of the subcommittee all hearing witnesses and all those in attendance the ranking member and the subcommittee members will each have five minutes to make opening statements and all members will have three days to submit statements for the record at this time i'd like to columbia related oversight hearing and title back on track the washington metro area transit authority red line metro rail accident continual funding challenges before delving into the purpose of this afternoon's hearing i'd like to express this subcommittee's heartfelt sympathy and that of all of our members of congress victims of the red line metro rail accident on monday june twenty second two thousand and nine and for their families and friends the tragic loss of life in the dozens of injuries make today's oversight hearing all that more important as the nation's capital area most public transportation authority  provides services to a population of over three point five million people within a fifteen hundred square mile area through metro rail natural bus and metro access and given the reliance on metro not only for the local economy but also that nationally with an estimated forty two percent of our federal employees commuting to work via metro and millions of tourists depending on the system to get around it is critically important that america's transit system be dependable and safe while to their credit the washington metro area transit authority has at times certainly exhibited great qualities over its thirty three year history last month's accident points to the fact that there still remains room for improvement in terms of ensuring that the highest standards of safety exist for metro riders and employee additionally the readline metro rail accidents also reignited the debate over the state of  financial condition and the impact that the authorities funding challenges has on such as deferred maintenance capital enhanced one project will not as ability to upgrade and replace aging equipment and rail cars it is the intent of the subcommittee that today's hearing also be used to reexamine and discuss one modest financial condition and its effect on safety reliability and dependability i must also say that i'm happy to learn that  necessitated the need for this panel to reassess and for a host of issues relating to a modest services in operations which are indispensable to the region and to the federal government while today's hearing certainly won't bring a final resolution as to the cause of all leading factors of the recent accident given the various songs going investigations the hearing is meant to continue the dialogue between the model and its regional partners and the various federal government oversight  specific issue of safety and to learn what is being done now to prevent as best as possible another fatal accident from occurring in the future i'd like to thank today's witnesses for joining us as we discuss this important matter i look oversight hearing on the washington metropolitan area transit authority at that hearing we examine metro's financial condition and internal controls along with safety and security issues on june twenty second two thousand and eight tragic accident tragic accident the most serious and metro history occurred on the red line one train crash in the back of another killing nine and injuring the in addition to the dead and injured damage to the morale of metro's riders and its workers and to the metros reputation as a whole is ongoing recent washington post editorial commented on the crashes having quote shattered many drive writers and some since about the safety of the system and quote today's oversight hearing will examine that accident continuing challenges faced by metro metro appears to be in the throes  crisis as a member of congress has a measure user myself i'm very concerned about the direction even and before the catastrophe of june twenty second a washington post story described comments from the metro riders as revealing quote a band of beaten down and frustrated people who despite their close kinship with metro have had about enough and quot in the wake of june twenty second at the june twenty second crash a more recent story reflected growing concerns about extensively cramped conditions  commutes jerky rides abrupt stops and passengers waiting for more than three full trains to pass before boarding there is also evidence of nerves rugger on some reports of yelling and shoving along the way while investigations are continuing there are deeply disturbing reports of track circuit problems which should have been anticipated and which have been dealt with in other systems notably the bay area rapid transit system in san francisco metro apparently never installed a backup system that is used by bart a significant segment of the federal workforce relies on the metro plus millions of visitors each year we are also quite aware of the enhanced security issues which apply to the metro because it services the washington region last congress approved a measure sponsored by the former chairman of our committee tom davis who i'm pleased to see is one of our witnesses today that law authorizing the much needed funds and mandates man management assistance but follow through by the administration of this congress is really required to make that law a reality i look forward to hearing from the witnesses today and let me just say on a personal heartfelt thoughts and prayers with those who are injured and killed on the metro it's devastating any time you see that i think that's the importance of the hearing today i look forward to the participation to make sure that we're implementing the best practices i think it individually is break it up everybody's hearts in the right direction but if the management's not there to coordinate move to move it forward in a cohesive matter i think that's where this committee needs to be involved  i have my my metro card i like writing it i enjoy it but there are also challenges there are times and things and frustrations that i think are appropriate for us to dive into and so mr chairman i thank you for holding this hearing i look forward to the dialogue from hearing from our witnesses and better understanding what's happening or what's not happening with them today without all your back i thank the gentleman before we continue with opening statements i would invite our first panel to come forward and be stephen lynch for his attention to metro by responding to my request early in his tenure as the new chair of this subcommittee with a hearing on april twenty fourth and again today granting my request for this hearing in light of the doing twenty second metro tragedy i have spoken with the appropriate metro and national transportation safety board officials concerning this hearing before the investigation is completed and learned that it is not unusual to be asked to testify before an investigation is is fully completed the investigation of this collision may require well in excess of a year or even more following our hearing in april we had every reason to believe that the metro system was a safe system and because of the consistent oversight of this subcommittee i continue to believe that the system that serves this region and millions of visitors is say i would not hesitate to board a metro train even after the tragedy june twenty second however the public is not fully aware of what this subcommittee has learned during years of consistent oversight about the overall safety of the system and in any case the public deserves to know much more about this recent catastrophe it is fair for riders to seek reassurance now ordered whether there is reason to be concerned about the daily trip on a metro train the public has bits and pieces of information about what may have caused the accident and what is being done now to assure its safety today's hearing however will make public all that is known now as congress opens its own investigation and will allow the public to separate urban legend from authoritative facts and eyewitness testimony long before the june twenty second accident the regional congressional delegation had been working to secure funds for metro for capital costs such as replacement of metro trains burden by increasing numbers of federal and congressional employees among others actually subsidized by the federal government in order to encourage employees to take metro who the majority of metro's weekday employees today in the region is particularly grateful to transportation house urban development appropriations chair john oliver for finding the funds in his appropriation for the first one hundred fifty million dollar installment in the one point five billion dollars congress authorized for a ten year period regrettably despite our efforts over several years funding was not authorized and till two thousand and eight when control change in the congress but we particularly appreciate the efforts of the former chair of the full committee tom davis who started us down the road today is funding and we are happy to have testified today the funds the necessary funds also were not included in the president's budget despite constant urging from the regional delegation but  of fund to meet this year's commitment and i know that millions of public and private employees and residents are deeply grateful to him and to the subcommittee chairman for managing a floor resolution recognizing those who were injured and remembering residents we lost in this tragedy seven from the district of columbia one from maryland and another from virginia we do not have a response that can console the losses of the victims and their families and those who were injured however we can begin with today's hearing and the first appropriation for metro under our bill to demonstrate to all the families friends and associates and to riders that this tragedy has already head immediate effects for sure in the safety of our transportation system and i thank you again  subcommittee and pleased to be here to discuss an important topic i also am a republican ranking member of the transit full transportation and infrastructure committee  also serve that committee together in that capacity i did want to make some remarks and first of all i want to join others in expressing our sympathy to those that lost loved ones and the tragedy of the metro  important responsibility of this subcommittee of that investigative committee of congress and i applaud you for for holding this hearing i think it's very important not just the transportation committee better investigative committee take action like you're doing here today it has been reported that the automatic train control system failed to detect a train waiting on the track if the system had been working properly possibly  again the crash could have been avoided n t s b will really investigate the crash and let us know however we do know that other transit systems around the country rely on automatic train control systems including san francisco boston baltimore atlanta philadelphia and and my state miami last year congress and a lot of us worked on it together we passed amtrak up rail passenger rail safety bill and in that legislation congress required that within the next six years commuter rail trains inner city passenger trains and freight trains carrying hazardous serials install similar positive train control  systems there we have to learn lessons from tragedies like the one we've experienced here on the washington community for rail safety around the country i do want to note for the record that three  safety oversight program like aviation railroads including commuter rail roads transit safety oversight is handled at the local level by state safety oversight agencies this is because the federal transit administration is a grant making agency it's not a regulatory body rail transit system is different and has unique system specifications the transit agency develops its system safety plan for each transit system and the state safety oversight agency directly oversees the safety of the transit system by reviewing safety plans performing safety offices officers who have that responsibility i'm sending and i'm going to have some members of already joined man sending this letter to the f d a administrator today and it's as follow me paraphrase it here we understand that the federal transit administration administrative policy prohibits transit agencies from using their frederick grant dollars to support expenses of the state safety offices that directly oversee the safety transit systems again according to a report from our committee the state safety offices are often adequately funded and staff i think in washington metro up to about a year ago they had about one position now they have to and again they're prohibited from taking federal these federal dollars and it's not by law it's by policy however given what occurred last year with the i guess of the boston green line and also with the washington metro system recently we feel it's important that the safety offices be strengthened so we recommend in this letter here that the federal transit administration work with us to provide those agencies again the flexibility to utilize some of the dollars maybe a small percentage for some of these important positions so i'll be asking other members to sign this and send this and i think that the final concern that i have here members says that mr oberstar and i have been trying to get a major highway and transit bill passed the current one we operate under expires in just a few months to the end of september the administration's now said that in the process while we're in the process of drafting this they sort of dropped a bomb on us and said let's extend this for eighteen months what will happen is all of the safety projects all of our transportation projects our major transit projects and major highway and infrastructure projects will be hold put on hold for two years and if we wanted to mandate changes by law we would have a tough time doing is that urge everyone to work with myself to try to move that legislation forward urge members in this letter because we don't need legislation to get aft to do what they should be doing is allowing more flexibility of these funds for safety oversight purposes thank you so much for the courtesy extended mr chairman will the gentleman like to have the letter added into the record opening statement be placed in the record thanks chairman we're honored today to as delicate as congresswoman norton said to have mr davis here mr davis when he was chairman davis championed the metro system and