Hearing Of The Railroads Subcommittee Of The House Transportation And Infrastructure Committee-Railroad Security
Federal News Service
May 5, 2004 Wednesday
Headline: Hearing Of The Railroads Subcommittee Of The House Transportation And Infrastructure Committee
Subject: Railroad Security
Chaired By: Representative Jack Quinn (R-Ny)
Witnesses Panel I:
Allan Rutter, Administrator, Federal Railroad Administration; Chet Lunner, Assistant Administrator, Office Of Maritime And Land Security, Transportation Security Administration, Department Of Homeland Security;
Panel Ii:
Ed Hamberger, President, Association Of American Railroads; Ernest R. Frazier, Sr., Esq., Chief Of Police And Security Department, Amtrak; Dan Duff, Chief Counsel And Vice President Of Government Affairs, American Public Transportation Association;
Ed Wytkind, President, Transportation Trades Department Afl-Cio;
Panel Iii:
James Dermody, President, Long Island Rail Road; Rick Tidwell, Deputy Executive Director, Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation
Location: 2167 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
BODY:
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REP. PETER A. DeFAZIO (D-OR): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, what I hope to hear from the witnesses, from Administer Rutter and Assistant Administrator Lunner is what tools they need-and I've got to tell you, I think part of it's money. And I know you're part of the administration and the administration doesn't want to spend money on a lot of homeland security things, but we need to hear your honest opinions, because we don't want to have you back here after there's an event, and saying, why didn't we take these reasonable steps and hear, well, there just wasn't the money to do it. So I'd like to see what steps you would outline and implement.
I look to obviously Amtrak being a federal responsibility, you know, a local state combined responsibility dealing with commuter rail, and certainly, you know, when we deal with freight I would like to see a partnership from the federal government, like to see suggestions about-we can't just say, well, they're required to have plans and private security and do these things. I think that we're dealing with national security issues here. The federal government has to be more engaged working with freight, partnering with freight, providing some of the resources that are necessary, you know, whether we need to get innovative and tax credits or something else. I don't know.
But, you know, I just do know when you look at a couple of freight instances that were accidents, like the Baltimore tunnel or the railcars in the West that wiped out an entire river system with the (Met M ?) whatever it was, that fell in. You know, when you begin to think of deliberate actions, targeted more into critical infrastructure or heavily populated areas, freight has got to be a major concern of the federal government, and we just can't pass it off by saying, they're private operators, and we can't stick them with all the costs either. So I hope to hear some very forthcoming testimony about what you need, not just enhanced criminal statutes. These people don't care about criminal statutes, you know. They really don't.
Suicide bombers are not really going to be petrified by the fact that they might go to jail for a while, you know. So the criminal statute stuff is window dressing. It's nice for people who are more casual sorts of terrorists, but for professional terrorists it does not have a deterrent effect, so we need to take proactive, preventative steps, and I'm afraid that means spending money. So I hope to hear some real honesty here today on those issues.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. DeFazio, questions.
REP. DeFAZIO: Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Just to go back to the question that was addressed to Mr. Lunner about the allocation of funds, I'd just to kind of get a little more direct answer. What the gentlelady was saying-I understand what you said. I mean we had an initial prior assessment of threats, still interested in aviation, use those as weapons of mass destruction, put a strong emphasis there. And I understand that part of the answer but I didn't get the second part. She was saying, is the money we've allocated, approximately $100 million to rail and transit since 9/11, adequate? What sort of a plan do you have? What will it cost to accomplish that plan? I guess, here is my concern.
You know, I helped created the TSA, which is now, in many ways, being disassembled. We had projected 56,000 screeners. We went down to 48,000 something and then suddenly, someone on the Appropriations Committee, with the collusion of the White House, said, Let's go with 45. Okay, we can do it with 45. So we're doing it with 45. So 45 isn't enough. There's going to be catastrophic lines this summer and potentially risking not only passenger inconvenience but also threatening security because of the pressure these people will be under to move a much larger number of people through than they can.
So I'm just trying to get at how we come up with these homeland security plans and budgets. I mean, do you have-have you sat down your group-and you say there's about 24 dedicated to transit and rail-and said, Okay, what do we need? What's the plan for the next 12 months? What's the plan for the next five years? Lay it all out and then figure out what it costs or do you basically get your allocation from Congress and the White House and say, Okay, well, here's what we can do. We've got 24 people for the entire United States of America, a pretty big country, to focus on transit and rail. Doesn't really sound like enough to me.
Could you just-I'm just trying to sort of get at her question which you answered very artfully and I know you're under scrutiny here and probably your masters are watching to make sure you don't say we need more money. But if you could just kind of talk about that.
