UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
       NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD
                 WASHINGTON, D.C.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  x
                                     :
PUBLIC HEARING IN THE MATTER OF:     :
                                     :  No. DCA
COLLISION AND DERAILMENT OF          :  99-MR-003
AMTRAK 59, THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS,  :
WITH AN EASTBOUND TRACTOR,           :  Volume III
SEMI-TRAILER AT RAILROAD/HIGHWAY     :
GRADE CROSSING NEAR BOURBONNAIS,     :  Day III
ILLINOIS ON MARCH 15, 1999           :
                                     :
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  x

                     Wednesday, September 15, 1999

                     The Guildhall
                     The Ambassador West Hotel
                     The Wyndham Grand Hotel
                     Chicago, Illinois
          The Public Hearing in the above-entitled 
matter resumed, at the Ambassador West Hotel, The 
Guildhall, 1300 North State Parkway, Chicago, Illinois, 
pursuant to notice, at 9:00 a.m., before the Board of 
Inquiry of the National Transportation Safety Board.

APPEARANCES:
     THE BOARD OF INQUIRY:
          GEORGE W. BLACK, JR., Chairman
          National Transportation Safety Board

          JAMES S. DUNN,
          Hearing Officer

          ROBERT C. LAUBY, Director
          Office of Railroad Safety

          BARRY SWEEDLER, Director
          Office of Safety Recommendations and
          Accomplishments

          CLAUDE HARRIS, Deputy Director
          Office of Highway Safety

APPEARANCES: (Continued)

     THE TECHNICAL PANEL:

          TED TURPIN, Operations Specialist
          Office of Railroad Safety

          DR. GERALD D. WEEKS, Chief
          Human Factors Division
          Office of Railroad Safety

          RICHARD DOWNS, Survival Factors
          Specialist, Office of Railroad Safety

          RUBEN PAYAN, Signal Specialist
          Office of Railroad Safety

          BURT SIMON, Human Performance Specialist
          Office of Highway Safety

          BYRD RABY, Heavy Vehicle Specialist,
          Office of Highway Safety

          THOMAS JACKY, Event Recorder Specialist
          Office of Research and Engineering

          MIRIAM KLOEPPEL, Transportation Research
          Analyst, Office of Research and
          Engineering

     PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER

          TERRY WILLIAMS

     ADMINISTRATIVE AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT

          Evelyn Hemingway

APPEARANCES: (Continued)

     PARTIES TO THE HEARING:
  
   NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION
       (AMTRAK):

          LEE W. BULLOCK, President, Amtrak
            Intercity

          TRAVIS HINTON, Chief Operating Officer,
            Amtrak Intercity

          CHRIS BLACK, Director, Public Affairs

          T. MICHAEL KERRINE, Associate General
            Counsel, Tort Litigation

          GEORGE BINNS, General Manager,
            Standards and Compliance

          PETER HALL, Director of Safety, Amtrak
            Intercity

          MARK MEANA, Director of Safety,
            Corporate

          CLAYTON BROWN, Assistant Vice-President,
            Corporate Operations

     CANADIAN NATIONAL/ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD:
          ED HARRIS, Vice-President,
            Midwest Division

          JOHN PRENDERGAST, Risk Manager

          CHARLES WEBSTER, General Counsel, U.S.

          JOHN SHARKEY, General Manager,
            Communications and Signals

APPEARANCES (Continued)
     CANADIAN NATIONAL/ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD:
          (Continued)

          MYLES TOBIN, Vice-President,
            U.S. Legal Affairs

          BOB KEENE

     Federal Railroad Administration:

          DAVID BLACKMORE, Deputy Regional
            Administrator

          ALLAN HALSTROM, Principal Inspector,
            Indianapolis

          JEFF THOMAS, Signal and Train Control
            Inspector, Chicago

          ROBERT MYERS, Assistant Grade Crossing
            and Trespass Manager, Chicago
          PATTY SMITH, Grade Crossing and Trespass
            Manager, Chicago

     FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION:
          RUDY UMBS, Chief, Safety Design Division

     ILLINOIS COMMERCE COMMISSION:

          MICHAEL STEAD, Rail Safety Program
            Administrator

          JOHN BLAIR, Railroad Safety Specialist

          STAN MILWESKI, Railroad Safety
            Specialist

          DON RICHARDSON, Railroad Safety
             Specialist, State Coordinator,
             Illinois Operation Lifesaver

     BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS:

          WILLIAM C. WALPERT, Vice-President

          JOHN P. TOLMAN, Special Representative,
            International Division

          LARRY JAMES, Coordinator, Education and
            Training Department.

          CARL FIELDS, Safety Task Force

          TOM O'BRIEN

APPEARANCES: (Continued)

     UNITED TRANSPORTATION UNION:

          THOMAS P. DWYER III, Director

     MELCO TRANSFER, INC.:

          MELVIN MARSHALL

          JUDY MARSHALL

          BRAD PURCELL, Counsel for Melco
            Transfer, Inc.

                 C O N T E N T S
                                              PAGE
Sworn Testimony of Ferdinand P. Serpe          537
 Examination by the Technical Panel            537
 Examination by the Illinois Commerce
   Commission                                  558
 Examination by the Brotherhood of
   Locomotive Engineers                        566
 Examination by the United Transportation
   Union                                       572
 Examination by Melco Transfer, Inc.           574
 Examination by the Federal Railroad
   Administration                              575
 Examination by the Board of Inquiry           576

Sworn Testimony of Bruce George,
    Ed Malinowicz, and Michael Onder           592
  Examination by the Technical Panel           593
  Examination by the United Transportation
    Union                                      633
  Examination by Canadian
    National/Illinois Central Railroad         634
  Examination by the Brotherhood of
    Locomotive Engineers                       636
  Examination by the Board of Inquiry          639
Adjournment                                    669

                 E X H I B I T S
NUMBER                                  IDENTIFIED
  2N  Diagram - Highway - Rail,
        Its Interfaces                      597
  2O  Diagram - Leveraging Advanced
        Traffic Management for HRI Safety   597


