weiderhold. I am not an expert in this area, but I have been with the company for 30 years, so I think I am qualified to answer the question. Excluding the rail grade crossings, I would say that absolutely what we call the rail equipment accidents that involve our trains are generally the fault of wide gauge-narrow gauge doing things associated with the track. Ms. Brown. In your opinion, how much progress has the U.S. made on rail and transit security since the Madrid bombing? I went on that trip to London, and it seems as if in London, the station is secure as opposed to when you go in the station. Mr. Weiderhold. The short answer is not nearly enough has been done. I can tell you the standard I use when I go to various properties that are out there. I use New York as my gold standard. New York has what we call in the vernacular, a game face. They get it. They feel the threat. They have made a commitment to it. The city has. The State has. The carriers have. So that is my standard. I will go to look at Washington or Los Angeles or Seattle or any other major urban station that we have, and I wish they were all as ready as New York is. Ms. Brown. GAO, you noted a conflict between FRA and TSA regulations. It seems to me that DOT and DHS needs to coordinate better and that the future legislation should recognize the need for the agencies to coordinate on these initiatives. Can you expand on that? Mr. Rabkin. They have signed a memo of understanding between the two departments and then there have been two annexes signed between FTA and DHS and between FRA and DHS. The question is whether they are actually carrying out what they have agreed to and whether what they have agreed to goes far enough to accomplish the mission that Congress expects of all those agencies. Those are questions that we plan to be asking this year as we do our work on both freight rail and passenger rail, and we look to informing the Subcommittees of our results in the next year or two. Ms. Brown. Mr. Siano, can you explain what type of security training your workers are now getting and what improvements do you think need to be made? Mr. Siano. Well, I guess that is pretty simple. The training that we are getting now is practically nil, means nothing, that I am aware of on any type of level. I mean we might be getting some very small amount of training about identifying people as they board on the buses or into any property that we have, but the security guards are not there for property entrance. There is very little of anything that is locked up. They do, my understanding is throughout the industry, they do lock up at a certain time at night, all doors, and you have to go through probably one entrance and one exit at night for employees leaving and coming that time of night. But during the day, you have got to understand, bus garages, for the most part in the summer time, in warm weather, all the doors and bay doors are open to get somewhat of cross breeze. So that is an open invitation to anybody to walk through. We have other situations where our bus cleaners because at night the bus has to be cleaned inside and out, and we have a tremendous amount of people sleeping in buses. They have no place to go. So what they do is they wander into a bus garage, and they fall asleep. They intend to fall asleep. You know we got to roust them up, and sometimes it is not a pretty situation because some of these people, who are very ill, protect themselves with any weapon that they have on them, mostly knives. And so, we are getting harassed. The notion that these garages throughout the Country are completely secured, let alone during the day, at night, they are not even secured. So we have a tremendous amount of break- ins. We have a tremendous amount of entry by strangers, and obviously we don't know what for. They could be terrorists. We don't know. We haven't been hit rather big on that situation, but we do have it on occasions. It is a tremendous burden on us to be careful of people wandering on properties. We are charged with that responsibility, and it is not part of our job description, and it should not be. Ms. Brown. Thank you. Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I thought Mr. Millar made a good point when he talked about the fact that we have so many billions more that are taking rail, bus and public transit than on the airplanes. I think the staff tells me 9.6 billion passengers a year on public transit, and that compares to about 700 million on the airplanes. Really, we are going ridiculously overboard. I was on the Aviation Security Conference Committee, but we are going ridiculously overboard at the airports, screening passengers, confiscating shaving cream and shampoo and an occasional pocketknife. But I do recognize that more needs to be done on this particular type of security we are dealing with here today. I also realize that every member is going to say that we need to do more and more and more in regard to security so they won't get in trouble if something bad happens, but at some point, we need to recognize that you are several thousand times more likely to be killed in a car wreck or even many, many times more likely to be struck by lightening than you are to be killed by a terrorist. I would like to read a quote that was testified or that was said at a Senate committee a few months ago by a witness. He said, ``We should not let an over-exaggerated threat of terrorism drive us crazy, into bankruptcy, trying to defend against every conceivable threat. We do have limits, and we do have choices to make. We don't want to break the very systems we are trying to protect. We don't want to destroy our way of life trying to save it. We don't want to undercut our economy trying to protect our economy, and we don't want to destroy our civil liberties and our freedoms in order to make ourselves safer.'' That was a quote from Secretary Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security. What I am saying is this, we just need to look very carefully, as the Wall Street Journal editorial said that I quoted in my opening statement. We need to look very carefully at any request for security. We don't need to just automatically approve anything that has the word, security, attached to it. We have got to make sure we are getting some bang for our buck and that what we are approving is effective and especially cost-effective. Now, going from that, I