continue to do so until his departure last year if you if if as i will predict congressman davis would rightfully so say if you can't get it right in d c you can't get it right in public train around the country there's a proposal in the stimulus package just passed a few months ago to put a mag lift type of train a high speed two hundred mile an hour train between county and las vegas it's pretty clear that we have fundamental problems with going fifty nine miles an hour with absolute safety in washington d c here today we're going to hear about how the accident happened how it won't happen again but more importantly i think this is an opportunity for us to look at a thirty plus year old system since one thousand nine hundred seventy three when the whole metro system began being rolled together and say have we done all that we can do i know that chairman davis did all he could do on his watch but i do believe that washington d c a compact city with a large ridership that comes into federal systems in and around the city every day commuters who buy both their own choice and by incentives from the federal government essential in most cases free passes want to use this system and want to be one hundred percent safe and one hundred percent reliable to chairman i believe that we as a committee have a special obligation to look at this system but i believe that what we get right in this system including the full funding of all the safety requirements in fact is essential for all systems around the country and i like many people everyone has a solution when they come after a tragedy like this i might strongly suggest to this committee that we bear in mind that there are billions of unspent stimulus dollars that are in fact earmarked for train transportation that will not be spent in the near future and might very well still be redirected to meet the needs of getting the metro system both safe and reliable at the level that we believe we were at and believe we should be at i look forward to hearing our panel and i think the chairman for holden's important hearing and you go back i think the gentleman before we were eyewitnesses i want to ask if mr two it in this subcommittee to swear witnesses who are to testify may i ask you all to stand and raise your right hand swear that your testimony before the subcommittee here today will be the truth will be included in the record mr davis i'm sure you don't need to be instructed in this matter but the green light indicates that each witness has five minutes to summarize your statement means you have one minute remaining to complete your statement on the red light indicates that your time for speaking has expired i like to originally i had offered the courtesy to mr connelly to introduce mr davis and here he is the gentleman from northern virginia mr conley for the purposes of introducing mr davis thank you mr chairman thank you as ever for your graciousness is a great privilege for me to sit up here and welcome back to this committee our distinguished former chairman tom davis tom davis and i have called in each of those footsteps he was a long time member of the board of supervisors of fairfax county and became the chairman of fairfax county and then took his congressional seat i also was a long time member the fairfax supervisors succeeded time as chairman and then of course succeeded him in this time it's been a friend and a mentor he has shown bipartisan inclinations that are deeply appreciated and i want to say personally in my transition to this job tom davis could not have been more gracious and more generous he and his staff and i just want to thank him and thank him for his leadership in metro without thomas vision of this congress would never it's nice to see you again and thank you for your leadership as well we saw early on with g a o reports that the metro has a six billion dollar shortfall in terms of its capital funding need and there was no way that this could have been raised with an existing system would not have supported it so the legislation simply bit off part of that three billion dollars one point five billion dollars paid for by the federal government in over ten years one point five  matching funds dedicated matching funds from localities part of the legislation there was no dedicated funding metro got what it got on an annual basis and when local governments cut their budget metro suffer as a result this is put i think they needed discipline on local governments to get the match and i was just thrilled to hear the chairman arbor put in the hundred fifty million last night in the transportation appropriation bill this is a precedent for the next ten years that i think will go a long way making the metro system safer policy makers like it or not we bear some responsibility in some of the shortfalls the system has had over time and i think if anything else we want to learn from this we don't want this to happen again so let me go briefly over what the legislation called for and what remains to be done and how we can continue to make this a safer and a better system here in the nation subway system first of all the congress last night put in one hundred fifty million dollars for the fiscal year the localities have already come up with their match and independent i g was established under the legislation so that metro it wouldn't be looking at itself to have an independent specter general which we think helps their operations and keeps them on their toes something that i think metro actually not adopted the changes to the metro compact represent a full year has pending legislation that will do that all three of the states amended the metro compact state legislatures and city councils now the federal government has to do that i think the quicker the possible so that the president can appoint federal members to the metro board now why is this important it's important because although virginia and maryland in the district have representatives on the subway system the natural tendency and i've been governor for fifteen also expanded riotous service on the metro system that was reserved for one operator this experience that we think this is helpful particularly in cases of accidents and crime finally let me say that i think push to get a slug of money up there right there to make these changes right away so that the kind of tragedy that happened on june twenty second will not happen again and we can make this change as well in that i want to thank the members up here in the house for being so mcmillan on the day of this accident and we understand that her and her conduct at the time of this action and slowing the train down may have saved lives in terms of her own actions here ok thank you ladies and gentlemen of the committee it is my honor to serve as a witness before you today as a rail operator of twenty two years and as president of the amalgamated transit union local six eighty nine i am deeply and personally affected by the tragic  model railway accident of june twenty second i join my union members and others to urge with corrective action we stand ready to help find solutions that improve and improvements and technological advancements capable of addressing the problems of the aging model rail system i firmly believe that we cannot afford to spend time on expensive studies and multiple meetings but must instead move into implementation mode without further delay when the national transportation safety board report from its investigation into the june twenty second accident is in hand we will have a much better idea of what went wrong and how to resolve those problems i urge the committee to be cautious about drawing any conclusions conclusions from this hearing i believe that it would be premature to publicly conjecture about the causes of the crash i also call on the model and the n t s b to be transparent in their investigation for the sake of the workers the public safety is the number one priority of local six eighty nine it is what we work hard to deliver every day to every rider on the buses and trains as president of the workers union union one of my primary goals is to ensure that every worker receives appropriate safety measures and training from a model while we do not yet know the exact causes of the accident there were troubling patterns of a modest responses to previous n t s b recommendations since the first fatal accident on one model in one thousand nine hundred two the n t s b has has recommended installing car borne monitors in every one model car to provide it vance performance data for every department none of the one thousand series cars and systems are so quit including those involved in the accident after the one thousand nine hundred six shady grove accident that shit n t s b recommend it with mata one model evaluate all series of metro rail cars with respect to resisting car body telescoping and providing better passenger protection and make it make the necessary modification after the two thousand and four woodley park accident the n t s b made a specific recommendation to either retire or retrofit the ruhr build one thousand series cars based on their crashworthiness one model gann failed to comply with these recommendations citing cost and binding lease agreements through two thousand and fourteen the n t s b made an urgent recommendation to include specific instructions when responding to rollback situations and were model responded that it would not address the issues the recommendation was left as open an acceptable response in the n t s b report it is unfortunate that the n t s b can do little more than make recommendations based on these findings it has no power as an agency to enforce any of its own suggestions furthermore there is no independent body to oversight with oversight of a model other than congress over the years local leadership has continually made suggestions to a model for procedural and equipment changes or models allowed to choose ignore defer recommendations until it deems the time right for implementation safety should not fall victim to fiscal constraints or internal priorities any legislation for the will modest system should include regulations enforcement and oversight one model is heavily constrained by its funding and i feel that my time is running out and i believe that funding is important for the model we need dollars it's a aging infrastructure and in order to make that infrastructure work for the members of local six eighty nine and all of the employees of a model we have to put the money where this nation wants it if public transportation is something that we need and we sorely need it based on the economy itself it's been proven that truck public transportation is needed and we need to put the dollars where it is needed and i thank you so much for this opportunity  seventy seven mr miller worked for the pennsylvania department of transportation where he created pennsylvania's free transit program for senior citizens or also spent thirteen years as the executive director at the port authority of behalf of the public transportation industry you know when a terrible tragedy such as the one that is the subject of this hearing occurs all of us certainly feel a great loss we  feel certainly great sympathy and our prayers and our sympathies go out to the victims to their families to their loved ones it is a tragedy like this that causes us to take a step back to examine what we do to see how we might improve the way we do things in order to prevent these types of accidents from happening as others have already said we do not yet know the exact causes but that shouldn't stop us from taking prudent steps to move forward and i know later in this hearing you'll hear testimony from ata and others about steps that are being taken our association stands ready to support one model of this committee and the other bodies involved here in trying to make our systems safer now notwithstanding the terrible tragedy we're discussing today americans are using public transportation in modern record numbers there are many reasons why americans are using public transit but there is one undeniable common thread tens of millions of customers rely on public transportation every day because our systems are fundamentally safe but as this terrible tragedy demonstrates they can always and must be made safe for years of proven performance records have instilled a confidence in the riding public that our systems will transport them safely i continue to use metro rail for my commute on a daily basis because it is a safe system and because the alternatives are much less safe the u s department of transportation data shows that a person is twenty twenty nine times safer when using heavy rail public transport such as when model operates rather than taking the same trip in an automobile further the congressionally created national surface transportation revenue policy study commission indicated that highway travel accounts for over ninety four percent of all to fatalities and then ninety nine percent of all injuries on the nation's surface transportation system this data clearly indicates that the public's trust in public transportation is not misplaced public transit is one of the safest mode of transportation available but numbers and statistics aside nothing is infallible therefore apt  its members remain vigilant in continuing our commitment to advancing trance of safety and promoting the safe operation of rail transit systems i've been asked to comment on several areas by the committee regarding safety standards and procedures in the industry please note i'm not speaking of a modest specifically but rather presenting information generally about the industry much of which would be applicable to a model for decades we've been leading force in developing safety programs and standards for public transportation operations and simpered kerman in the one nine hundred eighty s abt it was asked by the rail transit industry and f t a's predecessor the urban mass transportation administration to develop a standardized program for safety which we established under the auspices of what was then known as the rail safety review board at this commitment to safety was also the basis for our standards development program initiated in one nine hundred ninety six which currently  s department of transportation is funded in part through grants from the federal transfer administration congress has also officially recognized the importance of promoting voluntary industry based standards as a way of creating uniformity within the legal  regulatory structure of the united states my written testimony contains