MR. LUNNER: Sir, thank you for your question. The approach that I'm trying to explain is that, at this stage of our development, the people that have been identified in my previous answer are concentrating mostly on establishing the criticality and the vulnerability and the assessments of what's out there now and where the gaps are. It would be, we believe, inappropriate to throw money at a problem we haven't really defined in a particularly specific way. Again, going to the New Carrollton project, it's sort of the same approach that we're doing there. We need to answer some of these questions about what works, what's missing, what's the next needed mitigation factor before we can come up with any list of, you know, specific millions and millions of dollars to attack something that we don't understand exactly yet.
REP. DeFAZIO: Okay. Let me get at it this way. It's been, you know, 9/11, almost three years. Could we, if you had a few more staff, could we do the assessment and planning a little more quickly? I mean, I'm just a little disturbed to hear that we are still sort of assessing the vulnerabilities of the system and building a plan stage and then I guess maybe next year, you'll come in and ask for money. But that means that money does not get applied until October 1st, 2005. It just seems that-unless there's a supplemental-you know, could we be doing the planning and assessment a little more quickly, if you had some more resources?
MR. LUNNER: What we're able to do at this point, again, is to leverage the staffs of agencies who are our partners --
REP. DeFAZIO: All four of his, right?
MR. LUNNER: For example, the Federal Transit Administration studies that were done of risk assessments of the 36, I believe it was, top transit agencies. But there's work to be done there in terms of making it speak one language so that we can look at it consistently from system to system and from mode to mode. So it's not-some of the work that's already there has to be translated into a common language, for example, so that we can make these decisions on a relative basis in terms of their relative criticality and their relative risk assessment that they all face together.
REP. DeFAZIO: Have you been taking lessons from Donald Rumsfeld?
(Laughter.)
MR. LUNNER: I have not met Mr. Rumsfeld.
REP. DeFAZIO: Okay. Well, I think-but I mean, some of the language of it. I guess my bottom line is, I'm-as one member of Congress, look, this is not a place where I want to scrimp on the budget and I guess I'm just not going to hear what I need to hear today, which is, "Yeah, you're right. We could move faster, we could be planning. There are some things we already know. We could begin to implement. Here's what we need to do it."
I would hope, if you can't do that publicly, that you can do it privately or other people listening can provide us e-mails that come in over the transom and tells us about those things. You know, as one member of Congress, I want to be an activist on these issues and I'm just very concerned at this pace. I mean, if we're not going to begin to implement a comprehensive plan and risk assessment-based on risk assessment for rail and freight until 2006-7, that's to me just too far in the future, given what I feel is a more immediate threat.
MR. LUNNER: I understand the sense of your comments, sir. I would be remiss if I also didn't mention, beyond the 115 which people have identified in the UASI grants in 2002 Amtrak received $100 million additional for its safety and security improvements in the tunnels in the Manhattan and Long Island Area. And then the DOT is providing nearly $4 billion in transit formula grants to states and localities in its proposed FY 2005 budget. Of that $37 million is statutorily required to be spent on security projects. So again, it's an aggregate number, not just my staff or not just Administrator Rutter's staff or the money that we're given individually. But in aggregate, there has been quite a bit of money expended on this issue in conjunction with the industry's own investments.
REP. DeFAZIO: Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
REP. QUINN: Mr. DeFazio, let me just say. I share some of your impatience. I really do. I mean and I'm an expert at nothing. Believe me. I'm an expert at nothing but I know-and Mr. Castle pointed it out before-we travel each week at the airport. So I wouldn't say undo anything at the airports. But I just have this feeling that some days, I walk through and I'd like to take some of those good workers at the airport, so many of them, and just move them in the railroads.
You know what I mean. So there's more body, more money, more people, something to do quicker, more quickly than --
REP. DeFAZIO: Well, I've got to give them this. At least, they're experimenting with the sniffer portals, which I've been trying to get TSA to do at airports, which they did once before when it was under the FAA but haven't done subsequently to see what throughput and accuracy we can get. And I've met with some vendors who have what seems to me to be extraordinary technology that you can move through quite quickly. And again, you wouldn't necessarily have to screen every passenger. Part of it is creating the uncertainty for someone and you don't know whether you're going to be the person forced to go through that portal or not. It could be defensive in that manner. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
REP. QUINN: I agree. The New York Times reported today that the first stage of the demonstration project took about 12 seconds to get a person through it. That's just a newspaper report and I'm sure you're going to have to take that information and put it together. But that's a start. It just is a start.
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