have several questions. I am not going to have time to ask them all but maybe in a second round. Mr. Rabkin, you traveled, you and your people traveled apparently to several other countries, studying their security, their rail and bus security programs. What did you find in some of these other countries that was the most effective or impressive to you or your staff? Mr. Rabkin. First of all is the same frustration and limitations that we face in this Country: that you can't protect everything and that they had to make hard choices about what they invested in. We found a lot of the same practices and principles that were talked about today in terms of public awareness, intrusion detection, closed circuit TVs, the redesign of stations and infrastructure, which of course is, when you talking about building new, then that makes sense. If you are talking about retrofitting, it becomes very costly. One of the things that they do that we don't do here, there is a little more covert testing to ensure that the systems are working. They have a little more central focus on evolving technologies, and the governments there will do the testing and share the results of the testing of what technologies work well with the companies that need to use them. There are a couple of things like that that we have reported on. Mr. Duncan. All right, thank you. Mr. Millar, you gave one quote a few minutes ago from one of your members. Do you have any specific examples of problems that some of your companies or your people have run into in applying for these grants through the Homeland Security Department? Secondly, you have testified there is a $6 billion need there. Would you tell us how did you arrive at that? How did you arrive at that figure or is there some independent group that analyzed that and came up with that figure? Mr. Millar. With regard to your first question, our members tell us that the problems start first with understanding what the policy is going to be for that particular year. The second problem we hear is that since it is passed through the States, you have varying degrees of interest. Certainly, in a State like New York, there tends to be a higher degree of interest than there might be in a State that has not had a terrorist attack in it. At that State level, there is very little understanding usually of what public transit is about and what needs to be done. There are arbitrary limits put on how the money can be spent. Congress didn't necessarily put limits on it, but limits get put. So for example, paying certain kinds of operating costs, which as Mr. Siano said is important if we are going to pay to keep buses on the street while we are training employees. Transit is not like a product that you can put on the shelf and inventory. The bus that is to be there at 8:00 a.m. has to be there with a properly trained driver there, those kinds of things. Then this long process of getting an answer to a question, because you go through several different layers, we all know the old game of telephone where you speak in one person's ear and then the next person and the next person, and you get a different story at the end. Sometimes, DHS on a couple of occasions hasn't released the money that Congress gave it until the very last day of the year, so you miss many, many months, and the list goes on and on. We would be pleased to provide specific examples. With regard to the oft quoted number by me and others of $6 billion, that is a number that we developed based on a detailed survey that we did of our members in 2003, and it was talking with the members. By that point, they had two years of post-9/ 11 experience. We had learned some of these lessons from around the world that you just spoke of, and we had done assessments. The FTA, and that point, had done almost three dozen security assessments of transit systems. So we were able to piece together all that information. That is our best estimate. We have offered to the Department of Homeland Security who has frequently criticized our estimate, why don't we work together. Why don't we jointly develop a way of going out? Maybe the $6 billion number is right. Maybe it is $10 billion. Maybe it is less $6 billion. Let us work together. To date, we are still waiting for them to take us up on that offer. I wish I could give you more detail, but that is the best number that anybody has that we have been able to find. Mr. Duncan. All right, thank you very much. I have questions for the other members of the panel, but in fairness I am going to yield back at this point. I will ask later. Mr. DeFazio. [Presiding] I thank the gentleman. Mr. Cummings? Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just have one question, and this is to Mr. Rabkin. The President has stated in an executive order that Federal, State and local officials and the private sector must share responsibilities for surface transportation security. Tell me, what is the appropriate role for the Federal Government in setting standards that State and local officials and the private sector should meet and are the State and local officials truly prepared to be full partners in ensuring security on the transit and rail systems? Mr. Rabkin. Mr. Cummings, I don't have an answer to the second part of your question about the preparedness. We plan to do more work in both the passenger and freight rail areas, and as part of those efforts, we will be interacting with the operators and with State and local government officials and learning more about it. I don't know if anybody is ever prepared to do everything that is needed. I think part of the effort here is to get them to that level. I think I will just leave it at that. Mr. Cummings. But wait a minute now. Do you see the Federal Government has having a role in setting standards? I didn't hear your answer to that. Mr. Rabkin. Yes, sir. Mr. Cummings. Maybe I missed it. Mr. Rabkin. No. You are right, I didn't answer that first part. Yes, the Federal Government does have a role in setting standards, and it shouldn't be a unilateral role. They need to work as both the Congress and the President have instructed DHS to work_with the other departments, with State and local governments, with operators, with other stakeholders to come up with standards that would be effective and are achievable. Mr. Cummings. I see. I am sorry. Did you want to say something? You look like you are ready to jump over the