so much more detail on the nature of these standards the process that is used and things of that sort i do think it's important to realize we don't rely just on our own members our own expertise we involve many other organizations such as the american society of mechanical engineers the institute of electrical and electronic engineers the american railway engineering and maintenance association and a host of others as well as working with the federal transfer to ministration the federal railroad administration the national transportation safety board and others in developing these standards to date we've published over one hundred seventy rail standards in categories applicable to heavy rail transit such as those used by one model heavy rail crashworthiness standard developed by the american society of mechanical engineers in collaboration with is a good example developed after some five years of present of work at the professional level now i there's much more in my written comments i appreciate i've exhausted my time here and i would certainly look forward to answering any questions you might have thank you sir i thank the gentleman i now you know myself  acronyms being used at this hearing so i would just caution people to at least people use the acronym just describe the full title of whatever that is you're referring to and for those listening watching at home  local five eighty nine and the boston area and we've had situations on the t in boston with a train collision now i understand i understand where we  operating system where the conductor actually operates the train manually and then there's an automated system that is as used as i understand the circumstances of the most recent accident train to operating hers was on automatic and the way it should have worked was that williams train one twelve should have detected the train in front of her and should automatically stop the train off slowed it down and as i understand it she visually made a report that there was a train ahead and that all the indications were that she recognize the threat but that mechanically the system did not work and it failed where you have this seeming conflict i'm not sure why the first train was manually operated maybe that was a decision by the conductor in that case i understand those signals were operating in that area are they were operating intermittently in that area it may have been a decision on the part of the conductor just to switch to manual operation i'm not sure but  where you have this conflict is there a way to safely resolve that what your own observation haven't been in the seat yourself and being very very familiar with the circumstances for your conductors for your employees how how best white might we resolve that conflict between going between manual operation and automatic operation mr chairman i think that first of all let me say that under no circumstances whether the train was in manual or in a t o should it have happened safeguards are in place to protect that kind of accident from occurring whether you are in manual or an automatic i think that the operators are trained to know when it's best for them to move up in a manual or switch from automatic to manual and also from my experience and history is being an operator i've also same where all you should have to do is let central know that you've encountered a problem and once you've let them know that you've encountered that problem they know that  manual operation is needed i believe in the system i believe in it wholeheartedly i like you believe that it is a system although it should be safer at this point but i do know legislation and federal representation we thought all of these were to enhance oversight over the system to help it being spent correctly along the way the history of this is it came under the old district of columbia  committee every other transit system in the country came under the transportation committee transportation infrastructure t n i but this came under the old d c committee this goes back to the days of president eisenhower and so when we were putting together transportation bills you know whether it was t lew or whatever the magination was metro's funding wasn't included in that they did was no grab bag for metro to get money outside of the annual federal appropriation so we went a separate route through this committee to get the authorization bill together but that's one of the reasons i think that money was not as forthcoming or secondly the metro system operates in three different jurisdictions d maryland and virginia when it comes to transportation funding it's a grand grab bag and whether it was under the federal transit administration or its precursors really didn't our money coming from there we're not able to get it in the same way because we weren't on the same list we operated independently and separate that's why metro needed its own funding legislation that we put forward the consequence of the funding doesn't happen i mean i wasn't in the president's first budget if these things don't come to fruition what awful you have is a six billion dollars documented need our legislation addresses three billion of it which is half admiral and half local dedicated revenue which they never had before under the president's budget there would have been nothing in there originally and grateful that the house put it in and then nothing proceeds and by the way if the federal government doesn't put their hundred fifty million in the local jurisdictions may decide not to to it's almost a three hundred million dollar hit but it looks like it's on its way let me ask you quickly in the brief moments that i have here is there chairman was talking about the manual versus automatic can you talk a little bit quoted as saying quote we haven't received anything that would make us think this was an isolated incident i do need to know that that this is not going to happen again i do have people out there who are afraid and quote y ou know as as operators report to work every day i think the main thing to remember is that we are trained to be for professionals but your basic need for survival and your instincts kick in at some point and because early on in the investigation we had received information from different operators that there had been other instances where even though a crash not taken place that the a train did not respond to the commands or the or the wayside equipment a quick man did not command the train as it that half and so for that reason yes we do have employees that are apprehensive about whether or not this will occur again but i do believe that as professional as we all try to be in our occupations and as we report to our jobs the operators will continue to work those who would like to go back to the bus and maybe don't have the stomach a few more for operating the train i'm sure that mr cooper check will make sure that they have the opportunity to do in real quickly i have only seconds left here but maybe if the three of you could just address what's the number one thing you'd like to see us do well certainly as mr mica said getting good funding in place for safety getting a long term transportation bill with sufficient resources so not only one model but transit systems across the country going to address their fundamental needs is critical thank you sorry my time is short as i think the funding is essential no matter what you talk about whether you talk about training whether you talk about enhanced technology you need dollars no matter what two things first adopt the metro compact amendments the federal government has not adopted their share  recognize that mr to his who has agreed to join us now let me just do a brief introduction and i'm going to have to swear to it so that he can respond to questions mr patrick to it is currently the associate chair and head of the masters of oz program  train train one twelve the one that actually came forward and struck two fourteen and he helped people exit the train after the collision occurred to it it is the custom of this committee to have witnesses  answered in the affirmative and i will now i will yield five minutes to the gentleman from northern virginia mr c until we do you know my understanding is not tied up one of the reasons the administration didn't fund it is because under the law without the compact being amended they were obligated to fund it and i think this just puts it in motion and it makes it a lot easier to get money in the out years a hundred fifty million in this environment is tough with respect to my colleague mr question is it not true that metro has either the highest farebox recovery rate or the second highest in the united you know the second highest second highest so the users are in fact certainly paying their fair share i think they are as somebody who uses it and and until recently well until this legislation most of the financial burden terms of subsidies has fallen on the state of maryland the district of columbia and the localities in virginia is that not correct that is correct that's where the subsidies are come at a local and state budgets any other subway system in america that bear the brunt of almost fifteen million visitors from all around the country indeed all around the world other than the metro system and i mean new york may i don't know the answer but new york has a state funding government moving its workers it's tourists who come here to visit their nation's capital you know we're not moscow subway system is an elaborate system and they're they didn't consign it and they funded it this was a statement of what their government what they wanted the world to see their government unfortunately i don't think it's been the same here i think that's really a good point this is the nation's capital it's arguably been called the capital of the free world and the federal government has some responsibility on the initial construction cost of trying to help make president eisenhower's vision that this would be the nation subway system that wouldn't just be another local subway system competing with all the other local subway systems mr you were being asked about previous statement about the nervousness of the workforce and of course i do think it's important to put in perspective the tragedy not withstanding in the thirty three years of operation the metro system it has functioned on a daily basis as one of the even though we have not had those types of accidents as a rail operator i know that when an accident occurs it occurs absolutely and and one of the things that occurred m mr miller you may want to come in as well was it was because we were having what's called series one thousand car as some of the very earliest cars in the system in the front of the of the train that crashed into the stationary stationary train is that correct yes and the series one thousand cars are in terms of crash worthiness and safe haven for passengers a lot less safe and reliable than more recently constructed cars is that correct they are the weaker built cars and is it also true to your knowledge that there is no federal standard in terms of crash worthiness and safety of passengers on federally endorsed voluntary standard system crashworthiness that i describe in my testimony that's been developed obviously older cars were built under the practices of the time as newer cars are built and purchased they will be presumably to the standards of that time and cars that are bought ten years from now will have to continuously moving and improving target over time mr chairman my time is up but this is an issue that has come out of our the regional delegations examination of the tragedy of june twenty second this anomaly in federal regulation where we do regulate for hard rail cars on railroad systems but not  that i think the public the high applied indeed would require i think most people would have thought they were most encyclopedic first i want to know who has adopted these standards and then i want to ask you why you believe the federal government has done no more than give you  industry develop standards the development of our standards has been funded both by our own members as well as the federal transfer of ministration when it comes to rail transit and bus transit standards when it comes to commuter rail standards those have also been funded have been worked on by the federal railroad administration as well it is up to transcend property themselves to adopt a standard what is the usual practice when you develop standards have you that transit systems across the united states readily develop these standards and did well not to do so yes we have found that once the standards are developed in a greater they're called consensus standards  because there is agreement that this is the right standard and then we find trances systems do in fact use those standards because they want to improve safety standards to do that and they ha long list of standards do you believe the time has come mr davis to put the federal transit administration or some agency of the federal government to in fact in for some at least minimal standards for the safety of passengers in transit systems throughout the united states sure but let me you know one of the thing there is to my knowledge no a fire grants forced to buy rail cars outside of the new start program so when you start talking about our ability to buy rail cars and the like it's got to come comes right out of metro they can't go to the federal government  think that you are you implying that the federal government does not have the authority on the interstate commerce clause to require minimal standards no i think they have the authority let me let me  leader you talk about people aging out now these are union jobs which are far as i know a high paid union here you talk about boat operators aging out the operator who sacrificed their life's work her way up the ladder how is is is there some have right now the majority of the seven thousand nine hundred employees the majority of them have less than ten years of service so you have relatively  relatively young workforce young in the in the amount of time that they have been on the property i think that where transportation is concerned it is although it is a very well paid position it can be something that some of us don't enjoy doing as a person who has been employed by will modify or thirty years there are many christmases and thanksgivings that i did not spend with my family there were plenty of are there is there work was ready and willing to step up as the workforce ages a i i think that there have been some changes that have