              P R O C E E D I N G S
          MR. DUNN:  Good morning.  It is nine a.m., 
and the National Transportation Safety Board calls its 
first witness, Mr. Fred Serpe.
      SWORN TESTIMONY OF FERDINAND P. SERPE
          MR. DUNN:  Mr. Serpe, for the record would 
you please state and spell your full name.
          MR. SERPE:  My name is Fred Serpe, S-e-r-p-e. 
 I am the Executive Director of the Illinois 
Transportation Association.
          MR. DUNN:  What are your duties and 
responsibilities?
          MR. SERPE:  My role as Executive Director of 
the Illinois Transportation Association is to develop 
educational programs and lobby on behalf of the 
trucking industry in Illinois.
          MR. DUNN:  At this time, I will turn the 
questioning over to our Technical Panel and Mr. Byrd 
Raby.
        EXAMINATION BY THE TECHNICAL PANEL
          MR. RABY:  Mr. Serpe, how does the Illinois 
Transportation Association, the ITA, relate to the 
American Trucking Association, the ATA?
          MR. SERPE:  Good morning, Mr. Byrd.
          The Illinois Transportation Association is 
the state's trucking association affiliate of its 
national parent, the American Trucking Associations 
located in Alexandria, Virginia.  There is a state 
trucking association affiliate in every state.
          MR. RABY:  What is the overall mission of the 
ATA?
          MR. SERPE:  With your permission, I would 
like to read a prepared statement relating to the ATA 
and to the industry and then answer any questions you 
may have.
          MR. RABY:  Thank you.
          MR. SERPE:  The American Trucking 
Associations and it 50 state trucking associations 
affiliates continue to actively support railroad and 
grade crossing safety issues.  The trucking industry 
has been partnered with the National Safety Council and 
with Operation Lifesaver for many years and continues 
to work closely with Operational Lifesaver in 
developing and disseminating educational awareness 
materials on highway rail grade crossing safety.
          This includes a pamphlet, Working Together 
for Safety, and a two-page truck driver safety alert.  
Both have been utilized extensively by the trucking 
industry safety professionals to educate drivers on how 
to avoid the potential hazards associated with railroad 
grade crossings as well as how to stay in compliance 
with all applicable laws and regulations.
          In addition, the trucking industry and its 
membership are currently working with Operation 
Lifesaver in revises it video, Physics 101.  I have 
also brought a copy for you today.  It also provides 
the valuable information on rail grade crossing safety, 
both from the truck driver and locomotive operators 
perspective.
          Once completed, this updated video will be 
widely distributed throughout our industry and with 
Operation Lifesaver to further educate drivers on the 
importance of rail grade crossing safety.
          The American Trucking Associations' staff is 
also serving in the role of Chairperson to the National 
Safety Council Division on rail grade crossing safety. 
 This resulted in the inclusion of rail grade crossing 
safety issues in several states' commercial drivers 
license manuals.
          In addition, the ATA also developed a rail 
grade crossing safety manual that is distributed and 
used by, of course, all of its state association 
affiliates.  Also, just two weeks ago, the American 
Trucking Associations developed information on the 
Federal Highway Administration's new regulation 
providing for strict driver qualification periods for 
convictions of grade crossing laws.
          We communicated the impacts of these new 
regulations to all the industry and have posted 
information on the American Trucking Associations' web 
site.  The decline in railroad grade crossing incidents 
has been impressive.
          We believe this decline is primarily due to 
the hard work done by Operation Lifesaver the American 
Trucking Associations and its affiliates, the National 
Transportation Safety Board, the National Highway 
Transportation Safety Administration, the Federal 
Highway and Railroad Administrations, and the railroad. 
 However, more needs to be done.
          The instances of vehicles running into the 
sides of trains remains a real concern to our trucking 
industry.  In addition, 40 percent of those incidents 
occurred at active crossings.  According to the 1999 
final report on freight car reflectorization issued by 
the Volpe Transportation Center, this report, as did 
previous ones, concluded the need for increased rail 
car conspicuity.
          The 1999 report specifically pointed out the 
use of retro-reflective materials as a means to 
increase rail car conspicuity and thus reduce the 
incidence of vehicles running into trains.  Our 
industry strongly agrees with the Volpe's assessment.
          In doing its share to prevent highway and 
rail grade crossing accidents, the trucking industry 
has become fully reflectorized.  Given the shared 
responsibility of grade crossing safety, railroads, we 
would hope, should likely the same and also become 
fully reflectorized.
          Our industry also supports local control of 
speed limits to help reduce excessive speeds that many 
trains travel through our local towns and communities, 
possibly creating an unsafe situation for motorists and 
pedestrians.
          In fact, the National League of Cities and 
the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution 
calling for the elimination of Federal pre-emption of 
local speed limits.
          We also support increased use of uniform 
signage at rail grade crossings as well as improved 
integrity of locomotive fuel tanks.  Most importantly, 
the industry calls for the installation of cameras at 
grade crossings. California has seen a 90 percent 
reduction in violations as a result of those cameras.
          Finally, we strongly believe that rail grade 
crossing is a shared responsibility between trucking 
industry, the motoring public, and the railroads; and 
all laws and regulations pertaining to rail grade 
crossings should be equally enforced on the motoring 
public.
          MR. RABY:  Would you know, in a typical, day 
how many trucks travel over public crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  I can speak in regards to 
Illinois.
          MR. RABY:  Okay.
          MR. SERPE:  We, in Illinois, are America's 
crossroads.  We see about a hundred thousand trucks 
come through Illinois every day.  The figures I have 
gotten from the Illinois Commerce Commission say the 
percentage of truck traffic over all grade crossings 
range anywhere from 3 percent to 14 percent; 3 percent 
being rural, 14 percent being major urban areas.  
Within that number, it could be anywhere from 3,000 to 
14,000 trucks crossing grades every day.
          MR. RABY:  Would you have any numbers as far 
as how many of these crossings, the truck crossings 
result in accidents with trains?
          MR. SERPE:  From the years 1993 to 1998, and 
once again, I am quoting my sources, the Illinois 
Commerce Commission, for that five year period, there 
were 1,314 grade crossing accidents in that five year 
time period.  The number of crossing accidents 
involving trucks were 383,
           Now what the Commerce Commission doesn't do 
is break out the difference between small, light, and 
medium and heavy duty vehicles.  So, some of those may 
have been pick-up trucks.
          MR. RABY:  Would you also have any figures of 
how many truck occupants died in these accidents?
          MR. SERPE:  No.
          I was unable to get the fatality rate, but I 
will find that out and provide that to this court.
          MR. RABY:  Does the ITA or the ATA ever 
interface with shippers that have large truck traffic 
and use nearby grade crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes, we do.
          We interface with almost everyone as a result 
of highway users or highway traffic.  The way we do it 
through a myriad of meetings and councils and working 
with the government, with DOT, with the Operation 
Lifesaver.
          We have a safety council that meets monthly, 
and which consists of safety supervisors from every 
trucking company.  That comes together and it meets and 
talks about various safety issues.  Then in turn, it is 
the trainee/trainer sort of situation that disseminates 
all that information back to the drivers of the tucking 
companies.
          Once again, I speak on behalf of all 50 state 
trucking associations.  Every state trucking 
association follows the same safety procedure.
          You have to remember about our industry two 
things.  One is safety is our biggest big concern from 
a personal level.  We, in Illinois, employ 1 out of 
every 11 workers in this state, and it is the same 
number nationally.  So if you take a work force of 10 
percent of the population being 10 percent of the work 
force in Illinois, and multiplied that times four for a 
simple family, we are dealing with 40 percent of the 
vehicles on the road are going to be our families.  So 
if we were speaking strictly selfishly, those are our 
families on the road, and that is why safety is 
important to us.
          If we speak economically, our industry runs 
on pennies.  We only make one to two cents on every 
dollar that is profit.  Consequently, to lose a load is 
devastating.  Any spike in cost causes our industry to 
go out of business.  We saw this a few years ago with a 
spike in fuel.  It drove two hundred companies out of 
business just in Illinois.
          So, we have got real reasons to care about 
safety, not just from a family standpoint, but from an 
economic standpoint.  Those increases in premiums and 
losing loads just literally put us out off of business.
          MR. RABY:  What special concerns or problems 
do truck drivers tell you they perceive at highway 
grade crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  Well, in Illinois, the biggest 
problem that our drivers have is the lack of signage on 
the grade crossings themselves.  There are nine 
thousand grade crossings in Illinois, and only half of 
them have got some sort of warning device at all.
          The real numbers are 9,019 grade crossings.  
Grade crossing with gates are 2,296.  Grade crossings 
with lights are 2,500.  Some other automated device is 
61, and those crossings that only have a passive 
warning device is over four thousand.  So our biggest 
concern is lights, action, cameras.  We need them.
          MR. RABY:  Has the timing of the flashing or 
warning lights at a grade crossing been perceived as a 
problem with the truck drivers; in other words, the 
length of time of the warning?
          MR. SERPE:  In a simple answer, no.
          In a more detailed answer, we believe there 
is enough time to adequately warn the truck itself or 
the vehicle itself once the grade crossing lights are 
activated and, once again, assuming everything is 
running properly and efficiently.
          The time it takes a truck to cross the grade 
crossing ranges anywhere from 13 to 15 seconds.  
Generally, that is plenty of time with the adequate 
warning devices to make sure we are able to stop.  The 
law is very clear in Illinois what we have to do on 
stopping, and we are very confident in the lights 
themselves.
          MR. RABY:  What is the ATA's position on the 
draft Motor Carrier Safety Act of 1999 in regard to 
truckers?
          MR. SERPE:  We are a thousand percent in 
favor of the new regulations.  We feel that violations 
of a grade crossing is inherently wrong, and anyone 
should be penalized to the greatest and fullest extent.
          ATA was fortunate enough to be a part of the 
whole planning process of those decisions and made a 
great deal of recommendations regarding that final 
decision.  We were very placed with the final decision.
          MR. RABY:  Do you feel the present CDL 
licensing process adequately addresses the hazards and 
special precautions needed at grade crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  In Illinois, the CDL test itself 
addresses the procedures at railroad crossings.  If I 
may take a minute and read a paragraph right out of the 
manual (Reading)  All persons taking the driving test 
required for the commercial driver licenses are 
required to observe proper procedures that are outlined 
in the Federal motor carrier safety regulations and the 
Secretary of State Field Operations Manual at rail 
grade crossings.
          The procedure itself requires a vehicle to 
stop not more than 50 feet and not less that 15 feet 
from the nearest rail.  They are also required to shift 
into a low gear for crossing the tracks and looking and 
listening in both directions for trains.
          In addition, the Class A and B -- those are 
the commercial driver's licenses themselves -- drivers 
must lower their window and/or open the door to listen 
to trains.  After this is completed, the driver is to 
proceed across the track without changing gears and 
only when it is safe to do so.
          If the area does not have railroad tracks, 
then the driver is required to simulate the proper 
procedure if the crossing does exist.
          MR. RUBY:  That is in the Illinois --
          MR. SERPE:  That is in the Illinois Secretary 
of State Commercial Driver's License Manual.
          Then there is also a corresponding written 
question on the exam itself for the commercial driver's 
license.  I may also add at this time that the Illinois 
Secretary of State, Jessie White, has put together 
numerous task forces.  The one I chair, the Safe 
Trucking Task Force for the Trucking Advisory Board 
that brings all of the people concerned with safety and 
all highway users together to discuss all of these 
methods and procedures and whether everything is fully 
effective and the means to make it better.
          MR. RUBY:  Is there any new technology that 
you can see or have seen or are aware of that promises 
to improve safety grade crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  Our biggest request is cameras.  
We have seen that the cameras, there is a test site 
taking place right now in Illinois in Wood Dale over a 
grade crossing that has cameras set up.  There is 
funding available from the Illinois Commerce Commission 
to enhance those tests and to provide for more test 
sites.
          The biggest thing we would like to see in 
this industry, once again, is the establishment of some 
sort of camera system so that liability can be 
determined immediately, the deterrence that we have 
seen in California, the 90 percent deterrence rate on 
violators will be there and what would work.
          We have also looked at the yellow light 
system and examined it to see if that would be 
something that would be viable for our industry.  It is 
the industry's position that there is adequate warning 
time available with the current system and that money 
that would be allocated for a yellow light system or an 
additional signal system should be allocated in a 
better way from that and using the idea of cameras 
themselves.
          The other thing with technology is -- we are 
talking nuts and bolts here -- there are four thousand 
crossings that don't have anything, and that is just 
dangerous.
          MR. RABY:  Thank you very much.  I turn the 
questioning over to Ms. Kloeppel.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  What are you talking about 
when you say yellow light system?
          MR. SERPE:  There has been discussed in our 
safety groups that a grade crossing system possibly 
instead of just firing off red lights possibly put in a 
yellow light like a stop light.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  In other words, going to 
standard traffic signals?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes, more or less.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Good morning, Mr. Serpe.
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Yesterday at this hearing, a 
witness testified that with the exception of some 
micro-circuitry to predict train speeds and the 
addition of event recorders, the basic design of the 
grade crossing warning devices has remained unchanged 
since the late 1930s.
          Can the same be said of trucks and the fleet 
of trucks on the road?
          MR. SERPE:  Not at all.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  In what ways have they 
changed?
          MR. SERPE:  Our vehicles have become far more 
fuel efficient, far more easy to handle, a far better 
piece of equipment in stopping, starting, pulling and, 
once again, size.
          The industry, although it is not in favor of 
larger vehicles and more freight, the shipping public 
has demanded that the industry go to bigger trucks 
throughout the years.
          As we see today with the 53 foot trailers 
that exist on the roadways today, that was strictly 
because the shipping public wanted the ability to put 
two pallets next to one another all the way back.
          So, the idea of bigger and larger trucks is 
something that has never been requested from the 
industry, but it is something that has been demanded by 
our customers and consequently, we have had to respond 
to that.    Today, our equipment is phenomenally better 
just like our cars are phenomenally better than a 1930 
vehicle.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Are there characteristics of 
trucks that make some crossings particularly hazardous 
to truckers?
          MR. SERPE:  Would you repeat that, please.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  I was just wanting to know if 
there are some aspects of the make-up of trucks that 
make some crossings more dangerous than others for a 
trucker.
          MR. SERPE:  From the aspect of time, it takes 
longer to cross a double track than it does a single 
track.  The truck itself, in that position of a grade 
crossing, there should not be any blinds spots to the 
vehicle.  They should be able to see.  They should be 
able to cross effectively.
          One thing the industry like to see with the 
operation of the trucks is, you know, our vehicles are 
all fully equipped with all sorts of communication 
devices.  If there were a way to communicate that a 
grade crossing is not operating properly, we would be 
happy to serve in that capacity just like we do with 
the state police with a road watch program where, in 
that capacity, if we see an unsafe situation on our 
highways, we immediately radio or call or notify the 
state police.
          So from the standpoint of a driver crossing a 
railroad crossing, he can also be the best line of 
defense.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Are there any guidelines or 
restrictions on truck routing that relate to grade 
crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  Only from a weight standpoint; if 
a road itself is a designated route that has 80,000 
pound access, which is the maximum that any road will 
carry in America, except for the special permit 
situation, no.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  The Safety Board has 
investigated more than one accident in which the 
low-boy trucks got how hung up on crossings.
          In light of that information, do you feel 
that it might be wise to try to establish some 
guidelines to route trucks away from the high profile 
crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes, just like we route trucks 
away from the low viaduct crossings now.
          Unfortunately, there is not always a way to 
tell where a low viaduct is because of weather 
situations.  There could be ice and snow packed on the 
road that adds two to three inches to the road, and 
consequently, it becomes an unsafe situation without 
anyone knowing it, so, yes, if there is a way to 
re-route.
          Once again, we come back to the communication 
of the driver himself being able to notify someone 
somewhere that this is a bad spot that needs to be 
addressed.  The best way to do it, once again, is what 
is happening with our industries today, the rail and 
trucking and safety industries all working together to 
solve those problems.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  If some organization such as 
yours or even an individual trucking company wanted to 
determine whether grade crossings along long a proposed 
route were safe for trucks, is there currently enough 
information available to do that to make a route?
          MR. SERPE:  If I understand what you are 
asking is can someone in a nonprofessional capacity 
analyze and determine something that would be, should 
be done by an engineer or a technical person, and I 
don't know about that.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  I guess my understanding is 
that, let's say a low bridge is there, there is 
information available, and the people who are putting 
together truck routes know the height of bridges along 
the proposed route, is there similar information for 
grade crossings?
          Do you have any way to find out whether there 
are humped crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  Generally, yes.
          Once again, speaking for Illinois, the 
Illinois Department of Transportation has eight hundred 
numbers and tremendous access for routing purposes, 
especially for permit purposes, and also provide 
general information constantly with the ideas of 
construction and other gridlocks and possible barriers.
          So, I would say yes, the Illinois Department 
of Transportation has that information available to any 
motor carrier if they were to so call.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  In the case of the accident in 
Bourbonnais, did the extended load or the weight of the 
truck present a safety hazard when the truck attempted 
to traverse the crossing?
          MR. SERPE:  The truck in Bourbonnais was a 
steel or a flat bed trailer, so its typical lengths are 
usually between 45 and 40 feet.  Consequently, it would 
have taken it approximately 14 seconds to cross those 
tracks.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  I guess in this case, I was 
just thinking the load was over-sized, extended beyond 
that.
          MR. SERPE:  How much was it extended to?
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  It was seven feet beyond the 
back of the truck.
          MR. SERPE:  So, if it was a 40 foot trailer 
with 7 feet of reboof (phonetic) with 52 feet, so it 
would have been 14.6 seconds to cross the tracks.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Does your organization 
communicate on a regular basis with the railroads about 
grade crossing safety issues?
          MR. SERPE:  Constantly.
          Our organization is very involved with, once 
again, with the Operation Lifesaver and the total 
safety relationship of our industries and the 
Government and the public.  So, we are always in touch 
on all sorts of levels with the railroad industry.  
Even if any other type of legislation that arises, the 
industries are always notified and discuss it before 