table. I want to make sure. Mr. Millar. Standards is a very important issue. We are a designated standards setting organization. We have offered to the Department of Homeland Security, let us work together to develop standards. Apropos Mr. Duncan's question, we want to make sure that transit systems know the right things to do, that they don't do too much of it or that they don't do enough. We think a standards program which we have sought to have funded for several years now and which has not been funded. We have funded a piece of it with our own money because we think it is that important, but we think it is a partnership of the Government and the industry working together to set standards, and we would be very anxious to participate in such a partnership. Mr. Cummings. You have offered to do that? Mr. Millar. Yes, sir, we have on many occasions. Mr. Cummings. And you have been? Mr. Millar. Well, to be honest about it, at the lower levels, people see it, and they think it is a good idea, but when it goes up the chain in DHS, it has never been approved. It has never been funded. Mr. Cummings. It seems to me at some point we have got to move off the dime and make things happen. Chairman Brown, I have heard her talk about this, how the American people want us to solve their problems and not just be talking around each other. Consistent with that, I hope that we can begin to move in that direction so that 10 years from now, we are not sitting here, having this same discussion after many people suffered. I think, as I have said on many occasions, we have one life to live. This is no dress rehearsal. This is life. And so, I think we need to move on that, and I think it would be good if the parties would sit down and make an honest and straightforward effort to try to get there and that perhaps this Congress should set some timetables for you all to accomplish that because we don't know how long we are going to be here. It is our job to make a difference. If we are not going to make a difference, we might as well not be here. Considering the fact that there are other members and we will want to move on to the second panel, I yield back. Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman. Representative Coble? Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Duncan examined Mr. Rabkin along the same lines I was going to pursue, so I won't repeat that. Mr. Weiderhold, I am told that Amtrak does not control the commercial and retail spaces at Union Station. Has this had a negative impact on Amtrak's ability to control security, station security? Mr. Weiderhold. Let me just explain that just a little bit. I think there is a lot of confusion about who owns Union Station. Union Station proper, what we call from the gate area north up the railroad, is owned by Amtrak. The main hall, what most of you know as Union Station, is owned by the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation which is DOT, Amtrak and the District of Columbia. They, in turn, contract with Union Station venturers that hire a property manager that leases the space to the retail operators. It is complex. It is a problem that we are trying to address because up until about six months ago, those players were not fully engaged in our security programs, and we have since engaged them in those programs. So to answer your questions, yes, we have engaged those folks, and yes, it has been difficult when you have properties that have multiple owners and multiple players. Mr. Coble. But you see improvement? Mr. Weiderhold. Oh, absolutely. We have established at Union Station a concept that we call the Station Action Team that basically brings all the stakeholders in. We meet monthly. We go over security issues, safety issues. We have identified and uncovered some gaps that exist at Union Station, and I would love to talk to you about it more, but we are making some headway. Mr. Coble. I would be glad to. Mr. Weiderhold, let me put another question to you. What security precautions does Amtrak take at the ticket counter? That is to say do ticket agents have access to a no-fly list, for example? Do they check ID and inspect baggage? Mr. Weiderhold. ID is checked primarily to match a name to a credit card. It is done for financial reasons and not really for security reasons. In answer to your question with respect to the watch list, no, absolutely not. There are no Amtrak passengers that are matched against the watch list. Mr. Coble. Baggage is not inspected? Mr. Weiderhold. Baggage is not inspected, sir. On occasion, if we have a canine team present, they may make a sweep, but for the most part the baggage is not inspected. Mr. Coble. Mr. Chair, I have other questions, but in the interest of time, I yield back. Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman. Representative Carney? Mr. Carney. Mr. Millar and Mr. Weiderhold, I appreciate your both coming for the Homeland Security Committee and the T and I Committee on back to back days, not a fate I would wish on anyone frankly. I hoped to ask you this question yesterday but didn't have the opportunity. TSA continues to emphasize the importance of carriers identifying and reporting security risks to Homeland Security Officials. Has your industry promoted any whistleblower security or protections so that they can report these concerns without fear of retaliation or retribution from employers? Mr. Millar. The majority of our employees are public employees who are covered by whistleblower. While we have not specifically spoken to our members about whether they think more needs to be done in that area, it is a common and normal part of our practice. Mr. Weiderhold. Amtrak employees are not Federal employees so they are not covered by the general Whistleblower Protection Act. They are, however, covered by the Railroad Safety Act. My office does investigations with respect to violations for railroad accident reporting, and there are also some analogies in the Inspector General Act that has authority over Amtrak. So we are familiar with whistleblower protection, and in fact my office is charged with enforcing that on our railroad. Mr. Carney. All right, thank you. I yield back, sir. Mr. DeFazio. Representative Boustany? Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Rabkin, thanks for your report, and I read it. I was listening very intently to your verbal testimony, and I want to take a few quotes, one being you said the Country cannot sustain current fiscal policy. The second one was resources are limited. The third quote is there is no national strategy. As I read your report, I am very, very concerned about the interagency cooperation between the Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security. Certainly, you have highlighted what has happened with the memorandum of understanding, and certainly those represent a first step. But in looking at some of the other things we have asked for statutorily, we have asked for certain plans to be presented to this Committee, and as of March 2nd, 2007, TSA has not issued a transportation-specific sector plan and there are others highlighted in your report. There is a recurrent theme here. The agencies are very good at policy but very poor at implementation. As we look at moving legislatively, what should be our next steps in your opinion? Mr. Rabkin. There have been a couple of references to disappointments with the Department of Homeland Security and following through on directives that both the Congress and the President have given them, certainly in terms of meeting deadlines and also in terms of substantively coming up with strategies and plans. Holding them accountable by, first of all, ensuring that their activities are more transparent, that more of this information is shared with the committees and their staffs and holding oversight hearings on them to get them to answer these questions is probably the best way to do it. In our experience, in the end, what it comes down to is they listen to the power of the purse, and if you tie appropriations to their reporting or producing, it seems to get their attention and their track record is a little better at that. Mr. Boustany. I thank you because I share the same concerns that my colleague, Mr. Duncan, also expressed, and that is we want to take care of security, but we want to do it wisely. To continue to just throw money at a situation where we are not getting results is really not good policy. As we dig into this, you can bring department heads, but again I guess the power of the purse is the one real stick in this process. Mr. Rabkin. The appropriations committees have appropriated funds to DHS to carry out their functions and then withheld part of that until they produced plans of how they are going to spend the money, both in that year or over a longer term as part of a broader strategy. That has at least gotten the department's attention and has at least made them more responsive in laying out more specific plans. One of our frustrations with them, we put them on our high risk list of Federal programs that were more prone to fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement even before they opened their doors, and they remain on the list because of problems in transforming the disparate agencies that were pulled together into an operating department. They have been focusing on their mission work. Their management activities have evidently been second fiddle. We think it is about time. These things do take time, these kinds of major transformations. But it is time for them to start producing results in terms of how they are managing the department and how they are responding to Congress, et cetera. Mr. Boustany. Thank you. Do any of you other gentlemen want to comment on this? Mr. Millar. I will just say we completely agree on that point. Mr. Boustany. Okay, thank you. I yield back. Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentleman. I had some questions, but I am going to forego at this point because I do want to get to the next panel. I think it would not be fair to ask them to hang around while we listen to the King of Jordan, however long he might talk. Thank you all for your testimony. The members certainly can submit questions for the record or contact you folks individually to get answers to their questions. Thank you again. I would call the next panel, and let us move along as quickly as we can so we can hopefully hear from all of them before we become pumpkins. Mr. Hamberger, Association of American Railroads; Mr. Tolman, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen; and Mr. Durbin, American Chemistry Council. Just start talking, Ed. TESTIMONY OF ED HAMBERGER, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN RAILROADS; JOHN P. TOLMAN, VICE PRESIDENT AND NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE, BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS AND TRAINMEN, A DIVISION OF THE TEAMSTERS RAIL CONFERENCE; MARTY DURBIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF FEDERAL AFFAIRS, AMERICAN CHEMISTRY COUNCIL Mr. Hamberger. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here to discuss freight railroad security in general and the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act in 2007, in particular. I will skip with the background I was going to give on all the activity and actions the industry has taken since 9/11. I believe the Committee is fully aware of that. The written testimony which I submitted was due at a point in time when we had not had an opportunity to really review H.R. 1269, so I would ask permission to submit more detailed comments on the legislation for the record. Having said that, I would like to make three points on the bill. First, I want to thank Chairman Oberstar and Subcommittee Chairs Brown and DeFazio for recognizing the unique characteristics of the Transportation Technology Center (TTCI) in Pueblo, Colorado. We appreciate your putting TTCI in as a member of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (NDPC). Today, a facility specifically targeted at emergency response training for freight and passenger railroad environments is notably absent from the NDPC, and this corrects that oversight. Similarly, we support the provision calling on DHS to establish a research and development program for projects related to railroad security. I have specific recommendations in my written statement. Secondly, we recognize the importance of whistleblower protection. I am sorry Mr. Carney had to leave. But the fact is that railroad employees already receive whistleblower protection under the Federal Railroad Safety Act. Creating a new separate system under the Department of Labor seems to be duplicative and potentially confusing since many of the issues may surround both safety and security. We would suggest that perhaps a better approach