been made i know as soon as mr cato got on board probably about six months after him and i both i became president he became the general manager we had a conversation about bringing people in full time versus part time so that they would be willing to step into regular positions i don't think that one model has any trouble recruiting i think that transportation because of its transient rules and regulations have trouble staying to be honest i see my time is is when i was looking at the washington post this morning they were talking about the n t s b and their letter that they apparently sent to you all within the last few days and  your immediate response which i thought was good and i was just wondering is the level of automation on the operation of the modern system unusual compared to other  systems i would say yes i would say that at the time that it was designed only the parts system in california really had comparable and one model really even when a step further on the other hand around the world the newer systems now have much more advanced systems so at the time absolutely today not so much and in your opinion what are the particular risks that come with relying on such a high level of law to mention well you have to make sure of the proper design of the automation you certainly have to make sure of the proper maintenance of the automation you have to be very careful that w any changes are made for example if a new technology fix is intended to be brought in that there aren't an intestine dented consequences you certainly have to make sure that the employees are well trained and well from a year with both out of maintain and how to use the service you also have to make sure that you don't expect it to deliver more than it can deliver so there you always have to use your technology appropriately this is no different and how do you how do you make sure that the things that just that i've done i mean one of the things that you know the other day i went to get my brakes fixed and when i got my mention that is that i think that when you have automation certainly it takes human beings to make sure that all of that stuff works and i'm just trying to figure out how do you make sure that you've got everything you know  it seems like if when you're depending upon a train to stop or to do certain things and it could result as here in the loss of life and significant injuries how do you make sure that you i guess have a layer is of compliance and making sure that people do what this was to do and i'm not saying they don't i just just a couple of ways i would answer your question for each transit agency in america is a public agency it has its own procedures it has its own adopted process sees it has its own responsibility to train its employees into the in those processes more recently over the last few years apt and cooperation with the f d a and others has been developing standard operating procedures and maintenance procedures that can be used gave the example of brakes on your cars that's one of the very early areas that we develop standards in so that employees can have a standard to work against we also now have a certification program in our industry i believe one model participates in that certification program so the men and women can know what the standards are know what the procedures are trained in those tested in those to make sure that they are well qualified to work so those are usually the general ways that these things are handled  has been particularly placing emphasis on safety and compliance with safety and again i believe when the one model folks testify later in this hearing they could tell you much more about that than i am capable of relating to you if there is a follow up question after that i would be happy to supply it to you and for the record as the committee might desire jeter is i heard the last few minutes seconds of your testimony and i mean when you answer to question one of the things that you said i feel i feel relatively confident i also think that along with funding you also have to have regulations and you have to have those criteria someplace where they're supposed to do it one of the thing that in your question you were talking about the training that people would have to have in order to do all of that funding provide the money for the training but i also think that we have to stop paying lip service and actually doing it if if it's necessary to train the entire fleet of employees in a particular new technology then all of them need to be trained not just part of them today and then six months later we get to the other part by the time we get to the other parts months later a number of things have occurred so i think that some of what we have to do as an employee i've watched where you know twenty five people go to training for one particular thing and then we don't see that training anymore we move on to the next thing  we have to stop doing that i think we as trance it has to stop doing that to ensure that all employees are trained on particular things all things that concern any part of train e were told quietly out of was that the system of having automated operation with a manual override which is basically what we have now was not the way to go has anybody that the fact people in the front line was that the fatigue of an operator was more when they were not operating the car itself was sitting and basically just keeping an eye on the machine than to physically operate the system has anybody done a study on the re the reaction time of somebody who was not actually operating the vehicle as opposed to somebody who is actually physically doing the operation i'm not familiar with that particular if there is such a study i can tell you the question you posed is an unresolved question there are transit systems built today in the world that are fully automatic no manual override whatsoever there are trans systems in the world that have some automatic train control features but much more heavily reliance on the operator what there is clear agreement is that having automatic train protection systems such as was included earlier testimony today about the in the rail safety act last fall there's no disagreement about that that needs to be done and is being done around the world but i'm not familiar with such a study i will check our records and if i find such a study i'll be glad to make it available to you sam from the labor point of view i believe that running the system automatic is the right system to run in when you talk about delays that can occur the train just runs smoother as a whole i think that having a human being there stops whatever from occurring you know whatever problems you might have with the with the system from occurring and the operator can override and put it in manual but i do believe i do believe as an operator that running that system on automatic we are supposed to have an automatic system it should be able to run and run sufficiently  and theory and we had the bells and whistles you basically had the engineers the love the engineer everything and try to engineer the human factor out but as we were we were strongly urged after bart got an operation was do not ignore the impact on the human of not doing anything that the mind ends up drifting off there's a lack of concentration so the reaction to an emergency is going to be much slower for somebody who's not actually engaged in the operation than somebody who is observing it and then is expected to to impose on i think that we've got to be open frank i'll give you an example when you fly a b two bomber they are being flown by the person in the pilot a pilot's seat but the computer can override and stop you from doing the wrong things if we've got a technology that's that sophisticated you know one of the most of the sophisticated systems that americans ever developed operating off that mode were operating on in one nine hundred seventy mode that machines computers can do it and it was actually an afterthought that we put people on board as a backup i'm not so sure that that we shouldn't be taking the time to look at this study this and make sure the assumptions we made early in the seventies is the best assumptions going into the next century because i think we need to legitimately say we assume that the driver will respond to the crisis in a timely manner as opposed to the other way around and i just think we should rethink that because i just personally as somebody who was building a system back in like seventies i still remember being told again and again by drivers that watch out for this system it has this problem and when the accident happened madam chair i just literally thought back to those warnings i could hearing about that go ahead can i respond you know because the other part of that is also as operators when you operate for eight hours manually you also run the risk of someone getting tired so i think that it has a dual effect on individuals you know from as a seasoned operator i say when you get tired and you feel yourself maybe not paying attention get up stand up you know do something other than just sit there and be lulled with the movement of the train you have to condition yourself to know that being alert is your job that's what you're supposed to do when you're not operating that training manual you're supposed to be alert you're supposed to know what that train is dealing at all around them and i'm sure i appreciate time i think it may be time that we want to go back and study the human impact on the us we always looking at the machines but i think we've got integrate the human factor and assumptions made twenty thirty years ago we may not be reality today and i think that we ought to overlay frankly discuss that   who was involved in this accident you have five minutes to summarize your testimony  please could i just say that i have received word mr davis that you may have to leave i want to thank you for the chairman and the committee for taking time to to follow through on what you began here when you were chair of the full committee so if you have to leave you would be excused with thanks and gratitude again just to it i want to apologize first for my delay i knew that i had to be here two o'clock live in kensington maryland i decided for the first time since the accident to take the red line i left my home at twelve thirty seven i did not arrive here i capital south until two fifty five and the red line is being held up the five yes because of the accident i take it yes and the elevators were operating at forest glen and there are a number other problems that cause that delay so i apologize but please appreciate my frustration and even giving you that apology on the afternoon of the twenty second of june i was on my way to teach a night class at the catholic university of america i decided that night on a whim to save some gas park at the wheaton metro and take the red line down i normally ride in the first car of the train but on the evening it was hot i was dressed for work i decided to stay in front of an air conditioner on the platform at the wheaton station and because of that got on the second car of the train and sat on the forward most right hand side facing forward near the forward most doors if that helps at all while riding the train i read the paper as i do in the tunnel and then as we came out of the tunnel approaching the silver spring station somewhere around silver spring or tacoma i got a little tired and put down the paper the operator came on and told us to expect a delay this was a a typical announcement this was nothing unusual but i could hear the conductors voice or the operators voice she reassured us that we would take a delay stop in between stations and then start back up again so as the train came to a stop somewhere south of silver spring or south of tacoma i don't remember which i closed my eyes and relaxed a little bit the train began to move again while my eyes were closed i put the paper down and then somewhere in there we got to a normal cruising speed i'll call it when i heard a screeching noise shuddering feeling came through the car someone yelled behind me that she believed we had derailed and then one of the loudest bangs i've ever heard in my life everyone in the second car and there weren't many of us were thrown from their seats i hit the seat in front of me i don't really remember much of that but i do remember being on the floor of the second car with a lot of dust a lot of smoke not much in the way of screaming but all my belongings had been thrown to the front of that car it's at that point first of all there was no no it was all the electricity was down you could see the sunlight coming through but it was very difficult to make out what was going on a gentleman who had been sitting forward of me got to his feet and told everyone the car we should go everyone get out of the car so people did get up we moved in an orderly fashion again no screaming the woman opened the lever the emergency lever to get the center doors open the center doors did not open i helped by reaching in and sliding one of the doors open to the left and we proceeded to get people out of that car and onto the rocks below it was quite a big jump i mean it's a good four and a half feet four feet up to the rocks at that point so we helped lower people out of the car and it's only at that point when i paused looked to my left out of the door and realised that the first car of the train was actually in the air we could see i could see debris on the ground things thrown from the first car into the fencing there was at least one man that i saw on the ground khaki shorts moving but he did not look good he was bleeding profusely from his legs people were already moving towards him so that the people in my car decided to just exit as quickly as we could as safely as we could and then move to the back of the car all the way to the back of the train we helped people off the train when there when everyone was out of our car i noticed two gentlemen had gotten into the second car and were moving to the doors in the interior of the car i got back onto the train to assist those two gentlemen they were attempting to open the interior door that connects the second car to the first car that door was stuck i learned later that this was the car i was in was also one thousand series car and what had happened was that the roof of the car had actually dimpled like a soda can if you take your spray can or something turn it sideways imagine it's like a car and is pressure on the top that's what happened to that second car because the roof was down