anything is passed.
          A perfect example of that is the Safe 
Container Act that Illinois just passed recently -- the 
Governor gave me an inventory to read all of that -- 
that calls for the liability to exist on the owner of 
the container itself, that it must be safe before it is 
placed on a chassis and taken on the road by what we 
call a "dray man."  That is a trucking company that 
pulls freight out of the rail car containers.  That was 
done with cooperation of the rail industry and 
steamship lines.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Do you, for example, have 
direct contact with individuals within the railroads 
that operate in Illinois?
          MR. SERPE:  Sure.
          We sit on the board and we chair many 
committees with the board of the Chicago Area 
Transportation Study called CATS.  On that is an 
intermodal advisory committee and an intermodal board. 
 We are in constant communications with the railroads 
and sit on that board as well.  We enjoy a very fine 
dialogue with all of the industries.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Thank you.  I have no further 
questions.  I guess I will turn it over to Mr. Payan if 
he has something.
          MR. PAYAN:  Good morning.  I just have one 
question.
          Is your organization aware of the recent 
activities the railroad industry has taken in posting 
eight hundred numbers at railroad crossings to 
facilitate the reporting of problems?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes, we are.
          We are very much in favor of that activity 
itself.  When that was done, we requested that those 
numbers be placed prominently, not on the gate itself 
so when it goes up eight or nine feet it cannot be 
seen, but that the numbers be used and be aware.
          We are in the process of notifying our 
drivers to use those eight hundred numbers because most 
of our drivers now have phones in their vehicles.
          MR. PAYAN:  How is that information 
disseminated to truck drivers?
          MR. SERPE:  Once again, through our safety 
management councils of the associations.
          So, the American Trucking Associations in 
Washington has a safety management council, and it 
disseminates its information to all 50 state trucking 
associations.  Each state trucking association has its 
own safety management counsel, and that counsel 
consists of all of the safety directors of every 
trucking company.
          Those safety directors are informed of all of 
the different information, and then they relay it to 
their truck drivers themselves.
          MR. PAYAN:  Thank you.  That is all I have.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The Illinois Commerce 
Commission?
 EXAMINATION BY THE ILLINOIS COMMERCE COMMISSION
          MR. STEAD:  Good morning, Mr. Serpe.  I have 
a few questions for you.
          You made the statement earlier about the ITA 
liking to see cameras placed at crossings.
          Were you referring to all crossings in the 
state, all public crossings, or just the ones in urban 
areas or do you have a particular requirement for that 
request?
          MR. SERPE:  Please forgive me for answering a 
question with a question, but I are you asking me this 
as a utopia or as something realistic that can be done?
          MR. STEAD:  I guess that is what I am asking 
you.
          MR. SERPE:  If it were a perfect world, we 
would like to see a camera at an active crossing at all 
9,010 crossings in Illinois.
          Looking at it realistically, who is going to 
pay for all of that and where it is going to come from? 
 We would like to see an active camera crossing at 
least in the urban areas and those crossings that can 
be identified as possibly dangerous or heavily 
congested.
          MR. STEAD:  Have you discussed this idea with 
the law enforcement officials around the state?
          MR. SERPE:  This idea was brought up at the 
Secretary of State, Jessie White's Safe Trucking 2000 
Task Force a few months ago, and it was presented to 
them.  It was something that was requested by our 
industry to be open for discussion and looked at in a 
very serious way.
          At that meeting, it was pointed out by Tom 
Myers (phonetic) from the Illinois Commerce Commission 
that there is this test in place now.  As a matter of 
fact, the cameras were just activated a few months ago 
in Wood Dale, Illinois regarding the grade crossing.
          I have met with several of the vendor 
companies that provide this type of technology, and I 
have relayed their information back to the Commerce 
Commission.
          The problem that arose was that Illinois has 
funded or has funding available for three test sites, 
and the local municipalities that have the sites 
available in their town want a very extensive site 
built instead of something that is simple and that 
could solve the problem.  So, what they are asking for 
is a Rolls Royce instead of a Chevrolet.
          Our vendors have said very clearly that grade 
crossing cameras can be installed and activated and 
used for approximately $50,000 per crossing as opposed 
to the $300,000 that it is costing at the Wood Dale 
facility right now or at the other two facilities that 
have been requested.
          MR. STEAD:  Just as information for you and 
everybody else here, the other two sites have been 
awarded, and they are in the process of being 
installed.  So, we are much further along in the way of 
the process than what you had indicated.
          MR. SERPE:  That is fabulous, and we are, 
once again, thankful to the Commerce Commission.
          MR. STEAD:  We have a question regarding the 
number of collisions and injuries and fatalities at 
crossings.
          Are you aware that about half of all rail, 
highway vehicle collisions occur at crossings equipped 
with automatic flashing light signals and gates?
          MR. SERPE:  Do you have the numbers of the 
fatalities themselves from the 383 incidents involving 
trucks?
          MR. STEAD:  Not with me, but we have it in 
the office.
          Just by historical data, we know that 
approximately half of all collisions occurred at 
crossings, actually beyond 50 percent occur at 
crossings equipped with automatic warning devices.
          My question is --
          MR. SERPE:  By "automatic warning devices," 
do you mean gates?
          MR. STEAD:  Either automatic flashing light 
signals or signals and gates.
          How do you feel the installation of 
additional flashing light signals and additional gates 
will improve that situation?
          MR. SERPE:  Once again, you know, we are 
going to answer this in a realistic answer or utopia, 
and what is the best thing to do?  If we are talking 
safety, we are talking about the stronger the 
barricade, possibly the better it is?  It is safety.  
What else is more important than the saving of lives 
and the saving of our families?
          MR. STEAD:  Along those same lines, has the 
ITA invested any time or money in studies to determine 
drivers' conditions in observing warning signs and 
warning devices at crossings to warn themselves?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          The American Trucking Associations have done 
extensive studies on all sorts of driver-related 
issues, including the uses of grade crossings and 
driver awareness and driver fatigue.  All of that would 
come into play.  There are ways to make things better 
from our service standpoint to eliminate driver fatigue 
and a myriad of other ways to make these drivers more 
aware.
          One thing we are very proud of is that our 
industry is a drug-free work place, and we have done 
the mandatory testing and drug testing and 
post-accident testing and pre-employment testing for a 
number of years now, and we are very proud of the 
numbers that have come through.
          What we are ashamed of is the pre-employment 
testing and the potential hirees that we test come out 
an average of 60 percent test positive for drugs, and 
those people are never allowed to be in our work place.
          Of course, that creates another whole issue 
and another demand that is not for this Board, but it 
is a matter of finding good, qualified workers that are 
drug free.
          MR. STEAD:  Do you have any recommendations 
or suggestions as to how the existing warning signs and 
warning devices could be improved to better attract the 
drivers' attention?
          MR. SERPE:  Obviously, more gates would be 
better.  More lights would be better.  If the Board so 
decides the timing should be better or more extensive, 
that is a possibility.  Once again, we have to weigh 
those requests with the gridlock itself and what kind 
of a result, what would the ripple effects be in tying 
up traffic.
          MR. STEAD:  I am referring to the advance 
warning signs, the signs that are posted along the 
highway approaches to the crossing.
          Do your drivers see those warnings?
          Do they aid them?
          That is a key element in improving safety at 
crossings.
          MR. SERPE:  Of course, we have to start 
somewhere and say someone is alert and someone is doing 
the job.  Assuming that position is taken, then the 
question goes to how long should it be and what should 
be there.
          Yes, the more warning, the more availability 
a driver can be given, the better it is.  Having a 
crossbuck stuck out in the middle of somewhere may not 
always be the answer.
          Obviously grade crossing gates and lights are 
wonderful things.  Do violations occur?  Of course, 
they do.  Is it with cars and all vehicles.  Yes.  Once 
again, I am anxious to hear the results of the studies 
of all the other sites with the cameras and how they 
will actually deter any potential violators.
          Our position is very clear with the trucking 
industry.  There is nothing more important than safety. 
 A driver follows the law. That is it.  We know he is 
drug free, we know he is alcohol free, and he follows 
the law.  If he does anything less than that, he is no 
longer employed in our industry.
          The stronger and the tougher the laws are, 
the better.  We fought hard for the influence, the 
tolerance, lower tolerance rate for driving under the 
influence.  We fought hard for this commercial drivers 
license.  All of these safety measures that are in 
place for this industry have been requested by our 
industry and fought for by our industry.
          You know, we are knights of the road.  We are 
out there trying and living on those roads, and we are 
trying to keep safe roadways out there, and we are the 
ones that have to do it.  We cannot rely on the 
Government telling us what to do.  We have to take the 
responsibility ourselves, and we are proud to do it.
          MR. STEAD:  One final question:  Illinois 
state law currently requires all trucks carrying 
hazardous materials to stop at all crossings before 
they proceed over that crossing.
          MR. SERPE:  Uh-huh.
          MR. STEAD:  Would you consider tractor 
trailer combinations carrying over-length loads to be a 
hazardous material, that vehicle, and should they be 
required to follow the same rules?
          MR. SERPE:  That is something that should be 
addressed at one of the safety hearings gladly, and it 
is something that should be talked obviously talked and 
discussed, but I am not going to spout out an answer 
now.
          Is it safer?  If you show that it is safer, 
if you bring that to the hearing and show that it is 
safer, than yes, we should definitely do whatever we 
can for safety.
          MR. STEAD:  Thank you.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  I assume your support of 
photo enforcement extends to speeds also.
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          If we are talking about speeds, we also have 
to look at uniform speed limits.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Let's not get into that 
right now.  I was curious if you do believe in it.  I 
think if you believe in it for railroad crossings, you 
have to accept it for everything else.
          Photo enforcement is another issue that I 
personally think is the hope of the future for doing 
something because we are never going to have enough 
police officers to do it.
          From previous contact I have had with the 
trucking industry, you support it for some things, but 
not for other things.
          MR. SERPE:  Mr. Black, let me point out, if I 
can interrupt you, that in Arizona, there is photo 
enforcement at road crossings, and they have seen a 60 
percent reduction in violations, and yes, we are very 
much in favor of it.
          If I can please beg of you for one minute to 
talk about uniform speed limits because it does --
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  No; we are not talking about 
that at all here.
          We have a truck hearing, a series of truck 
hearings that are going on.  There is one in Los 
Angeles.  I would invite you to participate in those.  
Those issues are being handled separately by the Board, 
and some of us need to get out of here before the 
hurricane hits us.
          The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers?
               EXAMINATION BY THE
       BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS
          MR. WALPERT:  Mr. Serpe I would like to 
follow up on a line of questioning by the technical 
panel.
          In regard to the characteristics of crossings 
that may be particularly hazardous to trucks, you 
stated that it would take 14.6 seconds for a truck 
similar to the truck that was involved in the 
Bourbonnais accident to cross the crossing at McKnight 
Road based on its length.
          Is that correct?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          MR. WALPERT:  I assume that you were 
speculating on the speed of that truck.
          MR. SERPE:  I am basing it on a 53 foot 
trailer taking 14.8 seconds to cross.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  That is four miles per hour.
          MR. WALPERT:  In that regard, do you think 
the 26 seconds warning is an adequate amount of time?
          MR. SERPE:  Is adequate or is not adequate?
          MR. WALPERT:  Either way, is it adequate or 
not.
          MR. SERPE:  If it takes 14.3 seconds, we 
would assume it should be adequate before the crossings 
went down.
          You are saying there are 23 seconds before 
the gate closed down?
          MR. WALPERT:  Twenty-six seconds.
          MR. SERPE:  Are you talking simple math?  
Then simple math says yes, it should.
          MR. WALPERT:  I am talking about what you 
think.
          MR. SERPE:  27 multiply it and subtract it 
from 15, yes, you are going to have a 13 second leeway. 
 That is almost enough time to go over it twice.
          MR. WALPERT:  Would a trailer such as the one 
involved in the Bourbonnais accident need a special 
permit, to your knowledge, because of its extended 
load?
          MR. SERPE:  Not generally, no.
          MR. WALPERT:  What are your feelings in 
regard to a possible requirement that the trucks stop 
at railroad crossings such as school buses or gasoline 
trucks?
          MR. SERPE:  In Illinois, and it is not the 
same in all the states, a truck has to stop at a grade 
crossing, but if it is an unmarked gate crossing or if 
the lights are on and there is no train, the truck can 
proceed.  I am not comfortable with that.
          I believe, once again, from a safety 
standpoint, we have to examine that issue especially in 
a rural situation.  Where a truck can stop and wait 
until it is safe, it should.
          In an urban situation, and I am sure the 
Commerce Commission could tell you, I doubt there are 
not very many urban areas, especially in the Chicago 
area, that don't have adequate gating.  So if the gates 
are down and the lights are on, that truck should stop 
and not go until those lights go off.
          That is not the law in Illinois, and that is 
something Secretary White is looking into to address.  
In some states, it is the law, and that truck should 
stop and wait.
          MR. WALPERT:  Changing subjects briefly:  In 
regard to the hours of service for truckers, do you 
think the present hours of service regulations are 
adequate?
          MR. SERPE:  I am not using it to set you up, 
but if we are going to talk about hours of service, I 
also want to talk about uniform speed limits because it 
relates to the driver in question in this issue and 
some of his violations and how they were affected.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  We are not going to get into 
hours of service.  I would encourage you to participate 
in our hearings on truck safety.  That is not giving 
you the fact that the two were related, but we will go 
into it.  I don't necessarily agree with that.
          MR. SERPE:  Mr. Black, as a courtesy, I would 
be happy to answer the gentleman's question.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Okay.
          MR. SERPE:  Yes, hours of service need to be 
addressed.  The hours of service law on the books is 
something that is 60 years old.  Getting back to are 
the trucks the same from 1930?  No.   Are the hours the 
same from 1930 and the abilities for us to drive and 
deliver from 1930?  No.
          Hours of service need to be addressed.  They 
need to be examined fully on a scientific basis.  Given 
today's sleep patterns and what works best and getting 
the driver home at night to sleep in his own bed 
instead of having to park an hour outside his home and 
sleep in the truck, we need to handle that.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  We need to get back on the 
subject.  It would also be nice if we could enforce the 
existing hours of service, which we are not doing.
          MR. SERPE:  I have to take umbrage with you 
on that because the U.S. Department of Transportation 
and all the departments of transportation are auditing 
our industry extensively to make sure that the hours of 
service violations are not violated and that there are 
adequate log books and records in every company.
          Those companies that do not have it are fined 
extensively because of that.  So, the DOTs are doing 
their job.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Next question, please.
          MR. WALPERT:  Next question:  In regard to 
training for truckers, is it your belief that there is 
an adequate amount of training for truck drivers in how 
to safely approach crossings and all the regulations 
and safety precautions that need to be observed at such 
crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes, I do.
          I think, once again, in the commercial 
drivers license manuals and in the classrooms, there is 
adequate preparation and training.
          The key question here is:  Is it in the CDL 
manual, and is it a test question?  The answer to both 
of those is yes.  Could we do more?  We could always do 
more for safety.  Could we add more hours to the actual 
training of drivers for the classrooms?  Sure, but now 
it becomes economics too.  How much can a student 
afford to pay?
          MR. WALPERT:  You mentioned the CDL.
          Do you think -- I guess I should say, What is 
the position of the ATA in regard to going beyond the 
CDL requirements and maybe having Federal licensing for 
truck drivers?
          MR. SERPE:  The commercial driver's license 
itself was considered a Federal act, that a uniform 
commercial driver's license across the country be set 
forth, that each state be given some leeway in the 
testing of the commercial driver's license; but from a 
national view, the commercial driver's license is 
already a national uniform test.
          I remember years ago, you could go into 
Tennessee with a Volkswagen and walk out with a truck 
license.  You cannot do that any more.  If you lose 
your license in California, that license is gone here 
in Illinois.
          There used to be multiplicities of licenses 
for truck drivers, and we don't have that any more.  
Every driver has one license, and if he loses it, he is 
out of the industry.
          MR. WALPERT:  Thank you.  That is all I have.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  United Transportation Union?
  EXAMINATION BY THE UNITED TRANSPORTATION UNION
          MR. DWYER:  I wonder if you could define for 
us what constitutes a dangerous railroad crossing.
          MR. SERPE:  No, I really could not define 
that.  I mean I would speaking strictly as a layman and 
not as a professional engineer.
          MR. DWYER:  You talked about cameras, and I 
am wondering what the Illinois Transportation 
Association wants to do about funding, maintaining, and 
overseeing that system.
          MR. SERPE:  We have ideas on that, and there 
is money that could be available given the proper 
opportunities and having the proper numbers in place.
          Today, we cannot come up with real numbers 
because, once again, the test sites, the variation of 
cost per site, is so different.  We are anxiously 
awaiting the results of the tests, and then, we will 
have a formal presence and a formal idea of where the 
money is going to come from.
          MR. DWYER:  Let me rephrase my question.
          Who is going to fund it, who is going to 
maintain it, and who is going to oversee these cameras?
          MR. SERPE:  Those are all issues that will 
have to be discussed.  In sincerity, I think the 
question is premature.  Those are issues that have to 
be discussed:  Who is going to pay for it? Is it the 
industry or the Government?  All of these things will 
come into play.
          MR. DWYER:  I guess, based on my experience 
with the railroad industry, I know they are not going 
to pay for it.  Based on my experience with the 
trucking industry, I know they are not going to pay for 
it.  I guess what we are looking at here is you are 
going to ask the Federal Government or the states to 
fund this program.
          Is that correct?
          MR. SERPE:  As I said before, all of those 
issues will have to be discussed, and once we have an 
ascertainable amount and ways to fund, we will bring 
those out.  I agree with you that nobody is going to 
want to pay for it.  Those are issues that will have to 
be discussed.
          MR. DWYER:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Mr. Marshall with Melco.
       EXAMINATION BY MELCO TRANSFER, INC.
          MR. MARSHALL:  There is one question nobody 
has asked through this whole hearing, and you seem to 
have the ability to answer it.
          A truck driving 20 miles an hour with 80,000 
pounds, what is the stop distance?
          MR. SERPE:  I don't have that exact number.
          MR. MARSHALL:  I was just wanting to know.
          MR. SERPE:  If you want, I will get that for 
you gladly.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Amtrak?
          MR. BULLOCK:  We have no additional 
questions.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The CNIC Railroad?