would be to expand, if you feel it necessary, current whistleblowing provisions in the Federal Railroad Safety Act to encompass security issues so that there is one system and not two parallel systems in existence out there. Third, the issue of employee training. We do take that very seriously. Working with the National Transit Institute at Rutgers University, we have developed an interactive uniform security awareness curriculum for freight railroad employees. We submitted this training regimen to both DHS and DOT in 2006 and have received very positive responses from them. Recently, TSA inspectors surveyed 2,600 railroad employees and found that 80 percent have a medium or high level of security training. All front line Class I railroad employees will have completed this security training by the end of this year, and we will have written confirmation of that. As I look at your legislation, I would just draw attention that some of the elements that are in the training requirements might be more appropriate for transit workers than freight rail workers. Training on the evacuation of passengers from tunnels would be one example. A second example concerns the requirement of our railroad employees to investigate the seriousness of the matter at hand. We believe that the appropriate security training can be stated in three Rs: recognize that something is not right; record what you can, for example, a license plate number; and then report to the appropriate authorities_in our case, the railroad police, local responders or the National Terrorism Taskforce of the FBI. We just think we need to make sure that we are not training our employees to get into dangerous situations. The last point I would make is the following. It is very appropriate that I am here with a representative of labor and a representative of the American Chemistry Council because we have a long history of working together with both these organizations on safety and security matters. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Mr. DeFazio. Thanks for that succinct presentation. Mr. Tolman. Mr. Tolman. Thank you and good morning, Chairman DeFazio, Chairwoman Brown, Ranking Members Duncan and Shuster, members of the Subcommittees. My name is John Tolman, and I am a Vice President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and serve on the policy committee for the Teamsters Rail Conference. Thank you for inviting me here today to testify on the issue of rail security. On behalf of the 70,000 members of the Teamsters Rail Conference, I would like to thank you for the interest in this subject and applaud both the Homeland Security Committee and the T and I Committee for introducing rail legislation. We look forward to working with you on, I guess, fine tuning that. In lack of time, I guess I am not going to comment specifically on the pieces of legislation. As you know, the issue of rail security is a vital concern for all rail workers including the Teamsters Rail Conference, members represented by the BLET and the Brotherhood of Maintenance Away Workers. The Teamsters Rail Conference is dedicated to improving rail security and safety in America in order to adequately protect rail workers and communities they serve. Each and every day, we are on the front lines of our Nation's transportation system and see the woeful lack of security on our railroads. As you know, there are many components that make of the issue of rail security. Today, I would like to discuss four of these issues: training, whistleblower protection, rerouting of hazardous material and Transportation Worker Identification Credential program. Locomotive engineers and trainmen and track maintenance workers are the true first responders to rail emergencies, the eyes and ears of the industry. Worker training is one area of grave concern for rail workers because rail security measures have been given very little attention that they deserve. Even since 9/11 and the attacks of rail and transit systems overseas, the security training given the rail employees has been minimal and usually comprised of nothing more than a printed brochure and a 10 minute videotape. Moreover, 80 percent of the members who participated in the rail security safety survey said that they have not received any additional security training since 9/11. Therefore, we respectfully request that Congress pass legislation that will compel rail corporations to train their employees properly on proper safety evacuation procedures, the use of appropriate emergency escape apparatus, the special handling of hazardous materials and roles and responsibilities of rail employees within the railroad security plans, including an understanding of the plans' threat level index and notification to employees each time the threat level is changed. Unfortunately, the same employees who are given so little training by the railroads are still being intimidated and harassed when they report security problems. Strong whistleblower protections must be a component of rail security legislation. Railroad workers should not and cannot be subject to dismissal when they provide security threat information to the Government. Mandatory rerouting of hazardous materials for safety reasons would further jeopardize the safety of these same employees and the communities through which we travel. Mandatory rerouting sounds like a good idea in theory, but it is not a practical solution except on very rare occasions. Much of the infrastructure in the industry is at or near capacity, and there are both labor and equipment shortages in many areas. Furthermore, given the nature of the train operation and FRA requirements, locomotive engineers and conductors and track inspectors cannot simply be shifted from route to route the way a truck can be diverted from one interstate highway to another. Qualification requirements are territory-specific and exacting. Simply put, there is not enough slack in the system to reroute hazardous material on a large scale without the system experiencing significant delays and disruptions. Similarly, the Rail Conference believes that the Transportation Worker Identification Credential program is a mixed blessing. The Conference understands the need for heightened security against terrorist attacks that target American rail facilities and believes that a limited, properly designed safeguard TWIC program as one element of a comprehensive integrated anti-terrorist rail security system could help and protect our railroads from attack. Unfortunately, the program established by TSA in conjunction with the Coast Guard poses a cure that is worse than the illness in some respects. The Teamsters Rail Conference looks forward to working with the Committee and any questions, I would be glad to answer. Thank you. Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Tolman. Mr. Durbin? Mr. Durbin. I will also try to be brief here. Again, as Mr. Hamberger said, we too are analyzing 1269 right now, and we look forward to getting back to the Committee with more detailed comments on the bill itself. Again, I would just like to echo that we are happy to say there has been a long history of close cooperation on safety and security between the chemical industry, the labor unions and the rail industry. But as a representative of the materials that are being transported, let me point out that the products that are supplied by the chemistry sector, including the hazardous chemicals, are essential to virtually every aspect of our lives. In fact, more than 96 percent of all manufactured goods are directly touched by chemistry, which is one of the reasons that DHS recognizes our industry as critical infrastructure. So the flawed view that chemicals are an unnecessary risk that need to be eliminated is thankfully being rejected. Now Congress wisely established a comprehensive national regulatory system for hazardous materials transportation administered by DOT. The goal of that system is to ensure that chemicals and other hazardous materials are delivered safely, securely and reliably. The goal is not to prevent their movement. That is the appropriate focus. While DHS has been given an important role in transportation security, it should continue to rely on the unmatched hazmat regulatory experience at DOT. For ACC members, security was a priority well before the events of 9/11. Following the terror attacks, we went even further. We didn't wait for Government action but instead developed the Responsible Care Security Code which became mandatory for our members in 2002 and covers facilities, cyber systems and transportation, and our members have already invested over $3.5 billion in that effort and certainly will continue to do so because we understand the stakes and our responsibilities. Under the Code, the ACC and its members continue to work closely with the rail industry as well as with appropriate Government officials to develop more robust security operations. Among many other actions, our members efforts have included enhancing inspections and increasing surveillance along rail lines, and so far the partnership of the railroads has been strong and effective. In fact, we work together with the railroads on many issues. We share similar views with the proposed rulemaking underway at TSA and DOT and have long cooperated and invested in training systems and technology. We will continue to do. A superb example is the recently announced joint venture between Dow Chemical and Union Pacific to improve shipment visibility, tank car design and to reduce the rail time of hazmat shipments in high threat areas. The fact is that we, that is, the chemical industry, the railroads and the Government, must continue to work together to protect these shipments and ensure their safety and security. For ACC members, continuous improvement is part of Responsible Care. It is ACC's industry leading program and very much a part of the way we do business. Responsible Care requires us to look for new ways to enhance safety and security, whether the subject is new technology or new procedures and protocols. We are working cooperatively with the Federal Government, the railroads and tank car manufacturers as FRA develops a rulemaking for new rail tank car designs. Inputs to that process include industry efforts coordinated through the Next Generation of Rail Tank Car project and Government initiatives such as research coming from DOT's Volpe Center. Emergency response is another critical component of hazardous materials transportation safety. I am pleased to say that again, this is another area where since the 1980s, we have worked with our member companies together with the railroads to put together TRANSCAER, a voluntary national outreach effort to help communities prepare for and respond to hazardous materials incidents. In addition, ACC's CHEMTREC program, now in its 36th year, provides a successful blueprint for sharing expertise and experience with today's emergency responders. Located at our headquarters in Arlington, CHEMTREC is recognized by DOT and other agencies as a valuable source of information and expert counsel regarding hazmat incidents. I am proud to say CHEMTREC has been a behind the scenes partner to a variety of Government organizations and programs including NASA after the unfortunately Columbia Space Shuttle disaster and the U.S. Army in support of our troops in Afghanistan. As a further improvement to CHEMTREC's capabilities, CSX Transportation and CHEMTREC launched a joint program to provide even more timely and useful information to emergency responders. I want to personally invite the members of the Committee to tour our CHEMTREC facility in Rosslyn to see how we work with local responders and help protect your communities. So I will follow up with staff on that. We look forward to working closely with the Committee, the Congress and Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security and other stakeholders to make this happen. I will conclude my remarks. Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. We have about eight minutes left. There is, unfortunately, a very strict rule in the House that we can't meet during joint sessions, so I will defer to anybody on my side who has an urgent question. Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very brief. Mr. Tolman and Mr. Hamberger, and I will give you this in writing, but I want an extension on the whistleblowing protections. Why is it important, Mr. Hamberger? Whether you support it, Mr. Tolman. I don't understand. I have talked to many men in the field, and they have a concern that if they report what they view as security breaches, they will be fired. I would like to hear some discussion, maybe briefly and then in writing. In addition, Mr. Hamberger, would you also speak, and I will give it to you in writing, about security training. There is a concern from the people in the field that they have not gotten adequate training. You know it came up at our last hearing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DeFazio. I thank the gentlewoman for being so succinct. Mr. Shuster? Mr. Shuster. Just a quick question to Mr. Hamberger and Mr. Tolman on the whistleblower protection, do you see that as something that should be at the Labor Department or do you want it part of the Rail Safety Act? Mr. Hamberger. Well, as I indicated in my dash through my opening statement, Mr. Shuster, we believe------ Mr. Shuster. So fast I missed it. Mr. Hamberger. Yes, sir. We believe that it would be more logical to have the current Federal rail safety whistleblowing system expanded to cover security rather than set up a parallel system at the Department of Labor. We are not covered by OSHA. We are covered by Federal Railroad Administration. So it just seems logical to keep it at the FRA. Mr. Shuster. Mr. Tolman? Mr. Tolman. Yes, I did read the language in Chairman Oberstar's bill, and I think that is exactly where it belongs. Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much. I can tell, Mr. Tolman, you are not an attorney, and Mr. Hamberger is an attorney. The length of the answer was much different so thank you. Mr. Tolman. I am just trying to be brief. He is trying to be long. Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Duncan? Mr. Duncan. Let me just say very quickly, Mr. Hamberger, I want to commend you on what your organization has done just voluntarily, and I hope that for all the organizations that have been testifying here today. Mr. Siano, for instance, testified that his members were scared. There is a Federal role but also I think as a good union, if their employees are scared, they would do some things on their own to help better serve their union members. I would say that to all the organizations here. There are certain things that you can and should be doing on your own. We are going to submit our questions for the record. Thank you very much. Mr. DeFazio. I thank the Ranking Member. Anybody else on the Democratic side, quick question? Representative Napolitano? Ms. Napolitano. Not a question but rather a statement that I am hearing a lot of information that I didn't have before, and I am certainly aware that things have not been going too well in some areas insofar as the rail safety is concerned. I am hoping that out of this we will be able to move forward, and I hate to call it a mandate but have Homeland Security and have the agencies work with the railroads, work with the communities to come up with the answers because it isn't one individual that needs to impose those requirements and regulations on the general public nor on the railroads nor on those that really have very little to do with it. Thank you, sir. Mr. DeFazio. Thank you. Mr. Coble? Mr. Coble. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. Mr. Hamberger, I know that AAR has helped developed railroad tank cars that are capable of withstanding derailment, collisions with highway vehicles and other severe impacts. I want to put a hypothetical to you. How would these cars, these tank cars react if a projectile did, in fact, strike the tank? Would it be a Hollywood style explosion or minor league? I know hypotheticals are difficult to answer sometimes. Mr. Hamberger. I believe it would depend in the first case, of course, on what the projectile was and, secondly, what was the angle of the projectile coming in. It is possible, depending on the distance and the kind of projectile that it would, in fact, not penetrate. But let us be honest, there are projectiles out there that clearly would penetrate. If that were to occur, this material travels under pressure. It is liquid as it travels under pressure. When it released into the atmosphere--again, we are talking just those hundred thousand carloads of chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and others--it would then of course form a gas and plume which is toxic. Mr. Coble. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DeFazio. We have got about one minute left. Any other questions? Okay, I want to thank the panel. Thank you for being succinct and delivering a lot of information. Mr. Hamberger. Mr. Chairman, I think that Mr. Tolman would join me. The last time we testified here, we were admonished by Chairwoman Brown and Mr. Shuster to go back and try to reach an agreement at the bargaining table. I am pleased to say that last week our organizations announced that they have reached a tentative agreement that will be going out for ratification over the next period of time. So I would just like to acknowledge the input from the Chairwoman and the Ranking Member. Mr. DeFazio. She is a powerful chairperson. We all recognize that. Mr. Cummings. Mr. Chairman? Mr. DeFazio. Yes. Mr. Cummings. When can we get a copy of that agreement, Mr. Chairman, do you think? I was just wondering. We hear about agreements in all these committees. I would like to see some of these agreements. Mr. DeFazio. Does the panel have an answer? Mr. Tolman. We have not even distributed it to our members yet. It is not even put together. But, Congressman, as soon as we get it, we will be glad to. Mr. Cummings. When do you anticipate that will be? The only reason I am asking is because we hear these things in other committees all the time, and I would just like to see some of this stuff. Mr. Tolman. Right. The group that signed the agreement represents about 47 percent of rail labor. There is still another 53 percent of rail labor that has not signed an agreement, but within a week, I will give you a copy of that. Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much. Mr. DeFazio. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cummings. Again, I thank the panel members for their time and their testimony. The Committee is now adjourned. [Whereupon, at 11:00 a.m., the subcommittees were adjourned.] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.017 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.025 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.026 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.027 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.028 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.029 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.030 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.031 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.032 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.033 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.034 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.035 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.036 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.037 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.038 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.039 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.040 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.041 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.043 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.044 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.045 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.048 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.053 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.054 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.056 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.057 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.058 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.059 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.060 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.061 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.062 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.063 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.064 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.065 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.066 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.067 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.068 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.069 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.070 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.071 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.072 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.073 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.074 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.075 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.076 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.077 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.078 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.079 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.080 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.081 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.082 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.083 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.084 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.085 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.086 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.087 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.088 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.089 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.090 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.091 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.092 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.093 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.094 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.095 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.096 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.097 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.098 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.099 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.100 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.101 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.102 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.103 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.104 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.105 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.106 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.107 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.108 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.109 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.110 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.111 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.112 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.113 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.114 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.115 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.116 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.117 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.118 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.119 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.120 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.121 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.122 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.123 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.124 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.125 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.126 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.127 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.128 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.129 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.130 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.131 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.132 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.133 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.134 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.135 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.136 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.137 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.138 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.139 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.140 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.141 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.142 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.143 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.144 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.145 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.146 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.147 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.148 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.149 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 34784.150