the struts that support that roof were also down that prevented the door in the second car from opening enough for anyone in the first car to exit we could also there were two gentlemen with me we could see as we were trying to remove that door that possibly we could take some ceiling panels down we did that that didn't work because the metal struts underneath that ceiling panel were stronger we couldn't rip those out so the door was stuck we could hear the people at this point in the first car and it and it didn't it was pretty chaotic they were screaming they were upset i could see through the window there are about four to five people in the rear most section of the first car i could not see beyond that which would be the rear most doors the side doors that open you couldn't see past that because the flooring had crushed accordion like into that section so all the handrails all the seating was a skew we had hand rails and post pointing towards us almost like toothpicks and then four people four to five people trapped inside there when this one young man on the other side realized that we could not open our door he told us that he was going to break the glass so he took his shirt off wrapped it around his wrist and started punching the glass at that point that myself and the two other gentleman moved out of the way to avoid the broken glass at this time is and this is the first time that a first responder came to us a woman operator i don't know where from but obviously not on our train had come in through the third car into the second car he had the vest the walkie talkie goatee and told us that we should just exit that car as quickly as possible that he would take care of that situation as best he could in the first responders run his way on their way so we moved through the cars themselves they were empty at that point the second and third car were empty we moved into i believe the fourth car jumped from the car and then just got more people out of the cars as best we could help lower them again i did not see a lot of first responders at this point because i had not been to the back of the train itself i don't know what the time was a know how long this narrative would account for but when we got out of the train and were moving people out someone shouted that they needed doctors and nurses and that was quite vivid for me because i was lowering a woman in scrubs from maybe the fourth or fifth car she said i'm a nurse but i'm hurt and we said we need you and she went to the first car after that we pretty much moved everyone to the back of the train it was very confusing we saw too i believe plainclothes policemen in shorts with safety vests i don't know who they represented but they told us to stay away from the third rail state group at the back of the train we had people wandering away from the scene we had people for passengers at the very least that i witnessed who picked up their belongings at the end of the train and simply walked north they left and there were not enough first responders to prevent them from leaving and certainly none of us had our wits about us to say don't go we just let them go the firemen who arrived on scene went to the parking lot between the community gardens north of new hampshire out of that new hampshire have bridge and the jobber oh i think it's jobber zero printing that has a parking lot there they could not get to us because we had fencing between the c s extracts and the metro tracks there are four sets of tracks at that point by the new hampshire street bridge the metro tracks are in the middle there's fencing there to this day with barbed wire on the top firemen can't get to the fireman's equipment their trucks and whatnot to get out not get on the tracks so they had to lug their gear things like jaws of life diamond cutting saws and other equipment on stretchers manually carrying that equipment toward the first car this is when we start to see people at the back of the train so we we just waited we waited and took care of one another as best we could ok i thank the gentleman at this time i'd like to recognize the gentle lady from the district of columbia miss holmes norton for five minutes i need to get on to to mr miller and miss you too but i'm i ask you where you entered mr just stayed and towards the end of the evening again it was very confusing some of the first responders told people that look if we've got your name and number and we've looked after you you're free to go which i indispensable to this hearing it's riveting testimony i'm sure it's going to helpful to the n t s b be as well not me because i have only a short period of time mr miller would you have advised  to do what it now has done to place the one thousand series call ours in the middle the more crashworthy cars at either in yes or no yes that seems like a prudent faced with choices that you can pull thirty percent of your fleet because back almost forty years or put them in the middle what choice should have been to put them in the middle so that either in would have the most crash where the cars if you ever recommended anything a bad time your that is not a type of detail recommendation we would normally participate in anyway i would caution that looks like a very good idea given the circumstances that we think we understand now could in a different set of circumstances look like a good man or question we will question the next panel on that m peter it's important to hear your testimony about or to manage versus manual you know that some members of the public cerned about reports of a metro operator who seemed to be sleeping tell you one thing it's easy to go to sleep on any kind of moving vehicle especially a train that was concern and we are so pleased to learn that the operator didn't even have her cell phone with us so we know she was playing coast  close attention i understand what automatic does but i really have to ask you why is there and shouldn't there be something that the operator has to do fairly often during the trip to keep her alert in light of you know human sacrifice is human a human instinct to get bored if you're just sitting there doing the same thing over and over again is there something well you either you or mr miller think might be done to keep people alert well actually we do the operators are responsible for opening and closing the doors at this point we are also responsible for giving out announcements it's our job to listen to the radios and monitor the radios so that we know what is going on the railroad ahead of us and what we really think there were is enough to keep people alert already i do my own you're shaking your head ahead mr miller mr mo in your testimony i know that you say this fundamental system you say there were modern had adopted the fundamentals of the safety system also provide safe and effective service and other major cities you name boston atlanta baltimore miami philadelphia and san francisco do you believe that the system here is as safe as those systems you have enumerated in your testimony it's at least as safe i have full confidence in the metro system here  in reading your two asked him only miss miss jeter as some sometimes because one fan enough about trains had to try to distinguish between what my mind i could have done and what was too costly to do and you were generous in saying oh ma didn't have a lot of money to do what really needed to be done you recommended retrofitting some of the cars given the age of this car and kind of fines it would take to retro that and i suppose i should ask this question to mr miller forty year old cars retrofit i'm trying to make them crash worthy is it was that a real option for what model either mr miller and i'm trying to get in these one more question in yes or no do you think that that was a real option i don't know the facts pacifically here but i agree with the fundamentals of your point that if you're going to be retiring a car soon you want to do only watch  absolutely necessary to keep safety and operational efficiency will have to ask you whether it was worth the investment let me ask about your testimony miss miss jeter about car born costly and do you believe that one model installed what it could that was not excessively costly or that that contraptions like this car bomb monitors identified it would be hard for me to say that they purposefully did not follow no that's not my question i'm trying to say to distinguish you talk about rollback and there's some things that they didn't install or try to can do you think that will  given the the circumstances its face with congress not providing a money and of course you know that the system not having anything like the funds it did what it could to prevent  this accident assuming that it didn't have the money for four whole new cars or maybe even retrofitting cars where there's accidents concern to be perfectly honest i think there were  s there was some there was part of the situation that was missed either through supervision whether or not it was monitoring that should have taken place after some of the circuitry was changed on the rails i think that's a place where we probably need to go back and look at what the procedures are so that we would have the procedures in place it's my understanding and i understand why the time but it's my understanding that wants that wheezy bomb was changed to once there was a problem identified with that wheezy bond there should have been certain things done to assure that it was  operating as it should have been and apparently it wasn't because it's my understanding that train one twelve wasn't even seen so if the train wasn't seen why is was that a bond that prohibited that train from being able to be monitored by either central control or or some other manual thank you ishita orders now i would like to recognize gentleman from maryland mr van who has been an active and  attentive member on this issue a member of our full committee i recognize a gentleman for five minutes i thank you mr chairman thank you for bringing us together on this very important issue and i won't use the whole five minutes i do want to thank god our former colleague mr davis who had to leave again for his longtime leadership on the question of will mata and all of us from this region are very pleased that we're able to get the hundred fifty million dollars appropriation from the subcommittee preparations committee subcommittee and obviously that's the first step in providing the federal component of the ongoing funding to mr to it it's great to have a fellow resident of the town of kensington with us and thank you for sharing your story and thank all of our witnesses in fact my colleague ms norton some of the questions i was going to ask of the other two of yourself in the interest of time mr chairman i will move to the next thank you will ask that you remain responsive if members who were not here at the hearing today have any questions that they would submit in writing i would for them to you and would ask that you respond to them within five good afternoon to welcome our our second panel on and thank you in advance for your for your testimony it is the custom of this committee to ask witnesses to be sworn who are to provide testimony before so i ask you all to rise and raise your right hand  testimony you're about to get to the subcommittee is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth but the records show that all of the witnesses have answered in the affirmative and the interest of time what i'd like to do is just  offer a brief introduction of each of the witnesses and then we'll go back and and allow the witnesses to provide an opening statement counsel council member jim graham became chairman of the metro board in january o mr graham currently serves on the council of the district of columbia representing ward one he also chairs the council's committee on public works and transportation mr graham served as executive director of the  john b cato has more than thirty years of experience in public transportation as general manager of the washington metropolitan metropolitan area transit authority he oversees the second largest rail transit system in the fifth largest bus network in the united states with more than ten thousand employees a one point three billion dollars operating budget and a three point one billion dollars five year capital improvements program mr deborah hersman was sworn in as the thirty fifth member of the national transportation safety board on june twenty first two thousand and four since her appointment to the board was her husband has been the member on scene at fifteen major transportation accidents before joining the miss her husband was a senior professional staff member of the u s senate committee on commerce science and transportation from one thousand nine hundred ninety two thousand and four mr eric matteson joined the mass transit administration as transportation planner in two thousand and seven mr madison was wanted as a district representative to the tri state oversight committee for state safety oversight of the washington metropolitan area transit authority metro rail system in april two thousand and seven became chair of the was confirmed by the united states senate as administrator of the federal transit administration in may of two thousand and nine prior to joining the federal transit authority mr rugg off served on the staff of the senate appropriations committee for twenty two years including fourteen years as the democratic staff director of the transportation subcommittee of the rogoff has a strong background in federal infrastructure budgeting and finance and has played an active role in the financing of the date of great tragedy for our agency and for all who rely on it those most directly impacted remain on our hearts and prayers and motivate our every action i want especially thank mr to it for coming here today to share his personal experience which i found very impactful as a first step our board did act within twenty four hours to authorize the general manager to provide emergency hardship relief funds to the those who were victims of this tragedy that relief was not contingent on anything and it was made clear that it had no ramifications of the legal nature in so far as ultimate liability it was rather a humanitarian gesture to relieve immediate hardship and i know firsthand from working with certain of these families that it was really very much appreciate on behalf of our board of directors i want to say that we believe in our management and we have confidence in the skill and dedication of our general manager john