          MR. ED HARRIS:  No questions, Mr. Chairman.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Federal Railroad?
EXAMINATION BY THE FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION
          MR. BLACKMORE:  Can you tell me, Mr. Serpe, 
if the truck driver or employer was an ITA member?
          MR. SERPE:  His company was not an ITA 
member.  His company, though, has been given numerous 
amounts of safety materials.
          MR. BLACKMORE:  Do you have any suggestions 
on how we can reach the small trucking firms across the 
country to put out crossing safety messages?
          MR. SERPE:  "We" being?
          MR. BLACKMORE:  FRA, Federal Railroad 
Administration.
          We work with Operation Lifesaver also 
nationally, and any suggestions would be --
          MR. SERPE:  Of course, the databases listed 
are enormous today.  Our Illinois Commerce Commission 
has a database of 14,000 trucking companies or anywhere 
from a one truck owner to the UPSs of the world.  All 
of that information is available, and it is all 
ascertainable, yes, in the direct mail, in direct 
calling.
          Working with the trucking associations 
themselves is the best way to do it.  We are constantly 
sending out information to nonmembers from the aspects 
of safety.  To join our safety council, you do not have 
to be a member of the association because the interest 
of safety is so inherent.
          MR. BLACKMORE:  You have come in contact with 
nonmembers through, like, ICC --
          MR. SERPE:  Daily.
          MR. BLACKMORE:  No other questions, Mr. 
Chairman.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Federal Highway?
          MR. UMBS:  No questions.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Mr. Sweedler?
       EXAMINATION BY THE BOARD OF INQUIRY
          MR. SWEEDLER:  I want to clear up the 
discussion between the BLE and yourself, Mr. Serpe, on 
timing.  I think there was some misinformation or I 
don't think we understood exactly what was said.
          Our understanding is the 26 to 30 second 
warning is from the time the first lights come on until 
the time the train arrives.  I think you were thinking 
that, that time would be until the gate started to come 
down.  I just wanted to make sure everybody understood 
that.
          When the first lights come on, the gates are 
to come down in a few seconds, and then the train 
arrives within 20 to 25 seconds.  Under those 
circumstances, I think Chairman Black mentioned the 14 
seconds that you have discussed would be for a truck 
traveling only four miles per hour.  I don't know if 
that is a typical speed of a truck going over a 
crossing.  I would imagine it would somewhat higher 
than that, so it might take less time to clear the 
crossing.
          Under those circumstances, from the 30 
seconds or the 26 seconds is only the time from first 
warning until the train arrives, not when the gates 
start coming down.
          Do you still have the same view or is there a 
different view?
          MR. SERPE:  No; I may change that view.
          Those are the questions that would have to be 
looked at.  Yes, I was clearly under the impression 
there was a 27 second time before the gates come down.
          MR. SWEEDLER:  That is what I thought.  I 
just wanted to clear that up.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Let me intervene here for a 
minute, Barry.
          Didn't I hear you say that your training 
materials suggested a stop and shifting into a lower 
gear before going over a crossing?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  If you started from a 
standing stop, that number is probably not correct.  In 
other words, you could achieve about four miles per 
hour at the typical loaded acceleration rate over the 
distance that it would take to clear a 65 or so foot 
rig.
          MR. SWEEDLER:  We talked a little bit about 
stopping at crossings.
          Do you have a position or how do you feel 
about the installation of stop signs at crossings that 
don't have any particular warning devices at this 
point, no lights, no gates, just crossings with nothing 
or just the crossbucks?
          Do you think a stop sign would be a useful 
sign at that point on those types of crossings?
          MR. SERPE:  What the industry feels is a 
crossing that has nothing is unsafe.  Anything is safer 
than nothing.  The more, the better.  When they are 
safer, so be it.
          Once again, you are getting into the 
financing and everything else that is involved, but 
yes, we would love to see the four thousand grade 
crossings in Illinois that have nothing have something.
          MR. SWEEDLER:  So a stop sign at least is 
better than nothing?
          MR. SERPE:  We will take what we can get 
today.
          MR. SWEEDLER:  Thank you.  I have no further 
questions.
          MR. CLAUDE HARRIS:  Just one question, Mr. 
Serpe:  As a result of this accident, has your 
organization taken any other initiatives to try to 
address improving grade crossing safety?
          MR. SERPE:  Our industry has consistently 
tried to improve grade crossing safety and consistently 
tried to work with the railroads and the Government and 
the Department of Transportation in every way to 
improve grade crossing safety, especially in the 
Operation Lifesaver.  This is nothing new.  This didn't 
result from one bad record, one piece of bad press.
          Our industry has always cared about grade 
crossing safety.  Donald Herby (phonetic) speaks with 
our people annually on Operation Lifesaver.  It is a 
great program, and it is something that should be 
utilized by everybody America to understand the 
significance and the value of it all.
          So yes, it has not changed because of the 
accident.  Our continued striving toward safety will 
always continue.
          MR. CLAUDE HARRIS:  Thank you.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Mr. Dunn?
          MR. DUNN:  I have one order of business if I 
could get it in here.  The court reporter needs to have 
the business cards of all the party spokespersons.  
Also, if someone at the table asked a question during 
this, give your business card to her, someone at your 
table other than the party spokesperson.  If you would, 
do that for me and her.  She is here today, so that is 
good.  So, do that for me; thanks.
          Are there event recorders on the trucks?
          MR. SERPE:  No.
          MR. DUNN:  They are not required?
          MR. SERPE:  No.
          MR. DUNN:  In 1987, there was a rail accident 
in Chase, Maryland that I think changed the rail 
industry forever as far as engineer certification.  I 
have a couple of questions about truck drivers on the 
same things.
          An engineer is required to take a yearly test 
operations test and so on; is this required by truck 
drivers?
          MR. SERPE:  No.
          The test is every four years.  It is the 
commercial drivers license exam.
          MR. DUNN:  There is a certification program 
now where every locomotive engineer every three years 
has to be recertified.  That is going through the 
medicals, the eye tests, and a ride where he rides with 
a supervisor so that he knows what he is doing.  It 
doesn't matter how long you have been around.
          Is that required for truckers at all?
          MR. SERPE:  Basically, yes.
          The DOT physical form and a complete driver 
is required by the employers to maintain in their 
driver file with re-testing.
          MR. DUNN:  Someone rides with the trucker and 
watches him perform?
          MR. SERPE:  A safety supervisor general does 
that.  That is not required.
          MR. DUNN:  How often is this done?
          MR. SERPE:  Depending on the size of the 
fleet and the number of safety supervisor that are 
available, it would depend, it can go anywhere from 
once to annually.
          MR. DUNN:  Is it required to do it so many 
times?
          MR. SERPE:  No, not to ride along, no.
          MR. DUNN:  One last thing:  If the locomotive 
engineer mishandles his train in certain ways or is 
caught speeding over a certain percentage of the 
authorized speed limit, he can lose right to operate a 
train for 30 days, and then the second offense can be a 
year, and the third one is three years, in which you 
might as well go find another occupation.
          Is there anything like that for truck 
drivers?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          It is actually more extensive.  If a driver 
has three to four violations, depending on the state, 
in a year, he will lose his license completely.
          MR. DUNN:  Three to four violations?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          MR. DUNN:  What about the first violation?  
Say I got caught doing 85 miles an hour.
          Do I just pay a fine, or what happens to me?
          MR. SERPE:  That would be up to the Circuit 
Court Judge to decide where the violations took place. 
 There is no industry standard on that.
          MR. DUNN:  Could he stop me from driving for 
30 days or just fine me?
          MR. SERPE:  Generally, he will just fine you.
          Once again, your question is if the act is so 
wantonly negligent, the judge can make other 
determinations or place the driver on supervision or 
whatever, but as a general rule, it is three moving 
violations before the driver faces losing his license.
          MR. DUNN:  Thank you.  Those are all the 
questions I have.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Mr. Lauby?
          MR. LAUBY:  I have a couple of questions, Mr. 
Serpe.  You talked a little bit about the initiatives 
that the ITA has for their driver to provide 
information, safety information on grade crossings and 
how this information is also distributed to nonmembers, 
other truck drivers.
          Can you give me an estimate on how prevalent 
this information is; that is, how effective it is?
          By that, I am talking about numbers.
          What percentage of truck drivers are you 
reaching with this education material?
          MR. SERPE:  I will not only give you an 
estimate, sir, I will also provide to the Board copies 
of some of the things.  We do posters that we put up in 
the work place, a recent copy of the truck driver 
safety booklet.
          Generally, our filtration rate is extremely 
successful.  It disseminates to the general industry 
almost a hundred percent because we not only stop at 
the companies themselves, but we also utilize the truck 
stops and the National Association of Truck Stop 
Operators to disseminate the same information.
          MR. LAUBY:  You are saying close to a hundred 
percent of the truck drivers we might see at any truck 
stop has been given information on grade crossing 
safety?
          MR. SERPE:  Every truck driver is given some 
type of grade crossing safety information.  If nothing 
else, before he took his commercial driver license, he 
would have studied the exam and found it there, but 
yes, he has been given additional information.
          MR. LAUBY:  In looking at what I do, my 
occupation as an accident investigator, in the past 
year, as far as truck, train crashes, it has not been a 
good one for the railroad industry or the truck 
industry.
          This past year, we have had an accident in 
Georgia with a vault truck, in Portage, Indiana with a 
steel truck, in Bourbonnais with another steel carrier, 
and also Texas with another commercial trucker.  In 
these accidents, 14 people have been killed in the last 
year.  There is a lot more, but these are the ones.  
These are the big ones that NTSB is covering.
          I am impressed with the programs that you 
have told us about and the things that are being done, 
but my own view is that somehow we need to prevent 
these types of accidents.
          My question to you is:  What do we need to do 
different right now to prevent these accidents?
          MR. SERPE:  Right now, we need to disseminate 
as much information as possible.  We need to make sure 
our drivers are aware of the horrendous situations that 
occur.  In the future, we need to increase technologies 
on those grade crossings.
          We need a deterrent.  We can tell people 
until we are blue in the face that it is unsafe to 
cross that crossing and don't do anything negligently, 
but if the man stands to lose his license and lose his 
livelihood, if the driver stands to lose their 
livelihood and they know they are going to be caught 
because of cameras or whatever, so be it.
          The more we can instill the need for safety 
and the more we can instill, even on a selfish level, 
we mean to remove these people from the work place, and 
that we will do that, the better.
          MR. LAUBY:  Just to sum up, you are talking 
enforcement and stiff laws to go with that.
          MR. SERPE:  Yes, but I am talking about more 
fine projects like Operation Lifesaver and more of the 
industries working together like they do now to help 
and to promote and to include the industries and the 
drivers themselves.
          MR. LAUBY:  Thank you.  That is all I have.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Mr. Dunn asked you is your 
association for event recorders.
          Following through on that, is your 
organization for or against them?
          MR. SERPE:  Our organization is very much in 
favor of the new technologies that exist today with the 
use of satellite communication and all sorts of other 
information services relating to the safe and effective 
delivery of the freight.  If recorders also could add 
to that, then our industry would be more than happy to 
be in favor of it.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  I think I would encourage 
you to look at some private companies who run their own 
fleets who have very high success rates with safety and 
with equipment utilization and equipment maintenance, 
costs, fuel costs, and they attribute all of those to 
event recorders.
          I think it is significant, like I said to the 
media several times, in this accident, we have two time 
lines very well established in this accident.  One of 
them is from the railroad signal equipment because of 
the event recorder the railroad had on their equipment.
          By the way, the reason they had that piece of 
equipment was for maintenance issues so it would allow 
them to troubleshoot the equipment, but it also turns 
out to be a very effective tool in accident 
investigation and probably in defense when it comes to 
it ultimately to get into that issue.  Of course, the 
locomotive had an event recorder on it.
          Here, this truck obviously involved in 
interstate commerce, we don't know anything about it 
other than eyewitness statements, and we would not be 
having much of a discussion at this meeting had the 
trucks had event recorders on them.  Some of them 
already do.
          There were several companies at our truck 
hearings where operators, very large operators, some of 
them are going to.  They are going to all sorts of 
technology on trucks, and they cite some very 
impressive statistics.  I would suggest you might want 
to contact that guy from U.S. Express.
          MR. SERPE:  I am familiar with him and his 
company and his --
          MR. HARRIS:  Max Fuller.
          MR. SERPE:  Max Fuller, and he is extremely 
pleased with the recorders themselves in his operation 
and helping him.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Anyway that is something I 
think would definitely help in the safe and efficient 
delivery of freight, and I have some difficulty.
          Now that prices are coming down considerably 
from what they were a few years ago, I would encourage 
your organization to look at that.  I want to check 
again here.
          First of all, do you represent independents 
also or just large companies?
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          The companies that belong to the Association 
are the companies that lease to the owner/operators.  
So, one of our companies may have a fleet of two 
thousand owner/operators in their company.  So yes, we 
speak on behalf of all of the trucks in Illinois.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Joe Smith, he and the 
finance company own his truck, and he has no markings 
on it whatsoever and he hauls strawberries back and 
forth across Illinois, but is based here from 
California to New York, he probably would not be in on 
your flow of information.
          MR. SERPE:  If Joe Smith has no markings, he 
is in violation of the law.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  I am talking about, he 
doesn't say I used to, he doesn't say -- you know what 
I mean.
          MR. SERPE:  Yes.
          Yes, he would have access to some of our 
information.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  How would he get it?
          In the mail?
          MR. SERPE:  He would either get it in the 
mail or he would get it through a truck stop as a 
hand-out or a flier.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The last issue here is go 
back over, if you would, again what, if you could have 
controlled a driver approaching -- well, today, 
probably somewhere down there today, given three or 
four hundred loads crossing per day, somebody is 
crossing that crossing at McKnight today -- what would 
you have the driver who was eastbound toward the 
railroad tracks toward Route 50 on McKnight Road, what 
would you have him or her do on their approach to 
railroad crossing?
          MR. SERPE:  Exactly what the law says to do: 
 If the lights are on lights, stop.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  If the lights are on, stop?
          Would you have them stop anyway and shift to 
a lower gear before they started crossing?
          MR. SERPE:  Not necessarily; it would depend 
on the flow of traffic itself.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  If the lights were flashing 
--
          MR. SERPE:  A red light means stop.  That is 
unequivocal in Illinois.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you very much.
          Did we raise anything in here that needs 
follow up by anyone?
          (No response.)
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  We appreciate your 
participation here, and I really wish you would become 
involved with -- we are going to have a very large 
truck study.  Well, it is on-going now, and truck 
safety and interstate bus safety is included in the 
same process.
          The truck freight traffic that is going up 
almost daily by several percent, you probably know that 
better than I do.  We have some major, major concerns 
not only on highway grade crossings.  Bob read of the 
major accidents that we had done involving heavy trucks 
on railroad grade crossings this year.
          If he had read off the number of highway 
accidents that are associated with trucks running into 
the end of stopped queues of traffic on freeways, that 
number is probably double that.  The issues associated 
with breaks, and you mentioned hours of service -- and 
hours of service are something we are interested in 
this accident -- are becoming more and more critical 
to, not just to the truck drivers, but also to people 
who have to operate in same the traffic flow.
          Most people, most four wheeler drivers as 
truckers used to call them, do not realize that the 
truck behind them, under the best of circumstances, can 
only decelerate at about 60 percent the rate the 
automobile can.  That is with front electronic brakes 
and everything.
          That is a fundamental issue of physics with 
regard to frictional factors, and on wet pavement, it 
is even worse.  So, this is a major issue, and I would 
you and your organization to look into what we are 
doing there.  Any input you would have, we would very 
much appreciate it, and thank you very much.
          MR. SERPE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  
Obviously, sharing the road is something we do, and we 
are very much in favor of.  We are trying to get it 
across all the time, and I wish all of you a very safe 
flight home.
          (Witness excused.)
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  We can take a ten minute 
break.
          (Recess from 10:15 a.m. to 10:35 a.m.)
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Proceed, please.
          MR. DUNN:  The time is 10:40 and the National 
Transportation Safety Board calls Mr. Michael Onder, 
Mr. Bruce George, and Mr. Ed Malinowicz.
        SWORN TESTIMONY OF BRUCE GEORGE,
         ED MALINOWICZ, AND MICHAEL ONDER
          MR. DUNN:  Mr. Onder, for the record, would 
you please state and spell your name.
          MR. ONDER:  My name is Michael Onder.  The 
last name spelling is O-n-d-e-r.
          MR. DUNN:  You are employed by?
          MR. ONDER:  U.S. Department of 
Transportation.
          MR. DUNN:  What are your duties and 
responsibilities?
          MR. ONDER:  I have responsibility for 
commercial vehicle operations and the highway rail 
crossing activities in the ITS Joint Program Office.  I 
will explain as we get deeper into that a little more 
detail on how my duties are more or less spelled out.
          MR. DUNN:  Mr. George?
          MR. GEORGE:  My name is Bruce George.  George 
is my last name, G-e-o-r-g-e.  I am a Division Chief 
from the Federal Railroad Administration Highway Rail 
Crossing Safety and Trespass Prevention Division.
          MR. DUNN:  Mr. Malinowicz?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  My name is Edward G. 
Malinowicz.  The last name is spelled 
M-a-l-i-n-o-w-i-c-z.  My duties are to assist Geofocus 
Incorporated in the development of railroad 
applications for their GPS systems and to introduce 
these applications to our customers in freight, 
Intercity, and commuter rail operations.
          MR. DUNN:  Thank you very much.  I turn the 
questioning over to the Technical Panel.
        EXAMINATION BY THE TECHNICAL PANEL
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Good morning, gentlemen.  I 
guess I will start with Mr. Onder.
          Could you please define ITS and describe its 
genesis, how it came about.
          MR. ONDER:  Yes.
          This might get us into a couple of the 
acronyms we talked about yesterday, ISTEA and TEA-21.  
Just for the record, Mr. Dunn, ISTEA is the Intermodal 
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which passed in 
1991.  TEA-21 was the reauthorization of that, which it 
stands for the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st 
century.
          The key differences between those two Acts I 
think are the words that the "E" stands for.  In the 
first Act, "E" stood for efficiency.  In the second 
Act, it stands for equity.  Equity had a lot to do with 
how money is distributed to the states.  So, that is 
one of the reasons why it is used in the title for that 
particular Act.
          ISTEA came about, like I said, it was passed 
in 1991, and there was a new provision in that Act that 
created an ITS Program, Intelligent Transportation 
Systems Program, which is primarily an R&D program, the 