kato we believe our system is safe and we will do all we can to ensure that once the probable cause or causes of the accident are identified action will be taken by the authority to remedy and address those problems please keep in mind that in all of our history there has been but one other fatality involving passengers and that was more than twenty five years ago but for pressing infrastructure needs we need but for pressing infrastructure needs we need real action by the congress to make good on the promise in last year's authorization act and thereby provide a full payment of one hundred fifty million dollars in f y ten federal appropriations presently our local jurisdictions carry nearly the entire burden for example d c taxpayers will send some three hundred million dollars to metro well mata in f y ten we are very encouraged mr chairman by the action that was taken yesterday by the house appropriations subcommittee on transportation to take that first an extraordinarily important step in or in appropriating one hundred fifty million dollars for f y ten i want to commend everyone that was involved this most particularly our regional delegation some of the members are here today delegate norton congressman connelly congressman van hollen and others and i also want to single out our majority leader mr hoyer for his fine role in all of this i believe that if congress acts to finalize the one hundred fifty million dollars for f y ten c maryland and the commonwealth of virginia will all find the matching funds to bring together three hundred million dollars annually for each of the next ten years this money will make a critical difference in our abilities mr chairman i remember our last hearing where you were so diligent in terms of making sure that we had put everything out of the path in terms of obstacles in order to make sure that this money would become available but mr chairman we also need to have the active commitment of president barack obama and his administration to find emergency stimulus dollars for immediate assistance with these infrastructure issues i noted that congressman davis made a particular point of this in his comments today finally we appreciate the support of our local congressional delegation as i have said in its continued to work to move all of this forward thank you thank the transportation safety board and through this questioning this afternoon i'm sure we will cover every aspect of that i do want to say that we are working with the national transportation safety board to provide support and their investigation and they have the lead responsibility for the investigation of this accident today i will focus on the steps of metro has taken since the accident to ensure the safety of our riders and employees and also touch on the capital needs of this organization first i would like to extend my sympathy and those of all metro employees to the families of those who died in this accident i as well as all metro employees saddened by this event and but my grief is only small compared to the grief of the families of those who lost their lives at the what's also with those who are injured and we pray for their speedy recovery this is a difficult time for them and their loved ones and we would do whatever we can to help them come through this process i would also like to take a moment to acknowledge and buying the first responders from the district of columbia as well as some of the local fire departments police departments as well as members of the metro transit police and our employees who responded to this accident and provided assistance and  quick and in my judgment time period my written testimony also includes the lists of those who provided assistance which i am truly deeply grateful safety is at the foundation of what we do at metro we have always taken our responsibility to safety seriously and we have always taken a number of steps to ensure that this system is as safe as possible first  notice of this accident we began to operate all of our trains and manual mode rather than automated to ensure again the integrity of the system second within days of discovering that a track circuit in the area of the accident has lost his ability from time to time to detect trains we physically inspected each of the three thousand tracks or kids and rail system and and we are also running daily computerized tests on those circuits third we have arranged for and dependent review of our automated trance train control system after working with the national transportation safety board this review will be conducted by a group of outside transit signal experts and i appreciate the assistance provided by the american public transportation association for assistance in this effort finally while they are safe to operate i decided to place all odos for all cars in the center of trains we plan to replace those cars as soon as funding is available and funding is secured as you may be aware yesterday the national transportation safety board recommended that metro enhanced redundancy and training controls system by using real time data or an automatic alert we have already began contacting vendors with experts or expertise in this area and we are preparing an estimate of the cost to the valid and implement the automated system when we are able to determine the steps necessary we will move forward with this system we would do what we have to to ensure that the system is put into place however it requires a specialized development for the ramada system but we would dedicate the necessary were resources to employment recommendation as soon as that system is ready for this meeting and this process when that begin next week it has already begun and in fact a meeting is scheduled tomorrow morning with the vendors with then role model to begin the process of moving forward to meet the recommendations by the national transportation safety board we also recognize and i realize that this is an inconvenient to many of our customers operating else system the way we're doing so today we have not been able to return to pre accident levels of service and we will not be able to do so and to this best investigation is completed finally i'd like to thank the subcommittee on appropriations for including the hundred and fifty million dollars in funding for metro's capital needs capital needs over the next ten years total eleven point four million dollars four billion dollars and what i'm asking that this committee and the congress do is to pass the compact amendments necessary to make the changes in our contacts and to also appropriate the one point one one point when i didn't get the million dollars and pass it through the house so we can receive those funds when needed capital improvement thank you i thank the gentleman who shares my you're now recognized five minutes thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee mr lynch mr chase accident investigation since one thousand nine hundred two the n t s b has investigated seven accidents on one modest property resulting in seventy six investigate and seventy six recommendations on a variety of issues i'm here today to brief you on the accident that occurred on june twenty second involving two red line trains traveling in bound near the fort totten station there were nine fatalities and scores of injuries transported to local area hospitals on behalf of the board i would like to extend our thoughts and prayers to those who lost loved ones and those who remain in recovery from this accident we launched our team within hours of the collision parties to our investigation and involve people that you see at this table one was a f d a amalgamate trans and union that was at the table before and the tri state oversight committee we were also assisted as is customary in our acts and investigations by the f b i s evidence response team documenting evidence on scene as well as in the early stages of the investigation by many local responders from the area who did a great job assisting us let me begin by reviewing some factual information about our investigation the standing train to train to fourteen was a six car train consisting of four three thousand series cars and two five thousand series cars placed at the rear of that train it had stopped before entering the fort totten station it was following a train that was servicing the platform at fort totten the striking train train one twelve was a six car train composed of six one thousand series cars and it was following train to fourteen as you  heard from the eyewitness to the accident when we interviewed passengers after the accident they told us that there was an announcement that they came on board that there was a train stop ahead of them they slowed or stopped and then they began accelerating and the nickolas in occurred there was no communication between the train operators and metro's operations control center prior to the collision metro's metro's rail cars are approximately seventy five feet long that lead car of the striking train telescoped into this last car of the standing train approximately fifty feet of that car survivable space or two thirds of that car's survivable space was compromised in the collision are investigators found metal to metal compression marks consistent with heavy braking on both rails of the track for about one hundred and twenty five feet about four hundred twenty five feet before the point of impact trains operate under the direction of a modest operations control center o c c they utilize an automatic train control system that supplemented by wayside signals that interlocking the system is designed to prevent collisions regardless of whether or not trains are operating in the manual or the automatic mode speed commands for individual train movements should not allow for more than one train to occupy a track circuit at a time and the maximum authorized speed for this section of track was fifty nine mph post accident testing shows that the track circuit at the accident site intermittently failed to detect a train that was at that location on the day of the accident the train system did not detect the stop train and the following train did not receive speed commands to slow or to stop prior to the collision when models maintenance records showed that on june seventeenth five days before the accident that an impedance spawn pictured in the slideshow was replaced in the track circuit as part of a multi year program for scheduled maintenance investigators are continuing to examine the train control system circuitry and recorded data to better understand how the train can stroll system functioned prior to the accident in addition we will be conducting with the assistance of all mata some sight distance tests on that stretch of track between to comment fort totten this weekend the operations control can control center computer system receives realtime train location data it displaces information on a monitor in the control cent after a post accident review of the circuit data when model reported that the track circuit intermittently lost its ability to detect a train after after june seventeenth when model has now assigned personnel to review recorded data once a day to identify anomalies systemwide they do not have an automatic monitoring system that would identify and promptly report a situation in which a train stops being detected by the system that is why we issued t urgent safety recommendations yesterday one to one model and one to after the recommendation to one law to ask that it enhanced the safety redundancy of its train control system that monitors track circuit data so that it can detect any lost trains and immediately alert the control center so that they can stop or slow the train the safety recommendation to f d a or is it to alert other transit operators that have system similar to metros to determine if their systems have adequate safety redundancies and if they don't to take corrective action thank you for inviting me here today i'm happy to answer a question thank you thank you testimony mr rogoff you now recognize the five thank you mr chairman ranking member chaffetz other members of the subcommittee the federal transit administration appreciates very much being called justifying the overall safety posture of our nation's rail transit systems and the f d a has very limited role in overseeing rail transit safety as we address this issue of transit safety it is essential to remember that rail transit remains our safest form of surface transportation by far the citizens of the washington area are are always far safer riding in a metro a rail car any type of metro car than traveling on the highway the metro rail system has experienced thirteen onboard crash related fatalities during its thirty three year history while every one of those fatalities has been a tragedy the fact is that automobile accidents on the roads of the washington area claimed the same number of fatalities every two weeks and the proposal that could result in passengers getting in their cars versus riding metro will immediately degrade safety that said the obama administration believes that there are improvements and reforms that can and should be made to make our transit systems even safer while it is not very widely known right now our nation's rail transit systems operate under two very different federal safety regimes commuter rail systems like mark and the v are subject to the federal road administration's very extensive safety regulations those rail transit systems are governed by national mandatory safety standards and they undergo on site spot inspections in audits by federal inspectors those federal safety inspectors are empowered to dictate operating practices and assess signs for any deficiencies found by contrast rail transit systems like washington metro the new york city subway or the trolley operations on the t in boston and forty five other systems are subject to a very different federal safety regime in the case of those rail transit systems the states are expected to establish and implement a safety program the role of the federal transit administration is limited to setting minimum program acquirements and ensuring that the states have a safety authority in place in performing our safety oversight role the f d a is prohibited as a matter of federal law from dictating safety practices or setting mandatory national standards f d a does not have the authority to assess fines set operating rules or even mandate the level of technical expertise the state authorities must have and i'm fort and fortunately the vast majority of the state agencies including the tri