nature of research and development.
          As a result of the passage of that particular 
Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation invoked the 
Volpe Center to try to determine how to best manage 
that program within the Department.  They, in turn, 
came out with a report in 1993 that said a Joint 
Program Office ought to be created within the 
Department.
          It operates similarly to the way a Joint 
Program Office operates within the Department of 
Defense.  It is multi-modal in nature, so the money 
comes directly to the Joint Program Office and is 
distributed to the various modes from there for the 
various programs that are going to be implemented.
          One of the first requirements for the ITS 
program to undertake was to develop an architecture.  
That architecture primarily focused on activities 
within the metropolitan areas of the country and the 
functions associated with and cooperations that are 
necessary within the major metropolitan areas primarily 
between public safety officials, traffic engineers, 
weather operations, the media, and a whole host of 
other providers of traffic information.
          Out of this was born primarily the integrated 
traffic management center that many of us may see.  If 
we don't know about them within our major metropolitan 
areas, we see indications of them through the 
changeable message signs we see on the highways as we 
go throughout the country.  So, that is probably one of 
the most visible indications of that right now.
          Some of the cameras and everything else that 
has been talked about here the past couple of days are 
all sorts of indications of the ITS Program.  It 
probably has as its major focus, and I think one of the 
sound bytes that can be carried away would be that it 
integrates information systems.
          It is designed to do that so that people that 
may not have been able to talk together very easily in 
the past can talk together in the future, not only 
through land lines, but also through wireless 
communication and other types of communication, 
satellite as well.
          So the Joint Program Office is about 17 
strong.  I would say we have links to all of the 
various modes within the Department.  We are housed 
within the Federal Highway Administration, but we also 
have a responsibility and a direct organizational link 
to the Secretary of the Department.  So, we have, you 
might say, two bosses.
          We are managed on a monthly basis primarily 
by what we call a strategic planning group.  That is 
made up of associated administrators in all the modes. 
 Most of our program issues and policies and whatnot 
are set by a strategic planning group.
          Then on a less frequent basis, probably a 
quarterly or a less than quarterly basis, two or three 
times a year, the senior management council meets with 
all the modal administrators and other policy issues 
are decided at that time, including the budget 
activities for the ITS Program Office.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Within the ITS initiative, is 
there an attempt to address grade crossing safety?
          MR. ONDER:  Yes, there is.
          In fact, the Federal Railroad Administration 
took the lead in 1996 to request that our architectural 
teams which put the together the framework for the 
major metropolitan activities I mentioned to you in the 
traffic management centers, travel management and a 
couple of advanced public transit activities, also 
commercial vehicle operations, the Federal Railroad 
Administration petitioned our office to undertake the 
develop of an architecture for highway rail crossings.
          I think there is an Exhibit 2N or Exhibit 2O. 
 I am not sure if we could bring that up on to screen. 
 It might give you better pictorial of what that is 
about.
          This can get fairly complex, but let me give 
you kind of an idea just in your minds.  I put sort of 
a separator down here between what we will call the 
traffic side of this chart and the rail side of this 
chart.
          Primarily, what we are talking about here is 
having intelligent information systems talking to 
intelligent information systems.  That is way the 
architecture is laid out.  All of the information that 
is going on at a rail crossing, anything about a train 
or anything about the equipment at the wayside, can be 
communicated to this intelligent controller.
          In turn, you could either have this 
intelligent controller taking care of the gates and 
barriers.  Primarily, what is happening right now is 
the wayside equipment is taking care of that.  The 
intelligent controller also could have linkages to the 
traffic signals, variable message signs, surveillance 
equipment which could be cameras and other types of 
equipment, and then short range communications for any 
of the vehicles that may be crossing a highway rail 
crossing.
          It also can communicate whatever information 
is coming through this flow to a traffic management 
center which, in turn, if we blew this chart up even 
further, we would see all the linkages that, that 
traffic management center would have with the community 
that the traffic management center resides in as well 
as to other communities along a particular path.  So, 
that is essentially what the architecture was designed, 
how it is designed.
          It does not deal with anything on the left 
side of this particular chart.  That is all in the rail 
environment, and this is all in the traffic 
environment.  So, the architecture has only dealt with 
those things on the traffic side of this particular 
chart.
          That is the way the consensus group that came 
together made up of the industry and government and 
local as well as state and Federal Government and the 
rail industry and the manufacturing industry, they are 
the consensus developers who decided on how this should 
all come about.  Then, of course, the detailed 
technical work was done by our architectural teams.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Does the JPO, your office, 
consider it important to develop national standards for 
the equipment and the communications that would go on 
within these structures?
          MR. ONDER:  Yes.
          In fact, that is probably one of the foremost 
ideas behind building an architecture is so that you 
could have standards for the various equipment -- it 
might be hardware or it could be software -- but 
primarily the equipment that would make the 
architecture work so it would develop or be a 
foundation for more competition so that you would have 
more than one or two sources of, for whatever the 
equipment is that you are getting.
          So, stimulation of competition is certainly 
one of those.  The other one has to do with something 
that is critical as we move through this whole 
deployment of ITS technology, and that is 
interoperability.
          The issue of interoperability is how one 
piece of equipment may interoperate with another piece 
of equipment remote from the particular location so 
that if you have a device in your car, that it works 
the same at one rail crossing as it works at all rail 
crossings.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Are there standards in place 
for applications to be used at grade crossings?
          MR. ONDER:  No standards in place yet, but 
that is something that we are working on.  It is a long 
-- I don't know if you are familiar with the standards 
process or not, but it is a long and tedious process.  
It involves a lot of consensus development.  There was 
a workshop just held recently that was specifically on 
this subject.  It was held in July on the development 
of standards for ITS highway rail crossing activities.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Are there specific test 
projects that the JPO is involved with that address 
grade crossings applications?
          MR. ONDER:  Yes, there are.
          In fact, preceding the July workshop, we had 
a workshop in May specifically associated with some of 
the projects that are going on throughout the country 
that have an ITS focus.
          I might add that some of these projects got 
underway before there was an architecture, so they may 
be experimenting with some thinking, but they, I am 
sure, had some influence on how the architecture was 
developed; but they may have been experimenting with 
some thinking before that.
          I might also like to add that the ITS program 
has discretionary funds.  So, the funds that come to it 
are primarily able to be utilized through the planning 
and development process going on throughout the U.S. 
Department of Transportation and with various 
stakeholders.  So, there is a lot of decision that can 
go into how that money gets used from a central 
headquarter's perspective.
          The monies that have been used for the seven 
projects I am going to talk to you about this morning 
have all come from other sources.  It is ITS money, but 
it has come from various sources.
          It could have come from, for instance, there 
is a project that is being conducted in Illinois in the 
Chicago area, and that funding has primarily come the 
Chicago, Gary, Milwaukee corridor funding, which is ITS 
money that goes directly to that corridor to decide how 
the money is to be used.
          There are some other, Minnesota, for 
instance, has a Guide Star Program.  They get a direct 
grant from Congress, and it is ITS money, but it also 
is put to use in a manner that they see their 
priorities dictate.
          There are several other projects that I am 
going to talk to you about that have been direct 
earmarked.  So, the Congress has earmarked these 
projects directly.  So, we have very little say in how 
a project gets developed or put into place.  I just 
want to put that for the record in advance, and I will 
tell you after what we are planning to do to help that 
situation along.
          Let me just talk about the Illinois project 
because there was some discussion with the witness 
preceding us who talked about the camera project with 
the Illinois Commerce Commission.  I have to say that I 
am not familiar with that project and I am not sure if 
whether or not that camera project may overlap with 
some of these projects as well.
          There are five crossings in the Chicago area 
that are being outfitted, and primarily, it is with 
METRA, and I will say also that most of these projects 
have to do with commuter rail.  To my knowledge, there 
are no freight rail companies that have been involved 
with any of the projects.
          The project in Illinois is primarily between 
Raytheon, Cobra Electronics, like I say, METRA, 
Milwaukee North Line, and University of Illinois at 
Urbana Champaign.
          Primarily, what they are trying to do is 
assess an on-board advisor vehicle warning system.  
They are using fuzz-buster type technology which, as 
you may know, is not legal in some states.  So, to try 
to have fuzz-buster technology be prevalent throughout 
the country might be a little difficult from our 
perspective, but they have, the installation is nearly 
complete.
          By the end of this month, they are supposed 
to have installation complete at all five crossings.  
They will have about three hundred vehicles equipped 
with this type of equipment -- school buses, emergency 
service vehicles, and taxis.  The driver training is 
expected to be complete in October.
          Then they are going to test the system for 
another year.  So, by the end of this time or by the 
end of next October, we should have some information 
from that particular project that could be helpful.
          There is a couple of other projects, where 
in-vehicle warning is primarily the prevalent form of 
technology.  As I mentioned, Minnesota Guide Star did 
some testing there on five crossings, and they involved 
29 school buses.
          They did not have, the results did not 
specify any specific positive outcome, I will have to 
say, on the part of the school bus drivers.  
Apparently, they did not really use the devices.  So, I 
would say that the findings for that project are 
incomplete.
          However, I will say that, and one of things, 
I think one of the questions to deal with about 
funding, Minnesota is looking at other kinds of 
technology to use for warning of an approaching train 
to be captured by in-board or on-vehicle sensors.  So, 
I can talk about that project a little bit later.
          Those are primary two in-vehicle warning.  
There is another project that I am not as familiar with 
that I think my colleague, Bruce George, is and maybe 
he may want to talk a little bit about what Missouri is 
doing.  After I finish, you can talk about Missouri.
          There are two projects that deal with 
external warning systems, and these are changeable 
message signs.  There are two variations here.  One of 
them has to do with a changeable message sign that is 
at the crossing.  The other one has to do with a 
changeable message sign that is remote from the 
crossing, but it is along a major highway route.
          There has been discussion about re-routing 
traffic, whether it be truck traffic or other traffic. 
 The Texas project is designed to re-route traffic 
around or away from certain crossings.
          Texas has its project integrated with another 
larger project, which would be the traffic management 
center approach that is shown up on the screen.  What 
they are trying to do is warn a motorist prior to them 
making any kind of decision to go on a particular road 
as to what they may find on that road.
          In addition to that, they are using Doppler 
radar to detect the train speed and acoustic sensors to 
detect train presence.  So, there is some effort and a 
new look of different kinds of ways of detecting both 
train presence and speed.  They also are looking at 
methods for determining whether or not there is a 
vehicle that may be trapped at a crossing.  They call 
their system Award.
          The other site which I think is kind of 
interesting is a Maryland project.  I forgot to mention 
also Maryland and California have funded their projects 
out of an IDEA Program.  It is a transit IDEA Program 
that goes through the Transportation Research Board.
          It doesn't have to be ITS money.  In this 
particular case, it was not ITS money, even though the 
ITS Program had been supporting the IDEA Program.  They 
have their funding through this transit IDEA Program.
          The Maryland project is primarily a second 
train coming.  So, they are primarily dealing with the 
local at-grade trolley car type of environment.  
However, you have got two tracks, and you have got 
trolley cars going in either direction, and they have 
had some problems at several crossings with regard to 
-- and they know they have risky behavior going on.  
That was something that they had put cameras at the 
intersection to determine whether or not there was 
risky behavior before they selected a site.
          They did select a site, and they decided to 
put a changeable message sign at the site which was 
primarily graphic oriented.  Primarily, it was the 
graphics of two approaching trains coming together.  
They tested this at that site and found that within 60 
days of the test, the risky behavior had dropped 86 
percent.  So, I found that to be a pretty astounding 
result for that particular test.  That is one of the 
few tests that does have results at the moment.
          The California project is just getting 
underway.  In fact, they primarily are doing the same 
thing, although their focus of attention is on 
pedestrians.  They have a situation where they have a 
couple of roadways that are intersecting right at the 
same point where there is a station and a rail 
crossing.
          They have commuters that are getting off the 
light rail system and crossing over the tracks with 
another train that could be coming.  So, they are 
trying to warn.  They have had a lot of problems at 
that particular intersection.  So, they are just 
getting underway, and they should have something in 
place later this year to start testing.
          I think one of the sites that I have not 
mentioned thus far which is possibly one of the most 
comprehensive of all tests that are going on is the 
Long Island Railroad.  Essentially, what they are using 
is an on-board communication system in which the train 
is actually communicating with the railroad crossing to 
run the gates and the lights and the bells.
          So, they are experimenting with that right 
now.  The train will be constantly tracked for both 
direction and speed, and they are using more than one 
kind of communication.  They are using GPS as well as 
radio frequency, RFID type technology, and under a 
spread spectrum of radio communication system.
          They also have, one of the things that they 
have is -- just to get a profile here -- two hundred 
plus trains per day, and traffic volumes are about 
13,000 ADT.  So, they have had some severe traffic 
tie-ups when a train comes into a station with a 
crossing in proximity to the station.
          The gates have been coming down and causing 
traffic tie-ups.  So rather than have the traffic 
tie-up on the highway, they decided that they would 
have the train wait until most of the traffic cleared 
out.  Then again, the train or the train men would 
communicate to the rail crossing to close the gate so 
the train could clear the station.
          So, that is a most interesting project, and 
they are talking about fully equipping their entire 
system as well as perhaps the whole New York transit 
system.
          Essentially, those are the projects that I 
know the most about that we talked about at our 
workshop in Boston in May.
          Bruce, you may want to talk about the 
Missouri project.
          MR. GEORGE:  I am here about the Missouri 
project.  It is a warning system that they are trying 
to set up for passive crossings.  They can do it at one 
crossing to start with.
          They are going to tap into the railroad's 
block signal, no special circuitry, just tap and 
provide a binary signal that there is a train on the 
block or there is not a train on the block.  That will 
turn on an in-vehicle flashing light in the car that 
says there is a train in proximity.  It doesn't say 
that it is -- it may have been already been through the 
crossing.  It is in the block.
          They are equipping a number of vehicles, 
residents that live near that crossing, and a number of 
trucks that have business that is in close proximity to 
the crossing.  It is a double track crossing, so it 
would tie into both tracks and provide separate 
warning.
          So, if both -- I think there are LED 
indicators, and if they are both on, it will tell you 
there are two trains in the area, one on each track.  
So, it has the potential of providing a second training 
warning as well.
          It has not kicked off yet, but they are 
actively working on it in Missouri.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Thank you.  I think after this 
point, I would like to leap over to Mr. Malinowicz 
because he has a project that sounds somewhat similar 
to some of the aspects of the Long Island project.
          Mr. Malinowicz, could you, first of all, tell 
us what Tri-rail is.
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  The Tri-County Commuter Rail 
Authority operates a commuter service between Miami and 
West Palm Beach and South Florida.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  What is your company's 
relationship with Tri-rail?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  We are presently under 
contract to provide services of our train track 
monitoring GPS system to enhance the operation and the 
safety operational data and customer service.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  What technology is currently 
in place for grade crossing safety at Tri-rail?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Presently on the South 
Florida rail corridor, which is 72 miles long, we have 
a combination of anything from medium barrier curbs to 
four quadrant gates to simple gates with cantilevers, 
and Florida's only whistle band crossing (phonetic).
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Is there a proposed grade 
crossing enhancement project by Tri-rail?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Yes.
          We were requested by the Tri-rail to submit a 
proposal for our Aware system.  It is an advanced 
warning alert for railroad engineers.  That proposal 
was submitted to Tri-rail and has subsequently been 
translated into a 30 percent design plan for submittal 
to FTA (phonetic) for funding.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  What companies are involved in 
this?
          Is it just your company and Tri-rail or are 
there other organizations involved in this?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  The entire South Florida 
rail corridor is involved, and that includes Florida 
Department of Transportation, CSX Transportation, 
Amtrak, Tri-rail, as well as the local FRA.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Could you give us a little bit 
of a description what the proposal includes, what kinds 
of systems you are hoping to install.
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Yes.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Feel free to refer to any 
diagrams or anything.
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  The proposed system consists 
of four main components.  Presently on the Tri-rail 
commuter rail system, all of the trains are GPS 
equipped as part of the train tack system.
          The four main components are communications 
and positioning systems on board each train; 
intelligent video monitoring equipment at each grade 
crossing; event recording equipment at each grade 
crossing; and communication and monitoring computers at 
each crossing.
          If you refer to the diagram, there are, as I 
have testified, four main components.  Probably, the 
most important are the eyes of the crossing, and that 
is this Nestor Incorporated digital video technology 
that will be placed at the crossing.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Could you use the laser 
pointer there.  Could you indicate that, please.
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  As the train approaches the 
approach circuit to the crossing, the digital video 
camera will start rolling.  It has the ability to 
project what type of vehicle is coming, to recognize 
whether it is a cement truck, school bus, a person on a 
bicycle, or an automobile.
          The purpose of that is to monitor the vehicle 
coming to the crossing to see whether it is going to 
stop or if it stops on the crossing for an extended 
period of time.  The initial testing phase will look at 
a 15 second period for a vehicle or a person stopped 
within the confines of the grade crossing.
          At that point, it would notify the 
controlling communications computer at the crossing 
which would send out a spread spectrum radio message to 
the locomotive engineer who, based on the physical 
characteristics of the railroad, would handle this 
train in a safe manner.
          The next important part is the Harmon 
Devtronics (phonetic) event recorder, which will be 
doing a self-check before the train arrives at the 
crossing, and should there be any exceptions to the 
performance of the crossing, the engineer will get a 
message on his mobile information terminal on his 
console that the crossing has an exception to it, 
please handle your train in accordance.
          The purpose of the GPS is to notify the grade 
crossing you have a train coming, do your self-check on 
your event recorder.  If everything is in normal 
working order, the engineer will just have a steady 
green light on his console and he will know that the 
crossing is functioning.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Does the GPS also tell the 
warning system at the grade crossing to activate or is 
that handled through the track circuitry?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  That is still handled 
through the track circuitry.  We are just enhancing the 
system to make it a little safer.
          Should a vehicle stop, and again, within the 
confines a grade crossing for more than 15 seconds, 
that will be our initial timing that we would use in 
our testing, an alarm will go off, a digital alarm on 
the MIT, the local information terminal and the 
engineer's console will probably say something -- 
crossing obstructed and a damp road at mile post 15.7. 
 Should that obstruction clear, he would get a clear 
message.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  When was this project 
initiated?
          I mean when did this whole thing get started?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  The concept developed out of 
a meeting between Florida DOT and Nestor Incorporated 
for the traffic division system last December.
          At that point, I was invited to attend as 
Director of Safety for Tri-rail.  I saw what they had 
to offer.  I asked them if the system could be modified 
to send out an alarm should somebody stay in the 
confines of the grade crossing, and they told me yes, 
no problem.
          So, we went to work developing the two 
technologies to work together, Geofocus Train Track 
System and Nestor Video.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Are the devices being used 
here or are they being developed or is this equipment 
that is almost off the shelf?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  This technology is presently 
off the shelf.  It has never been used in the 
combination in which we are going to use it, but it is 
proven technology.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Do you have an expected time 
frame for when you would like to equip the crossings 
and when you expect things to be fully running?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Florida DOT presently has 
the event recorder program up and running effective 
September 10th of this year.  Nestor is presently 
entering a contract with Florida DOT for the first four 
crossings for demonstration purposes, and as far as 
Geofocus goes, we are expecting a contract with 
Tri-rail upon receipt of funding from FTA.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Is FTA the only source of 
funding for this project or hoped for source of funding 
or are there other avenues available?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  I have believe FTA is the 
only source we have considered.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Could you describe for us any 
particular difficulties you have had getting everything 
to work together.
          I would not just mean equipment.  I mean any 
overall difficulties you have had with the project.
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  There has been no 
difficulty.  In a short few months, we have taken a 
project from the design concept to a 30 percent design 
for funding.  Geofocus has entered a safety  
partnership with Florida DOT, Tri-rail and things have 
been moving along.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Thank you.  I guess I have a 
few questions for Mr. George now.
          Could you describe any FRA programs designed 
to encourage the testing and implementation of 
innovative technologies.
          MR. GEORGE:  The programs we participate in 
are DOT programs I believe.  Mr. Onder mentioned the 
IDEA Program.  That is an acronym, IDEA.  It stands for 
Ideas Deserving Exploratory Analysis.
          It is administered by the Transportation 
Research Board, but the costs are underwritten by the 
Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Highway 
Administration, NTSA, FTA, and I understand also that 
the American Association of State Highway and 
Transportation officials and American Public Transit 
Administration and the National Academy of Science is 
also participating.
          The goal of the IDEA Program is to generate 
innovative solutions to critical issues in the 
transportation field.  They explore feasibility of 
unproven technical concepts, of novel applications of 
existing concepts or advances that have not yet been 
tried or tested in the transportation field.
          They focus on high pay-off concepts, product 
systems, test techniques that will accelerate 
technologies, methods, or processes for surface 
transportation.  It is open to everybody.  Crossings 
are a specific topic for which ideas are sought.  
Funding ranges from 25,000 a hundred thousand dollars. 
 It can go up to a quarter of a million, but that 
requires some matching.
          They are typically short duration projects, a 
few months up to a year.  The selection of the project 
is done through peer review.  They look for quality and 
credibility of the concept, the potential pay off, and 
the ability of the person or team making the proposal.
          The topics deal with safety, mobility, 
intermodalism, capacity, collision avoidance, emergency 
response, hazard recognition, and that sort of thing.
          Specifically sought are ideas for on-board or 
wayside monitoring from shared crossings, that crossing 
is clear, automated event recording, in-vehicle warning 
systems, low clearance vehicles versus high profile 
crossings, inspection, detection, that sort of thing.
          There have been projects -- Mike mentioned 
that the second train coming project was outgrowth of 
that.  They are looking at LED light mini diodes for 
signals, for communications.  Vehicle profile scanning 
has been explored.
          Frankly, I get calls in my office with 
somebody that has an idea they think is a novel 
approach, and frequently, I would refer them to this 
program because it is an opportunity for them to see 
some Federal funding for a small project with a lot of 
potential.
          Another thing that FRA has done is -- twofold 
reason, and in fact, in the action plan in 1994 for 
crossing safety, we wanted to do an outreach or to 
involve the defense industry, and we went out with what 
is called a broad agency announcement published in the 
Commerce Business Daily looking for ideas to address 
these programs.
          One of the things, the Nestor, which Ed just 
mentioned, has applied for funding to that.  We are 
currently working on a statement of work with them to 
refine the computerized video monitoring using their 
lenses to detect obstacles at crossings, the presence 
of a train, and the functioning of warning devices.
          Another project is with Honeywell 
Incorporated, a radar scan to detect blocked crossings. 
 We are exploring different ideas on that approach.  
Another project published or initiative jointly 
supported within the department and the industry, we 
published earlier this year a request for technical 
information.
          The FRA; FHWA; FTA; the Volpe Center; JPL, 
the Jet Propulsion Labs, contractor to JPO; Ashto 
(phonetic); ADR; Amtrak; Norfolk Southern; CSX; CNIC; 
and the test center, the transportation test center 
were all involved.  This was looking for ideas and 
approaches regarding train and obstacle detection and 
testing the prototype equipment for obstacle detection.
          We are looking for alternatives to track 
circuitry in this regard.  We were looking at suppliers 
or investors.  We received 17 proposals.  We have 
selected eight for a presentation in July.  The 
decision was made to go ahead with a demonstrations or 
testing of all eight of those concepts.  That will 
begin next month.  We are looking to have that done by 
the end of the calendar year at the test center.
          The kinds of technology involved are seismic, 
infrared, or lasers, wheel counterers, magnetometers, 
radar, and video image processing.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  You said you expected that to 
be, the testing to begin --
          MR. GEORGE:  The demonstrations to be done or 
the testing out at the test center to be complete at 
the end of this year, the end of the calendar year.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  How do you plan to measure 
success of any of them?
          MR. GEORGE:  I am going to leave that to the 
people who do the testing; I don't know.
          The next generation projects which are funded 
through FRA is looking at laser scanning in California 
for obstacle detection, and the incremental train 
control system in Michigan is also funded through FRA. 
 That is on the potential high speed line in Detroit to 
Chicago on that on that portion which is owned by 
Amtrak.
          One of the things they are doing there is 
long -- if you are going to provide warning at a 
crossing and find out the status of the crossing, you 
need time to take some action on a high speed train.  
You have to do that over a long distance, and track 
circuitry doesn't usually or doesn't conveniently do 
that.  So, they are looking at alternative methods of 
alerting the crossing that the train is approaching and 
finding out the status of that crossing.  That is being 
explored under the incremental train control system.
          The Section 1010 money, now called 1103, 
which is the high speed corridor programs in the 
country, that started under ISTEA when we were told to 
select five corridors nationwide, Congress told us to 
for high speed rail development.
          Then we have added, under a hundred TEA-21, 
we have been told to add six more, three of which were 
designated by Congress.  So, there is a total of eight 
now, and we are in the process of selecting the other 
three.
          There is a lot of innovation being done 
there.  The North Carolina project, for example, is one 
of those corridors where they are looking at four 
quadrant gates, long gate arms, articulated gates, 
channelization, closures of crossings, pedestrian 
overpasses, and just overall corridor studies.
          Four quadrant gates in Florida which Ed 
mentioned, there is a half dozen installations I 
believe now down there.  Locked gates at private 
crossings which are under control of the dispatcher is 
something that is being explored in New York.
          Then there is the Section 1036 Program which 
was funded under ISTEA originally.  That was to 
demonstrate technology for realizing safer crossings 
where high speed rail is involved.  That funded the 
four quadrant gate project in Connecticut.  It is 
funding the barrier nets in Illinois.
          The intent was to do low cost grade 
separation in Florida, but that never came off.  Mike 
has talked about the ITS.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  I did want to ask you about a 
project, the four quadrant gate project that is being 
conducted in Connecticut.
          Four quadrant gates are not new, are they?
          MR. GEORGE:  No, not at all.
          We have had four quadrant gate installations 
in this country, a couple of them, since the mid 1950s.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Can you tell me what it is 
about this project that made it necessary to test four 
quadrant gates?
          MR. GEORGE:  First off, they are not -- there 
is a reticence on the part of the industry and the 
suppliers to go forward and the state officials to go 
forward with four quadrant gates.  So, we needed a 
demonstration just generally.
          Specifically, at the crossing in Connecticut, 
the School Street Crossing, that is a very complex, 
very sophisticated installation.  Not only do you have 
four quadrant gates, but you have obstruction or 
vehicle presence detection in the crossing using loops 
in the pavement, not one, but six, two on either side 
of the double track crossing and two between the 
tracks.
          The circuitry reaches out so that there is 
enough time that if the crossing is obstructed when the 
train is detected on its approach, that the train can 
make a non-emergency stop before they reach the 
crossing.  That train stop is automatic if the engineer 
doesn't react to the signal.  So, that is something new 
and very different.
          It requires that the crossing be closed 
anywhere from 75 to 80 seconds, which is new.  One of 
the significant findings is that there has not been 
strong objection to that long period of lockage, but it 
is not a very, it is not a busy urban street.  It is a 
suburban street with a very modest amount of traffic.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  When did testing commence on 
this?
          MR. GEORGE:  July of 1998.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Is it complete yet?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.
          It is complete and considered operational.  
As a matter of fact, Amtrak is planning to install 
another one of those this year, starting this year; and 
they are planning to do more six more next year all in 
Connecticut.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  What are the characteristics 
of the Connecticut corridor that make them want to put 
them there?
          MR. GEORGE:  This is on the corridor that is 
on the New York to Boston.  It is high speed, although 
these particular sites won't be hosting traffic over, I 
think 90 miles an hour is the fastest at any of these 
crossings, but this is on the project where they are 
trying to, where the Acella (phonetic) train will be 
operating, and they are try to cut the running time 
from Boston to New York City significantly.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  This is trackage that only 
passenger trains go on or is this also used by freight 
trains?
          MR. GEORGE:  I believe it is just passenger 
trains, but I am not certain of that.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  Would you expect this kind of 
installation to go on other tracks across the country?
          MR. GEORGE:  That sophisticated an 
installation, I don't believe is necessary at other 
crossings with the train stop and vehicle presence 
detection.  You can put in a four quadrant gate 
installation without having that kind of sophistication 
as they have done in other locations already.
          MS. KLOEPPEL:  I have no further questions.  
I guess I will hand it over to Mr. Payan.
          MR. PAYAN:  I have a few questions.
          Is any work being done on monitoring the 
health of crossings to ensure they are working properly 
and possibly being able to notify somebody if an 
abnormality is detected?
          MR. GEORGE:  We encourage health monitoring. 
 The technology is certainly there.  Work is not 
necessary in terms of developmental work.  We are 
encouraging the railroads to do it.
          I guess where some demonstrations have been 
involved recently is in actually the communications 
site, how does the crossing communicate to a central 
point that there is a problem with that crossing right 
now.  Alternative communications are being explored, 
but it can be done today with conventional technology.
          MR. PAYAN:  Mr. Malinowicz testified that 
most of his equipment was off the shelf.
          These other projects that you mentioned, is 
the technology being developed or is this off the shelf 
technology that is available right now?
          Whoever feels comfortable can answer that.
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  As I previously testified, 
the Nestor video system is presently in use in Rhode 
Island on I-95 for traffic and also in Vienna, 
Virginia, I believe, as part of their traffic division 
system.
          MR. PAYAN:  How about the other projects?
          MR. ONDER:  Some of the other projects, even 
though it is proven technology in other applications, 
it is not proven technology in rail crossing 
applications.  So, it is new to that.
          We were talking about magnetometers that are 
being used to detect the presence of a vehicle at a 
crossing or we use it to detect a train.  Acoustic 
devices, Doppler radar, all of those are proven 
technologies in other applications, but looking at 
using them in a rail highway configuration is new.
          MR. PAYAN:  Thank you.  Mr. Raby has some 
questions.
          MR. RABY:  Mr. Onder, are there any ideas, 
programs in progress or planned for the human 
performance phase; for example, driver ed programs or 
impaired drivers?
          By impaired, I mean physically like eyesight, 
motor skills, and hearing.
          Are any of those type of programs included in 
the ITS highway system?
          MR. ONDER:  The answer to your question is 
yes, absolutely.
          Whether or not it is specifically in the ITS 
area or not is another question, but human factors are 
considered to be a real critical area of concern with 
regard to the devices that we are going to be seeing on 
our vehicles or are already seeing on our vehicles.
          They can be very distracting.  It could 
probably work to our disadvantage rather than to our 
advantage if it is not all done in a proper sequence or 
if one cancels out the functionality or effectiveness 
of another.  So yes, there is some work going on in 
that area.
          You mentioned now with regard to the driver, 
some of the technology associated with that?
          MR. RABY:  Like drivers ed, you know, it 
seems like the drivers ed program is not --
          MR. ONDER:  I am not sure if I am the proper 
person to answer the question about drivers ed, but I 
can tell you that from the technology with drivers, 
there is lot of activity going on in that area right 
now, especially in the trucking industry.
          We just had a demo 1999 over in Columbus, 
Ohio about a month ago, and Freight Liner and Mack, and 
Volvo all showed several different devices they are 
using and getting ready to put into the marketplace.
          Some of those have to do with lane tracking. 
 In lane tracking, the devices not only tell you that 
you have been leaving your travel-way, but it also is 
designed to determine where the center of the road is.
          As you drive down that highway, if you stray 
from that center line, it keeps scoring.  I should say 
it keeps scoring your straying from the center line.  
When your score drops to a certain point, you start 
getting different kinds of feedback.  It could be the 
steering wheel that might start shaking.  It could be 
the seat that starts shaking.  You could get rumble 
strip sounds.  So, you get all kinds of different 
feedback.
          I think it is Volvo that has designed into 
their system that if you don't react to any of these -- 
some of them, believe me, get pretty annoying; I sat in 
a seat to receive the reaction -- the truck will shut 
down.
          MR. RABY:  The driver ed, I was thinking 
entry level.  I don't seem to be hearing a lot of 
attention being given to entry level driving.  
Certainly, I think the insurance statistics show that 
youthful drivers make up a large percentage of highway 
accidents and highway deaths.
          I was just wondering if all this magic stuff 
the ITS is looking at and the futuristic stuff, it is 
as you said, the human performance, the human factors 
are certainly not going to be any better than the 
person behind the wheel.  It looks like to me that 
maybe some follow-up or some research should be looked 
at for entry level driving.
          Where are we at and what improvements could 
be made there?
          MR. ONDER:  That is a good point.  I think 
that we have, we probably all suffer from information 
overload, and we do need to have probably instruction 
on how to deal with what is that we are going to 
receiving, especially as we get into more in-vehicle 
navigation systems, which would be communications 
devices into and unto themselves.
          MR. RABY:  I have often thought that a lot of 
basic skills and things could be, long before you get a 
senior in high school, should be instilled in them.
          Mr. George, in your research and programs and 
things that the FRA has looked at, and we are talking 
grade crossing safety now -- I guess earlier yesterday, 
you heard the discussions about the constant warning 
devices detecting train speed, and then you were 
talking about the on-board recorder on the train, there 
was a differential in speeds between the two devices -- 
has it ever been thought about in your research or 
programs where the train will talk to the constant 
warning devices by transponder or what have you or some 
of that technology?
          MR. GEORGE:  I think that, you know, we have 
the -- that is what is happening in Michigan now on the 
ITCS Program where the on-board system makes inquiry 
about whether the crossing is ready for the train's 
arrival and is functioning properly, and then there is 
feedback to the train.
          What is happening in Connecticut is one way. 
 It is from the crossing to the -- well, the train is 
on approach, and then the crossing advises that if 
there is a blockage to the path at the crossing.  So, 
that is a step.
          In some of those new technologies for train 
presence detection, if they bear out, then that would 
be the next step, is to look at that kind of 
communications.
          MR. RABY:  I know the Federal Highway, I 
think it is on I-75 coming up through Tennessee into 
Kentucky, is using the transponder system where trucks 
don't have to stop at weigh stations.  The transponder 
tells the authorities it is properly weighed, if it has 
the proper fees and licenses and permits and things.
          They have their rolling weigh scales where 
they don't have to come to a complete stop.  They just 
slow down and cross over these centers.  It would seem 
like maybe that some of that technology could be where 
the train speed and its position as far as that goes 
could be transponder fed into the constant feed warning 
devices, and it would be cross check and maybe 
eliminate some of the little, I understand, temperature 
and different things --
          MR. GEORGE:  That is what is going to happen 