state authority that oversees messed metro are very  the distinction between these two safety systems was plainly apparent at the site of the recent red line crash when i visited the crash site at the invitation of member when i saw a chain link fence that separated the metro tracks from other tracks in the same corridor that served amtrak mark and c s x trains under our two separate safety systems the federal inspector that periodical inspects the tracks serving amtrak and mark cannot inspect the track on the other side of the fence the side serving metro the new team has come on board with the obama administration we find the status quo to be unacceptable and we expect to propose reforms secretary la hood is a stablished a multimedia departmental committee chaired by deputy secretary poor cari to identify alternative approaches to address what we consider a gap in transit safety oversight the team review the difference a few authorities in inspection regimes we have a d o t with an eye toward proposing reforms to congress soon now on the matter of financing it is impossible to discuss the issue of safety of our nation's transit systems without simultaneously discussing the financing of those systems at the f d a we find that the systems that are adequately financed are those with a dedicated funding source that provides a predictable revenue stream and will model does not have such a system w mata does benefit from a regular stream of federal formula grants that totaled approximately two hundred twenty million in two thousand and eight also will moderate operates in the only region the united states where the federal government has mandated transit benefits for all federal employees that generates an additional one hundred seventy million each year in farebox revenue for well mata in addition to these federal resources the secretary and i do support congressional efforts to make matching federal grants available to remodel for two thousand and ten while working within the overall spending ceiling established in the president's annual budget we believe strongly however that these federal matching funds must be used by will mada to address the most safety critical issues in the system as identified by a pro at vulnerability assessments to make clear that in calling for reform and endorsing additional funding for will model i do not intend to leave the impression that the cause of the recent red line disaster was related to inadequate safety rules inadequate safety oversight inadequate funding or poor compliance on the part of metro only the n t s b will investigate only that the n t s b investigation will reveal to us the true cause or causes of the accident and we have the f d a stand ready to review and implement any recommendations that arise from the board's investigation just as we did yesterday evening while working within the very limited safety authorities we have under current law and mr chairman my time is up i hope i will have an opportunity later to respond to the concerns raised by mr michael regarding our grant rules and maybe we can do that in q and a and with that i thank you for your  the opportunity to testify i think i think the general mr madison you now recognize the five minutes distinguished members of the committee good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to discuss rail operations and safety at the washington metropolitan area transit authority or will mata and the tragic accident of june twenty second two thousand and nine as well as the activities of the tri state oversight committee which we called the talk before i began i would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the members of the talk to express our heartfelt sympathies and condolences to the victims and the families of those who were affected by this tragic accident we will continue to keep them in our thoughts and prayers the members of the talks are fully committed to working closely with  the federal transit ministration the n t s b and congress to improve safety operations and prevent another similar accident from ever occurring again my testimony will provide a brief overview of the state safety oversight program in general as prescribed by forty nine code of federal regulations part six fifty nine and the talks rolls responsibilities and authority i will also discuss the talks recent history and address the limited patients faced by the talk  performing safety oversight and regulation of will modify the talk is the state safety oversight agency or s s o responsible for overseeing metro's rail safety program under forty nine c f r part six fifty nine each state with the rail transit agency like the metro system that receives f d a funding and is not under the jurisdiction of the federal railroad administration must designate a state agency to carry out the s s o requirements the talk is a joint effort of staff from state government agencies from the district of columbia virginia and maryland state safety oversight agencies approve a transit agencies safety and security plans review accident reports and corrective action plans and conduct periodic safety audits among other tasks unlike some transportation regulators like the f a a and the f r a the talk lacks the authority to levy fines or enforce civil penalties for noncompliance in two thousand and six the government accountability office conducted an assessment of the s s o program on a national level including a case study on multi state s s those including the talk the g a o report made note of administrative financial and organizational issues facing the talk to which we have responded by streamlining our organization further empowering the talk chair and improving our working relationship with one model in addition to the g a o report the federal transit administration audited the talk program in two thousand and seven the audit resulted in eight findings of noncompliance and four findings of compliance with recommendations working with one modest talk was able to close all but two findings of noncompliance and one finding of compliance with  recommendation the talk is in the process of preparing its next audit response of mission to the f d a and expects to satisfy the three remaining audit findings in the near future while the administration of the talk program has improved significant challenges remain these include the lack of a traditional regulatory structure and continued funding constraints the talk has a limited regulatory authority under forty nine c f r part six fifty nine the only authority inherent to six fifty nine is the themselves receive no f d a funds for program administration despite its limitations state safety oversight programs nationwide have improved and expanded in the last few years for example the f d a now funds some training through the transportation safety institute as well as hosting workshops for s s so managers such courses have developed to help develop to improve the program overall and should be continued the talk is professionally and personally invested in the safety and security of the metro rail system our members as well as their friends and loved ones are regular metro riders we hope our testimony can assist congress with assessing and improving the s s o program and in turn improve rail transit safety nationally with that i conclude my statement and look forward to your questions i thank the gentleman myself five minutes we have some votes pending but what i'd like to do is to keep the hearing going so that we're not here unreasonably late hour mr graham in trying to follow the budgetary priorities for the washington metro area transportation authority i know that the administration oversight committee just preliminarily approved a one hundred seventy seven million dollars system infrastructure and rehab program and trying to follow those items it appears and i may be wrong so i i'm not opposed to being corrected on this it looks like the project includes new escalators platform rehab all  important things track repairs operates to the train power system and most relevant here the automatic train controls but i could not find any allocation and it's probably because of the transportation appropriations committee of one hundred fifty million dollars does that change the dynamic and what might what might be we expect mr chairman it most definitely does change the dynamic and we as you know  have we have an r f p which we have received bids on for replacement of the one thousand series cars as well as the expansion of new cars as well as new cars for the expansion to dulles and what we're awaiting is the funding there's no question about it into if i may add in terms of the hundred seventy seven million dollars redline rehab that has been gone through the committee but has not been approved by the board of directors and in fact our board is well aware of the the fact that there may be additional demands that will take a higher priority than what has been set forth in that proposal ok i still have several minutes left what i would like to do and i'm going to have to take the answers on the record i would like to ask each of you what you think the priorities for the next step what has to happen next in terms of of  whatever you think the top priorities should be whether it's in response to this accident or infrastructure needs operational needs the you know the grant the grant programs that are all the op was talking about earlier and i'm going to i'm go yield and i'm going to allow the answers to go on the record and i'm going to ask michelle and to take the chair and to continue with the process and use your allocation of time but could we just use the next few minutes to go down the line mrs chair since i'm next in order yes i will go the first response and use of monies will be to respond to the recommendations of the national transportation board regarding this accident that is a first commitment this agency w make and spending its dollars and any future recommendations concerning al system we need to have monies to respond to the order of magnitude the next response would be the replacement of the thousand series cars they are very all they need to be replaced and as i was chairman mr graham has said we have had the r f p and we're ready to go all we need is this the funding to do that third as i mentioned many times metro has an urgent need of additional capital funds to maintain its structure in the state a good repair and that would be the third step so first from the requirements of this accident and the other safety needs the replacement of the thousand series cars and continuous work on the aging infrastructure of the  the outcome of the investigation that we keep our mind open in terms of what is the highest and most important capital need for those matching dollars that at least as an interim step seem to be coming forward from congress  because you know rail cars while important are really our last line of defense in an accident the most important thing we always must be focused on is avoiding the accident and the collision entirely is as mr cato has been very articulate about we're not going to develop a r something about the probable cause issue because we're we're extraordinarily concerned about this and we're we're very respectful of the n t s b these pronouncements and all of the work that they're doing some of which is central some of which is peripheral but let me make some some basic points here on june seventeenth signal device let me call it a device because it has various component parts which has become the focus of suspicion about the probable cause of this accident on june seventeenth this device was replaced in the course of routine scheduled maintenance there was no indication to our knowledge of any problem relating to the functioning of this device and june twenty second of course we had this horrendous accident and there after we went back and what we did and i believe n t s b was involved in this we saw that there was a subsequent really review of this device functioning there was this fluttering so that at one point  signaling the presence of a train another point it was sent which was obviously a very substantial problem here but what happened was we replaced the device and this is a very important point madam chair we replaced the device you would think that that would remedy the issue that with the new device there might be some technical or other problem with the old device that we would have we would have solved the problem in so far as this particular situation in fact madam chair the new device that was replaced continued the same fluttering as the former device and so we're left and i'm making this point madam chair very intentionally with the metro board and the metro management has issued a statement on this we're left with a very compelling mystery as to what is going on here and we have to focus all of our energies in determining just what is wrong and let me say there's another significance to this and the other never again for those who are concerned about the slow movement of our trains and the fact that we're on manual operation i think with this mystery outstanding it's very important that we do just that until we figure out just what happened this is a probable cause situation we believe where the answers and the solutions are not immediately apparent thank you and to make a conscious decision to look forward at the degree of casting out testing for thirty years serves us well but something this a new device i know device of the kind you never used before  result of this device and what i'm not aware i've not personally found that in any of the records of that occurring the investigation is still on the way and we will continue to investigate to review our required to do more and as a result of that and i repeat this hearing is not about assigning cause we don't have the slightest idea nobody could possibly do it this hearing is being held as a public needs to know what you know and we are very pleased that as the information develops that you have developed the smart you are making that information public and transparent i'd like to ask about the recent decision to put your duty over and over again instead replace those car that message needed to come here and of course he wasn't heard in time why did you not recommend what looks like a common sense a recommendation that doesn't require a bunch of experts at least don't make the were on june twenty second why did you not recommend that we recommended in after the shady grove accident in ninety six that metro look at all of their fleet in consultation with