in Michigan.  They are going to start using that in a 
shadow mode, leaving the conventional warnings in there 
while they test it in the very near future.  I think 
that is what Ed is talking about in Florida.
          MR. RABY:  Thank you.  That is all I had.
          MR. ONDER:  I also might add that the Long 
Island Railroad is doing exactly that.  So, we should 
learn a lot out of what they learn.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  I think that is called the 
Advantage 75 System if I am not mistaken.  We keep 
asking you if it can be used for enforcement,  but we 
never get an answer back.
          MR. ONDER:  Can I respond to that?
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Sure.
          MR. ONDER:  First of all, some of which you 
have mentioned is futuristic.  All that happens when a 
truck passes by our reader on a highway that is 
equipped with a transponder is there is a communication 
of a code that is on that transponder to the wayside.
          The wayside then will take that code and 
match it up to a record in a computer system to 
determine whether or not there is a reason to stop that 
truck.  There was a couple of schools of thought going 
on two years ago on whether or not you should put all 
the information in a transponder or you should use the 
transponder to be able to communicate with the road 
side, a significant index that could be used for a 
further record check.  The school of thought that won 
out was to have the index number transmitted to the 
road side.
          To be able to use this particular device for 
enforcement, the unfortunate part about it is yes, it 
could be used for enforcement, but it is not getting 
much play.  Right now, it is a volunteer type program 
on the part of the truckers to adopt it, if it makes 
business sense for them moving.
          As you heard the gentleman before us, he 
mentioned that the key is how does that fit into 
getting my goods to market.  If it doesn't fit in very 
well there, then it is not something they readily 
accept.  So, we are continuing to move with that.
          I might also add there is another group along 
the west coast called Helbaine (phonetic) which is 
about 16 states that have signed up to this.  They are 
making very good progress on getting transponders on 
trucks.  The truckers are finding that it makes good 
business sense.
          They are also enforcing safety through this 
particular program.  They find that periodically they 
have to get back to a carrier and say that your safety 
record has dropped below par and we are going to have 
to take the transponders back from you.  It is an 
incentive for them to get back into the right safety 
category.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The potential there is to 
look at hours of service and average speeds and things 
that might help tremendously in dealing with this 
onslaught of tucks in the interstate system.
          The United Transportation Union?
          I'm sorry.  The BLE, I think.  I'm sorry.  I 
am wrong?  Were you first the last time?  I had a 
system, and I just violated my own system.
          Do you mind if we yield to UTU?
  EXAMINATION BY THE UNITED TRANSPORTATION UNION
          MR. DWYER:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
          Mr. George, you said there was a reticence on 
the part of states to install four quadrant gates.
          Why is that?
          MR. GEORGE:  I think that is a complex issue. 
 I think that often, what is often cited is concern 
about trapping somebody between the gates.  We think 
that could be handled with the timing of the lowering 
of the gates where necessary using vehicle presence 
detection or providing escape lanes.
          Frankly, we have looked into it and not found 
an instance of that in Europe or Australia nor in the 
U.S. where there has been a lot of experience for the 
use of four quadrant gates.
          MR. DWYER:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you, Tom.
          Mr. Marshall of Melco?
          MR. MARSHALL:  Nothing to say.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Amtrak?
          MR. BULLOCK:  No questions.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The Canadian 
National/Illinois Central?
           EXAMINATION BY THE CANADIAN
        NATIONAL/ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD
          MR. ED HARRIS:  We have a couple of 
questions, Mr. Malinowicz.
          On the Tri-rail project, can you tell us what 
the speed of the trains are?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  The maximum authorized speed 
is 79 miles per hour.
          MR. ED HARRIS:  Also, my experience with 
spread spectrum radio is it is a line of sight type of 
communication medium.
          What about the fail safe for this type of 
operation?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  By using the spread 
spectrum, it is designed to go around interference, and 
the design engineers have told me it has a range of two 
to ten miles.
          MR. ED HARRIS:  No further questions.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Federal Railroad?
          MR. BLACKMORE:  No questions.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Federal Highway is absent.
          The ICC?
          MR. STEAD:  I don't really have a question.  
It is more of a comment.  Mr. George mentioned earlier 
that there is technology available today to do 
diagnostic checks on wayside signaling equipment.
          We wanted to mention that the Commission is 
working with several railroads in the state, including 
CNIC, to install a wayside monitoring system at all 
signalized public crossings in the state using open 
cellular technology that would provide instantaneous 
notification to all railroad signal operation people if 
there is a malfunction problem with the wayside 
signalling equipment at any particular crossing at any 
location.
          The CNIC, BNSF and several other railroads 
have agreed to participate in the initial phase of this 
project, which we intend to conduct and install this 
equipment at all public signalized crossings statewide.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you.
          The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers?
               EXAMINATION BY THE
       BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS
          MR. WALPERT:  Mr. Malinowicz, I have a couple 
of questions in regard to the Aware Project.  I think 
you talked about this earlier, but I wanted to make it 
clear in my own mind.
          You indicated that the crew, in other words, 
the engineer and, I assume, the conductor, would be 
alerted of equipment failures of stationary 
obstructions as soon as the train establishes contact 
with the grade crossing.  I think you touched on this 
earlier.
          How much warning would the engineer have that 
there was either an obstruction or the warning device 
was not operating?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  That would vary in 
accordance with the time of the incident versus the 
location of the train.  It could be as little as a half 
mile.  It could be as much as five or six miles.  It 
depends on the final design of the program and how we 
are going to do it.
          MR. WALPERT:  You said that the maximum speed 
of Tri-rail is 79 miles per hour; correct?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Yes.
          MR. WALPERT:  If we had a train approaching 
at 79 miles an hour to a crossing that had a 
malfunction and the engineer only received a half mile 
warning to that, it would be useless, would it not, 
because it would never be able to stop?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Well, the advance crossing 
check would happen prior to a half mile.  It would 
happen approximately one to two miles away.  Presently, 
our stopping distance full service at 79 miles an hour 
is approximately 2,800 feet.
          MR. WALPERT:  I assume that is taking into 
effect the weight of the train and the number of cars 
on the train.
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  We run a standard three car 
process.
          MR. WALPERT:  The next question I have in 
regard to the project, which I find very interesting, 
is:  Can this type of system work in conjunction with 
other GPS systems?
          I know several other companies have developed 
GPS systems such as positive train separation and that 
sort of thing.
          Can this be incorporated into that sort of 
system?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Yes.
          According to our design engineers, we can 
enhance the other GPS systems such as orbital signs 
that are presently up in VRE.
          MR. WALPERT:  Thank you, Mr. Malinowicz.  
That is all I have.
          Mr. George, I have one question for you.  You 
stated earlier that in regard to new technology, in 
response to a question asked by the technical panel, 
that you didn't feel it would be necessary to have a 
positive stop and vehicle detection on every crossing.
          Is that correct?
          MR. GEORGE:  That is correct.
          MR. WALPERT:  What about the detection of 
malfunctioning warning devices at any crossings so the 
engineer would be informed enough in advance to be able 
to react to that situation?
          As you well know, today, with a high speed 
train, once an engineer determines that the crossing is 
inoperable for one reason or another, he is already on 
that crossing, and there is not much he can do.
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes, I like them.  In a perfect 
world, we would have that.  Of course, in a perfect 
world, we would not have a malfunction either.
          That would require that somebody else ask 
about the communication from that crossing back to the 
locomotive engineer about the status of the crossing.  
I think that is a good idea.  He needs it before he 
hits the track circuitry in most conventional settings, 
and you are talking about som pretty sophisticated 
technology, but it is certainly would be doable.
          MR. WALPERT:  Is it realistic?
          MR. GEORGE:  I think long term it is.  It is 
the direction we ought to be going in for automated 
warning devices.
          MR. WALPERT:  Thank you.  That is all I have.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  I see Mr. Sweedler has flown 
South.
          Claude?
       EXAMINATION BY THE BOARD OF INQUIRY
          MR. CLAUDE HARRIS:  I have one question for 
Mr. Onder and Mr. George.  Both of you went through a 
fairly extensive list of ITS technologies that are 
being evaluated currently.
          Which, in your opinion, has the most promise 
to address issues in improving grade crossing safety at 
active crossings; and also, which, in your opinion, 
would have the most promise for improving grade 
crossing safety at passive crossings?
          MR. ONDER:  It may be a little too early to 
say what has the most promise yet since we are going 
through a lot of testing with a lot of different 
devices.
          One of the things we heard at our workshop in 
May in Boston was if it takes $150,000 now to equip a 
crossing to make it active, you probably don't want to 
be thinking about putting a million dollars into a 
crossing.  It may not be cost effective to do that.
          What is not cost effective today could be 
cost effective tomorrow as you get greater usage of 
whatever the technology is that the unit cost will come 
down.  It looks to me like we are moving in the 
direction of being able to deduct obstacles which at a 
grade crossing.  There are different technologies that 
are being used there.
          There is probably some promise associated 
with that whether you are using magnetometers that 
really are probably the most expensive to install or 
you are just putting loops in the highway which may not 
be as expensive.  So, that is certainly a promising 
technology.
          One of the other ones like Mr. George 
mentioned earlier is technology that may get out beyond 
the track circuitry or need to be beyond the track 
circuitry, and that is why the tests that are taking 
place out at Pueblo right now or during the fall test 
different technologies.
          We are working very closely together be 
Federal Railroad and the other administrations on those 
tests.  So, to try to pre-judge what is the best to go 
with is probably not real practical right at the 
moment.
          On passive crossings, we still think that is 
probably the best way to go, and of course, once you do 
something at a passive crossing, I guess you make it 
active with putting any kind of warning device in 
there, but if you are not actually going to have 
anything that you are going to actually install or use 
anything associated with the tracks, if you are going 
to set up a track circuit for passive crossings, you 
are going to invoke a certain amount of dollars to do 
that.
          One of the things that I think is being 
looked at is how communications-based train control 
from the locomotive can actually communicate to the 
wayside and have that wayside, in turn, have a 
directional signal that can communicate with vehicles 
so that you are not getting extraneous signals that are 
running and affecting all the vehicles, but only those 
that you want to communicate to.
          There are always two different kinds of 
communication that have been talked about.  One is a 
communication that I am coming to a rail crossing.  The 
other one is that there is actually a train coming.  
So, there are two things that are being looked at in 
that regard right now as well.
          So, I am giving you stuff off the cuff.  I 
don't think we are talking about there being any kind 
of policy associated with this or any direction, but it 
does lead me into an answer that I would like, with 
your permission to mention.
          One of the things that we were trying to do 
with the May meeting that we had and also with some 
work that is going on now with the Volpe Center and 
with us internally within the Department is try to 
develop some guidance that can be given out to the 
communities around the country so they, in turn, can 
use that guide and say, Here are the lessons that have 
been learned and here are some things you might be able 
to do in your community that might work well and here 
are some of the variations in cost associated with 
that.  That is one of the things we are working on now.
          MR. CLAUDE HARRIS:  Mr. George, do you want 
to add anything to that Mr. George?
          MR. GEORGE:  I would like to echo some of 
what Mike said.  I think the alternative train 
detection work that is being done -- of course, this is 
long term -- and the communications work and what we 
are seeing in Michigan on the ITCS has a lot of 
potential later on.  That is two-way communications 
again.  So, circuitry and communication is where it is 
at.
          I like what we are seeing in the concept at 
least in Missouri where there is not any special track 
circuitry being used.  It just requires that the 
particular section of track have block signals for 
train operations, and the driver gets told there is a 
train in the area.  It remains a passive crossing, and 
it is a relatively inexpensive approach to things.
          I think that some of the things we talked 
about yesterday, that the proposed revisions, changes 
to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices need 
to be looked at very carefully when they are published, 
and this project to develop warrants for all crossings 
for all levels of warning devices and grade separation 
has a lot of potential.
          MR. CLAUDE HARRIS:  Thank you.
          MR. DUNN:  I don't have any questions, but I 
have a comment.
          I heard a lot of good stuff on new technology 
that is going on in projects, and I just hope that we 
move forward and do something different that we see at 
crossings, whether it be laws, protection, or whatever 
it is before we have to go out and to do something like 
this again.
          Everybody in the room has a responsibility to 
push things along.  Whatever it is, I would appreciate 
if you all would do that so we don't have to go through 
this again.  A good time line for me would be two and a 
half years, when I retire, so that I can drive across 
the United States and see something different.  That is 
my comment.  Thank you.
          MR. GEORGE:  Can I respond to that Mr. Dunn?
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Very briefly, yes.
          MR. GEORGE:  We say there have been no 
changes out there, and the aspect the drivers see when 
they approach a crossing has not changed in years.  
What drives those devices, the technology internal to 
them is changing, has changed remarkably in the last 
several years.
          I don't want people to think, you know, some 
of the discussion yesterday said that it is the same 
warning device that was out there to 40 years ago.
          Yes, there is a Manual on Uniform Traffic 
Control Devices that has kept what the drivers see 
constant because we want to have something the drivers 
are familiar with and can react to.
          The train detection technology constant 
warning time, as constant as it is at least, as opposed 
to the block circuitry, all of that has changed in 
recent years.
          MR. LAUBY:  I have a couple of questions, a 
couple of specific questions for Mr. George.  You 
talked about this Missouri project.
          MR. GEORGE:  Which project?
          MR. LAUBY:  The Missouri project, and this is 
an in-vehicle --
          MR. GEORGE:  It is an in-vehicle warning 
system.
          MR. LAUBY:  This is geared to one particular 
crossing; is that correct?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.
          They are going to do a demonstration with 
just one crossing to start with.
          MR. LAUBY:  How is that crossing protected 
now?
          MR. GEORGE:  Just with the crossbucks.
          MR. LAUBY:  Just with the crossbucks?
          MR. GEORGE:  That is all it is going to have 
when we have this in place.  Other than the fact there 
will be a transmitter there.
          MR. LAUBY:  I am curious.
          Has anybody taken a look at the human 
factors?
          Will people become dependent upon what is 
inside the car?
          You know, if the light doesn't go off inside 
the car, does that mean they don't have to look both 
ways?
          Has anybody looked at that end of it?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.
          You would have to talk to the Missouri 
project manager.  That is an issue.  If you put a 
vehicle warning system in -- that is what happened with 
the Minnesota Guide Star system.  The bus drivers said, 
We are not going to depend on it.  We are still going 
to look for a train.
          So, it is a reinforcement, and some of the 
drivers said that, you know, I would like to have it as 
a reinforcement or a reminder, but I am still going to 
look for a train.  Those are professionally trained 
drivers.  I don't know.
          That is an interesting point you raised on 
the Missouri project.  We are monitoring that, and I 
will talk with Mr. Mooney about that.
          MR. LAUBY:  I know there has been some 
concerns about BTS (phonetic) also whether those types 
of control systems, whether that is going to lull the 
operator into a position where he is going to let the 
technology take over.
          On high speed rail corridors, you talked 
about you have eight high speed rail corridors.  You 
also mentioned the Northeast corridor and the and 
crossings that are still left on the corridor.  I 
believe Connecticut had something like 11 left.
          Is that correct?
          MR. GEORGE:  Right.
          MR. LAUBY:  From the Federal Railroad 
Administration's point of view, on these new high speed 
rail corridors, are the grade crossings going to be 
tolerated with high speed service?
          MR. GEORGE:  Are they going to be what?
          MR. LAUBY:  Are grade crossings going to be 
tolerated with high speed service, or are we looking to 
eliminate those completely where we are going to have 
high speed trains?
          MR. GEORGE:  That goes back to Mr. Harris' 
question.  The best thing to do with a crossing is to 
get rid of it; you know, close it.  That has the most 
potential.  With high speed rail operations, we don't 
want to see any crossings where there are high speed 
railroads.
          We have put out guidance that says we don't 
want crossings where trains will be operating 125 miles 
an hour or higher.  From 110 to 125, we want to see a 
positive barrier of some sort, something that will stop 
a vehicle.
          We have said from 80 to 110, we think there 
ought to be the highest technology possible at the 
crossing -- gates, channelization, constant warning 
time, or four quadrant gates.  That is guidance on our 
part.
          MR. LAUBY:  This is the approach you are 
taking on the northeast corridor where you expect that 
to handle the trains that operate at high speed?
          MR. GEORGE:  Yes.
          If they are going to operate over 110, they 
have a positive barrier; over 125, no crossings, public 
rail traffic.
          MR. LAUBY:  My final question, and it is not 
really a question, Tom Dwyer brought up the question of 
four quadrant gates and what the concern was.  This 
kind of also reflects what Mr. Dunn said.  We have had 
four quadrant gates in this country since the 1950s.  
They have been used in Europe and lots of places in 
different countries.
          I guess I am a little frustrated also that we 
are still doing tests of four quadrant gates, and I am 
not quite sure what we are trying to find out, whether 
there is an entrapment issue -- if there was, I would 
think we would know that by now -- or whether it is 
just a cost issue.
          In looking at four quadrant gates, at this 
point, we don't know enough about them now to either 
recommend them or not recommend them?
          MR. GEORGE:  The Federal Railroad 
Administration recommends them.  We think they should 
be an option for the traffic engineer to use.  It is 
not a panacea.
          If you have got a gated installation and you 
are still have violations, try channelization.  If you 
cannot do that or if that doesn't work either, then go 
to four quadrant gates.  That is an option from our 
perspective.  Federal Highway shares that.
          People come back to us and say, Well, what 
are the standards.  Well, you know, what do you want 
for a standard?  We cannot make, we are not to regulate 
or legislate or issue standards telling the traffic 
engineer how to do his job.
          There are lots of decisions that need to be 
made when you put in a four quadrant gate installation, 
whether you were going to have vehicle presence 
detection:  Whether you are going to have a delay on 
the exit gate, whether you are going to have an exit 
gate set-back, whether you are going to have 
channelization or not.  Those are traffic engineering 
decisions that have to be made on site.
          MR. LAUBY:  I would hope we can get some of 
these questions ironed out as far as what a four 
quadrant gate standard should look like or how it 
should be applied.
          One frustration I have with this particular 
hearing is that, again, in Bourbonnais, the reason we 
are here is that we didn't have latest and greatest 
technology, and we had a terrible accident there.
          Basically, I don't hear ideas on what to do 
differently at Bourbonnais to prevent this.  I think 
four quadrant gates might be something that is doable 
that could protect that particular crossing.
          I am a little bit frustrated in that area, 
and in that town, I think we have to have some answers 
because what we have, the latest technology we have is 
not working in all cases.
          MR. GEORGE:  I will make a plug for the Texas 
Transportation Institute is going to have a conference 
at the end of October.  It is going to be, one of their 
workshops is going to be on four quadrant gates.  I am 
hope a lot of this discussion -- I am moderating that 
so I should not worry.
          We have invited people from the project in 
Connective and from the projects in Florida and North 
Carolina, and they have all taken slightly different 
approaches to doing it.  Hopefully, we can put all 
these issues out for discussion during that workshop.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you, Bob.
          As usual, we are last, and all the good stuff 
is gone.  I guess one question was left out of this 
list here.  It appears to me that this positive train 
separation or positive train location system that we 
have been advocating for railroad collisions for some 
time is going to generate accurate global differential 
or precise global positioning location data within a 
few feet.
          The way we heard it was that the railroads 
were sluggish in implementing it because you could not 
tell, on a double track, you could not tell which track 
the train was on, and until they achieve a degree of 
accuracy sufficient to do that, they were not 
interested in pursuing it.
          I think that has probably been solved now.  
Ed, you might be the one who would know about this.
          It seems to me once you have a transmitted 
coordinate system for a train, you are probably going 
to have speed off of it and you are going to have 
several things off of it that are available on the 
locomotive.
          It doesn't take too much rocket science to 
generate that and transmit that information into a 
crossing system plus also to a train coming type 
detection system.
          Have you guys thought about that?
          MR. MALINOWICZ:  Yes.
          We have done some preliminary thought process 
on that idea, the availability to getting to read the 
code line on the nine hundred Megahertz system that we 
have down in Florida for our signals.  The ability to 
refine the GPS down to an acceptable level of five feet 
is on the horizon.  Presently, it is 15 feet.  We can 
tell train direction, train speed, and we have a 
real-time update of five seconds.
          I believe it is possible in the near future, 
should we have the advantage or the opportunity to go 
in and have a railroad open up their code line for us 
to go in and read, that the GPS could produce a type of 
cap signal for a positive train separation.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Bruce, are you guys looking 
at that?
          MR. GEORGE:  Sure.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  They are not going to forget 
about it when you retire, are they?
          MR. GEORGE:  No.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  We might have to hold you 
over for another few years.
          MR. GEORGE:  We have got some good people 
there pursuing that, really competent.  I think we will 
ensure that kind of approach is included.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The other thing to Mr. 
Onder, we have heard pretty frequently -- I don't know 
whether Illinois Central wants to nod their heads yes 
or no -- but we in local government, back when I was in 
that, and now we see industry are very concerned about 
the selling off of frequency spectrum, radio frequency 
spectrum in these auctions that the FCC is conducting 
to the private sector, which then becomes not available 
any longer for some of the sorts of communication that 
we need for this sort of thing and other intelligent 
transportation systems.
          Are you guys concerned about that?
          MR. ONDER:  We are very much.
          One of the reasons -- we have tried to grab a 
spectrum at 5.8, 5.9 gigahertz for transportation 
purposes, and I realize, I think the frequency that is 
being used for railroad is -- there are different 
frequencies.
          I know that railroads are all equipped with 
transponders, with the passive read-only transponders 
for primarily equipment purposes, for equipment 
management.  In that, the communication being used 
there is 915.  It is in the 902 to 928 frequency 
spectrum, but that frequency may not be ours to use in 
the future.  So, we have been looking at other 
spectrum.
          Right now, we are looking at 5.8, 5.9 
gigahertz.  We were hoping the world would be looking 
at that, but we are finding there is some difficulty, 
that it doesn't overlap.   Some of it doesn't overlap. 
 So, we don't have the worldwide spectrum.
          We have been working, we had a conference in 
June last year in Reston to talk about technology 
harmonization in all modes of transportation, including 
communications that need to take place overseas for 
global movement of goods.
          The Department of Defense and Department of 
Transportation primarily sponsored that activity.  We 
are going to have another one in 2000.  We have made 
some progress.  There is no house.  There is no home 
for a group to get together under.  So, we formed a 
group.  The industry primarily wanted to have a neutral 
territory.  So the closest thing we could come to for 
neutral territory was ITS America.
          So now, there is an intermodal freight 
technology working group that is operating under the 
ITS America banner, and it is that group that is trying 
to make some progress in this area with regard to radio 
communication and that issue with regard to the band.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  For informational purposes, 
yesterday, the fire chief who was in here talking about 
coordination of efforts mentioned he had some 
difficulties with the radio system there.
          Basically, it was they could not talk to each 
other, not to mention the fact that they got saturated; 
that they didn't have a tactical channel to handle an 
incident on separate from their dispatch channel.  I am 
familiar with that from my last life.
          What is alarming, and I talked to him about 
this after the meeting, is that the eight hundred and 
nine hundred Megahertz stuff -- the frequencies that 
were being used were these trunked systems where you 
could have a county-wide radio system, which we 
ultimately got and many other agencies now have -- 
those frequencies, originally, there was a considerable 
number of those that were available for public safety. 
 That was the FCC by-word for governmental functions.
          About half of what was originally available 
has now been auctioned off for cell phones.  The 
government made some money on the deal, but in the 
process, they eliminated this spectrum.
          If you are close to a metropolitan area and 
you want to go on to one of these systems, you have got 
problems because they are all gone.  The Chairman, Jim 
Hall, has talked about this several times.  I know the 
railroads have had some concerns.  We have talked to 
the AAR, but I think it has a new name.
          MR. ONDER:  The AAR still handles the 
frequency allocation.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  They have frequency blocks, 
and law enforcement does; aviation does.  I was at an 
aviation seminar, safety seminar from the other ATA, 
apparently the Air Transport Association, and they have 
the capability now to up-link digital or Doppler radar 
data to the cockpit.
          The problem is they are using 150 Megahertz, 
120 Megahertz channels for the ACAR (phonetic) system, 
and there is not enough band width at that to get the 
stuff up.  Plus, they are running out of frequencies.  
Then they started looking elsewhere in the frequency 
spectrum to get this, for a band to get this 
information up, and they could not get it up.
          In the Little Rock accident, of which I was a 
board member there a few weeks ago, was directly an 
issue of getting the information.  The local weather 
forecaster had information the pilot didn't have.  The 
11 o'clock news knew more about what was going on than 
this pilot trying to land an airplane load of people.  
So, this is a major area.
          I am glad that you guys are -- do you know 
Mr. Shackleford (phonetic), who is used to be the 
President of ITS America?  I worked for him for 12 
years.  He was my county manager.  So, I have stirred 
him up once or twice on this issue also.  So, thank you 
very much.
          I will share Commander Dunn's concerns with 
the sluggishness of this system.  Bruce and I are good 
friends.  I hope it is true that you are still seeding 
the same system that you always have out there; and 
traffic engineers who are in the advertising business, 
basically, are trying to attract the attention of the 
motorist and then elicit a certain behavior out of 
that.
          If the people who put advertising signs up on 
the freeway left the same sign up for 50 years, I 
suspect everybody would get used to it and would not 
pay much attention to it any more.  If you especially 
make some of the information unreliable in that system 
because of some of the problems that are inherent to 
the existing detection systems for railroad tracks, the 
circuitry, the track circuit equipment, false 
indications, that makes it even less valuable.
          What do you think about that, Bruce?
          MR. GEORGE:  I agree with you.
          The credibility of the devices, you know, 
when half of our collisions occur at crossings with 
automated warning devices, it makes you wonder what the 
issue is.  When credibility becomes an issue, you have 
to ask why.  False activation is the classic answer.
          It is interesting that when we monitor 
crossings, we frequently find, and ask we found in 
North Carolina for example, when they started video 
monitoring, they found there were more false 
activations than anticipated.  We have seen that result 
elsewhere.  They have been able to correct it once they 
addressed it.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The new equipment you are 
talking about, the digital equipment like the ICC had 
basically state of the art equipment here at this 
location, but it still has some inherent shortcomings. 
 We sat and watched that thing quite a bit while I was 
visiting.  I visited the railroad people out there and 
the law enforcement people, and I sat and watched the 
crossing for quite some time.
          Switching operations don't generate these 
false calls that come in.  No way to avoid it.  I 
understand that, but they come in and every one of 
those produces a credibility to the system.
          MR. GEORGE:  I hope this new train detection 
technology that we are working with will be able to 
address that in the not too distant future.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you.
          Anyone else, anything required up here in the 
next few minutes we need to deal with?
          The ICC?
          MR. STEAD:  We have one comment.
          MR. BLAIR:  John Blair.  I would just like to 
make one comment about the four quadrant gates and 
where we are at in Illinois.  Our primary concern is 
this:  We do not want to design or make a change in the 
warning system that in any way degrades the degree of 
safety for the law abiding citizen.
          If we are going to improve this system, 
basically, four quadrant gates are for the motorist 
that drives around the gates.  Of course, we want to 
eliminate that, but in the process, when we are 
engineering the new warning system, we don't want to 
include an element that is not there now, which is 
traffic.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  That is called unintended 
consequences, by the way, in Washington.
          MR. BLAIR:  Because the net result is, 
besides the human tragedy, we will be back in a 
situation like this -- why did this innocent person get 
killed?  We have cautiously followed the development of 
four quadrant gates.
          To our knowledge, there is only one system 
with traffic vehicle detection that is based on a fail 
safe design, and that is the one that was testified to 
today in Connecticut.  Bruce George can comment if 
there are any others out in the nation.
          MR. GEORGE:  The one in Los Angeles I think 
is also --
          MR. BLAIR:  There are two in the country 
right now that we know of that have traffic vehicle 
detection, which is a safeguard for the law abiding 
citizen that finds himself stuck in traffic or in a 
rural situation where you have got a crossing next to a 
state highway and there is a stop sign and he is the 
second car when the gates activate, that the gate 
doesn't come down in front of him and trap him on the 
crossing.
          There are two installations nationwide that 
have a track, vehicle detection system that is based on 
a fail safe design.  We are very much interested in the 
development of the system.
          In fact, we are in the process now of also 
jumping in to the development of the trapped vehicle 
detection part of the system.  When that is done, then 
four quadrant gates will be in the toolbox and on line, 
but at this time, it is not in the toolbox, and that is 
the reason.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you.
          Yes, Mr. Lauby?
          MR. LAUBY:  What I am demonstrating here is 
my frustration that it is not in the toolbox.  It is in 
the toolbox in Europe.  It was in the toolbox in the 
1950s, and some of the frustration I have in looking at 
new technologies is that there seem to be more reasons 
not to do it than reasons to do it from everybody that 
we talked to.
          I am very concerned about the crossing down 
in Bourbonnais.  I am concerned about the type of 
traffic we have there, the steel trucks.  We know 
exactly what that can do to a passenger train.  This 
evening, another load of passengers will head South to 
New Orleans and will go through that crossing.
          I am very frustrated that we have a lot of 
good ideas up here, but because they have not been 
baptized by anybody, they are not able to put in place. 
 I think it is important that something happens down in 
Bourbonnais to those crossings to improve the situation 
to respond to the tragedy that we had down there.
          I think the longer we wait, whether we are 
waiting to have something else in the toolbox or not, 
the longer we wait, the greater the risk is to the 
passengers that use Amtrak or another form of public 
transit in this country.
          I know we have to go through your procedures 
to get there, but at this point, if we get anything out 
of this particular accident, I would hope that we 
really shine the spotlight and put the focus on grade 
crossing safety and do something to move it forward 
more than just a little step; move it ahead a giant 
step.  That is the reaction I am looking for.  Thank 
you.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you.
          It does seem like we have developed in this 
country an inability to act on anything without 
studying it to death or without proving that it is 
absolutely infallible to liability or litigation or 
whatever else.  I think it is pretty much hurting us.  
It hurts industry because they are afraid to be 
creative, because they are afraid if they are too 
creative and lead the way, they will end up being sued 
over something.
          Government now seems like it has to have 
consensus with everyone.  We cannot make anybody mad.  
I am really getting -- this is a personal observation 
like Bob's -- I am really getting tired of the word 
partner.  It is true we all have partners, and we need 
to consider that.  However, there has to be a managing 
partner sometimes.
          Just to bring this home here:  At 9:55 p.m. 
last night at Stuttgart, Arkansas -- Jim, where is 
Stuttgart?
          MR. HALL:  It is the duck capital of the 
world, the duck hunting capital of the world.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Thank you, Jim.
          Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
          MR. HALL:  It is Stuttgart, not Stuttgart.
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Sorry; I am from Georgia.  
Give me a break.
          -- a Union Pacific freight train struck an 
auto on a crossing.  Flashing lights, gates, and bells 
were all in working order; unknown injuries or 
fatalities at this time.
          At 11:50 p.m. in Sandy City, Utah, a Utah 
Transit Authority northbound -- this is interesting -- 
passenger train struck three self-propelled transit 
vehicles at a grade crossing.
          This is a grade crossing, I think, of a light 
rail and heavy rail and protected by gates and lights, 
I guess for the light rail.  The vehicle driver 
injured; damage to the transit cars; train was not yet 
in service; undergoing going testing operations; 
damages, it says here $25 million.  That sounds like 
one heck of an impact to me.
          Then there is another here about a Union 
Pacific freight train with one of those long 
alphanumeric numbers, eastbound, struck a pick-up 
truck; train speed unknown; track speed 70 miles an 
hour; flashing lights, gates, and bells; injuries to 
occupants of the vehicle.
          It goes on right now while we are talking.  
We get these things on our pagers pretty often, and 
then we sit around and talk a lot about this.
          When you look at hardware in the field, we 
have got a lot of tests, and it we also, it seems to 
me, have -- like Bob was talking about his frustration 
with that crossing down in Bourbonnais, I would say the 
use of median strips is a very good way to deal with 
the gate running situation.  It has worked in a lot of 
places, and I guess there are some excuses for not 
using it.  Let me go into the boilerplate here.
          Anyone else?  Have we covered everything, Mr. 
Dunn?
          (No response.)
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  Since there are no other 
witnesses to be called to testify at this time, this 
portion of the Safety Board's investigation is 
concluded.
          However, I need to emphasis that, in 
accordance with our procedures, this investigation will 
remain open for the submission of new and pertinent 
information by interested persons.
          If the Safety Board finds that such evidence 
is relevant, it will be made part of the docket, and 
where appropriate parties, will be given an opportunity 
to comment.
          As parties to this hearing, you will have the 
opportunity to submit proposed findings of facts, 
conclusions, and recommendations.  Please forward any 
such submissions to the National Transportation Safety 
Board -- specifically to the Investigator in Charge, 
Mr. J.S. Dunn in this case; we have two of them -- 
within 16 calendar days after the close of this 
hearing.
          Also, any parties making such a submission 
should also send copies of their proposals to each of 
the other parties.  I think you know who each other is.
          Any such proposals will be made part of the 
public docket and will receive careful consideration 
through the Safety Board's analysis of the evidence and 
during the preparation of the Safety Board's final 
report.
          From the evidence collected, the Safety Board 
will, the Safety Board being the five members, will 
determine the probable cause of this accident and make 
any safety recommendations necessary to prevent similar 
accidents.
          That is a sunshine meeting, a meeting open to 
the public.  It will be in Washington, D.C. about when, 
Jim?
          (Off-mike response.)
          CHAIRMAN BLACK:  The final report will take 
several months to complete.  However, the safety 
recommendations may be made at any time.
          On behalf of the National Transportation 
Safety Board, I want to thank the parties at this 
proceeding for their cooperation, not only during the 
proceeding, but also throughout the entire 
investigation.
          Also on behalf of the Board of Inquiry and 
the Technical Panel, I want to express my sincere or 
our sincere appreciation to all those groups, persons, 
companies, associations, and agencies that have lent 
their talent so willingly throughout this hearing.
          Last, but certainly not least, I would like 
to thank all of the witnesses who have given of their 
time to come forward and testify during this hearing.  
I would also like to thank at this time, certainly, the 
NTSB staff.  I won't mention them by name again.  
Carolyn, you know who you are -- among others, you set 
this meeting here in the room this time; I don't think 
you were here the last time in the room -- is our 
special events person here.
          To the families for sitting through what must 
have been a combination of difficult and boring for you 
at times, and we appreciate your being here and your 
interest in this.  The family people will let you know 
when the last hearing will be.  Certainly, if you have 
any questions, you know how to contact our Family 
Affairs people to get to us.
          I would like to thank everyone for their 
perseverance in going through this.  It went pretty 
slow every now and then.  This is probably -- we had a 
little discussion a few minutes ago up here -- this is 
more than likely the worst grade crossing accident from 
the standpoint of on-board passengers on the train that 
we could think of.
          We only have to think back 80 or 90 years 
about how long there have been railroad grade crossings 
in existence and cars.  I don't remember any, and Mr. 
Dunn is more older than I am, and he doesn't remember 
any either, but this is -- and as horrible as it was, 
it could have been worse.
          We do have passenger trains, and we are going 
to have them going faster in the future, and this is a 
critical area.  I appreciate everybody's help.  
Everybody is interested in doing something about this. 
 With that, this hearing is adjourned.
          (Whereupon, at 12:26 p.m., the proceedings 
were concluded.)

             CERTIFICATE OF REPORTER

          I certify that the foregoing is a correct 
transcript from the record of proceedings in the 
above-entitled matter.


____________________________       October 7, 1999
Elizabeth Hudson Telson
Executive Reporters, Inc.
 

 
 



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