engineering experts to determine what needed to be done to improve the crashworthiness of their entire fleet whether it was retrofitting making those cars more robust but that's not a question that's hersman these people are not the crash experts and i question very specific did it occur to anybody it in t s b what almost sell you what's the first thing to occur to knownothing me and i suspect to many people in the region because i was on washington post dot com and for an hour right after the accident and somebody you know wrote in well why don't they just put it into one of the better cars and i said you have read my mind i'll make sure i ask that question of mr kato and the experts my question is very semple you know these people did could not possibly replace the trains over and over again you said do the impossible a any way for them to possibly replace thirty percent of their fleet didn't recommend that they take them out of service why did the transportation board not at least  technical reason why is it just so in your face that even the experts didn't see it well i think the challenge here is because there are no standards and there is not crash testing done that we don't have the engineering data to necessarily  and mr rogan agency pardon me but particularly because we have this allows you so so i'm i'm asking is what they did the right thing to do or now in hindsight would you say well that doesn't make a lot of difference i think the safety board has not taken a position on whether or not putting the cars in the center was the right thing to do we did ask them to look at the kind of perhaps already ought to have i can tell you without the of contradiction leave aside the recession we are in let's suppose when this false bloom economy  out where we made money i can guarantee you that there is no transit system in the united states that isn't operating with old cars and cannot replace them quickly therefore  in this hearing we're really looking for answers and is real easy to say spin a billion dollars and you'll be safe but i've got to ask you whether you are prepared at least in the future to look at into rome possibilities when the only answer the n t s b has been able to come up with since two thousand and four spend some money the public needs to know short of spending money do the experts have a response that can increase our feeling of safety when we get aboard a red line that that that we have no alternative but to board could you consider that in the event your recommendation costs a lot of money and give you know about resorts is would you consider offering recommendations temporary and short of spending the money that could increase safety ms norton it is completely up to the recipients who are the experts  back when they had to when they rolled forward to change the cars that you didn't mince your words on we're dealing with millions of people get on these trains including people who visit the city we're trying to learn whether or not there is any way anybody interested in doing what seems us to be mentally necessary if you do not have the money what do the experts have to say to the system about interim steps i think that is a fair question and you either are prepared to look into that or not and i want to know if you are prepared to look into interim steps such as mr cato is now taken such as the union apparently advised neither of which is presumed to have the background and expertise you do are you prepared to consider interim steps when the funds are not available to do what you think is the best thing to do yes or no yes and we often consider interim steps if one model has all i want to know and i'm trying to second guess anyone we are trying to be poor handed we're really not blaming anyone for anything we think that this accident was so unforeseeable that i only duty here to say what little things can we do to to make sure this doesn't happen again frankly i think that the victims and the public is entitled to hear any  more specifically say in your testimony that the f d a is prevented by law from establishing safety standards requiring inspections of the kind that are required on other common carriers etc what better a law prohibits you from acting that specific  that at least that there is an obligation to add least one hour talking to us now i know you what you don't hear i want to know however where it's found and but do you believe that there is at least amenable obligation on the part of federal authorities to a minimum standard that perhaps states and cities can go beyond but minimum standards so the ms hersman know minimally what is required so that the operators know what wouldn't that not be a reasonable thing for the congress to do  we certainly think so i want to i want to answer both parts your question the language that has been both litigated in found by the courts to be most limiting to us is section fifty three thirty four b one of title forty nine and i'm just going to read it because it shortened except for purposes of national defense or in the event of a national or regional emergency the secretary may not regulate the operation routes or schedules of public transportation systems once the date on that place this is been in law really from the beginning of the urban mass transportation act going back a great many years and what was the reason do you believe we prohibit it i believe in providing six grew up as part of the urban renewal and urban redevelopment agenda in the johnson administration and it was thought to be a grant making agency and persisted as a grant making agency should it with some other federal agency have been charged as more and more well as well as more and more cities and states developed mass transit systems well you know what is developed  is somewhat of a hodgepodge system where we do have commuter rail operations under the federal railroad administration with hundreds of federal inspectors across the country all the problem was when the transit systems weren't under the the usual regulatory agency the federal railroad administration those that are are said to be off the system of the one off the national road system which is to say they're in a closed system so you even got some operators that run both closed systems like the typically there must be be dozens of subway systems across the nation that you have to buy to see their own pants well forty eight systems to be exact in about twenty six to me twenty eight states and they are largely to the extent that they are regulated they are regulated by the state organizations such as mr madison speaks and as you heard me say and mr madison say mr madison is concerned that they don't have enough authority to in their legal statute and we don't have the ability and set minimum standards for them we could set minimum program requirements but that gets into the issue of available funding i mean one of the great concerns that we're looking at as part of you don't want me to use the reform but part of our process as we look at this is is the scant funding and the scant staffing of those organizations no i'd like to use that just for a second to segue into safety organizations are simple and first answer to that is that it's a conflict of interest that we don't think we should abide we do not believe that we would ever want to have a situation where the grantee is using their funds whether it's through a federal grant or other grants to pay for the operating costs of their regulated that parallels what the what the federal railroad administration and exactly in fact that there used to be real safety user fees that went into a fund there wasn't a direct dollar pass relationship and those fees were repealed by the congress because they did not want the users to be paying the operating costs of their regulators and inspectors and that is the you know we just had a south west flight land with a high hole in it about the size of a football about twelve by eighteen last night and last compression the f a a has dozens of inspectors that inspect nothing but southwest airlines aircraft we would never want southwest airlines to be paying the salaries of those inspectors and i don't think we should necessarily don't think we're the people who ought to be regulating no no man i guess what i'm saying is we're not comfortable having our grantees use their money to pay for the same factors we think they should be paid for adequately robustly but by someone else again as the money was in our court i think this issue is in our court i needed your testimony on the record however because if we want to really do something besides pick up the money in the future considering that what happened here could happen you say in what eight systems we have an obligation now that we know from this experience here mr madison my they'd oversight committee that has the jurisdiction that such it is such as it is and i understand how minimal it is that mr roboto does not have a why is there such a lack even of public information letting the about the website we've had some discussion about that because we were not really sure who would maintain the website what information we would have on there because i knew that we would say no you have any staff not meet our staff if we would be  each work out of a specific ok are you do you see we'll do it this year you virginia will do it next year and why is that so difficult to just have a website at least so people can understand what go through just to just to get the the funds that are necessary in order for us to release the funds to say how come you have been pouring money on this board particularly since i can't believe we will seek to find out that there's any such a board is this particularly well funded given the lack of oversight from the transportation administration i'm sure the people decide to put their money elsewhere  stipulation that the state safety oversight agency has to develop what's called a program standard program standards and procedures the tri city oversight committee does have a document called the program standard procedures  document no really what it is it's a document that lays out how we execute our how that talk is executed but also you don't have any enforcement authorities ever you can tell them to do anything no matter what no you know you did recommand i can understand your any way to get the money wasn't that counterproductive and to say ok take away their money when they don't have any money i wouldn't be better to to  make some other kind of recommendation actually the talk hasn't made a recommendation to withhold funding to amata because we understand that if you can do that is that we have we can do that ok and you have not done that no we haven't because you recognize that if that's all they give a new they are not given you any tools if they're all they can give you is to recommend that federal funds be withheld they haven't given you anything to work with i understand that nor can the local agencies so as a practical matter the reason i haven't much heard in the public has been much heard of this of your board is not that you don't desire to do regulation but you don't have any authority to do any regulation or to maintain the safety of the system or to enforce it do you know we do not i have got to ask mr cato to comment unrelated to this accident about release backs first let me say that particularly because this hearing and isn't isn't about why didn't you do what you should have done but about trying to explain why some things which may seem strange perhaps aren't or certainly to give you the opportunity to explain them but they and therefore i preface this question by saying you are operating with no way you have been operating with no way to do capital cost and the only system with no dedicated funding so somebody some smart find him to a person  did what has been done all over the country may indeed have gotten of in this fix we have been working with you with the fix it got you in to say take advantage of the fact that if you go to the banks to own the cars they will have an incentive to buy the cars because unlike you mr cato you explain why they can't depreciate cars as they age because they can take the customary loss and write right off taxes so we notion o rs that the longer you keep the cars from the point of view of the banks the better for for them  d the this this arrangement apparently goes until two thousand team and we are informed that if somehow these cards are retired before two thousand and fourteen there's a straight on money deal if not a safety deal desperate a desperate transit authority with no way to get the money but correct me if i'm wrong on this that if you retire these cars before two thousand and fourteen that the system would have to pay a two hundred fifty million dollars now we have a two thousand and six letter after the n recommendation the metro replaced or these cars where where you say one model is constrained by tax advantaged leases which require that one model keep the one thousand series cars in service at least until two thousand and fourteen when these cars in service for tax reasons are constrained by the way in which you had to finance the new car or for that make payments those payments back over the number of years of that agreement was in place there was an agreement that at the time was considered legal and it was encouraged in certain quarters since that time that type of arrangement had been determined to not be legal you know i want that to be on the record at the time you went you engaged this way to finance the cars there and again other than this of all operations not just transit to be able to do that but to get to your question and there's many pieces to that of the two thousand and six letter in response to the n t s b recommendations and replace in the rail cars while twenty fourteen was the coverage date under the agreement that we had with various banks on the one thousand series cars the agreement did allow substitution for an example if we decided to sell the one thousand to replace the one thousand series cars we could use a newer card to substitute so long as we have a substitution now did you have any substitution yes we do have a substitution so even though that's what the letters said at the time sense that period of time ramada has been in the process of replacing those vehicles identifying funding sources as well as developing the specifications for a new series of relevant eccles which several months ago we did put out the b and we have received new beds on those vehicles if there was a way that we could replace those cars today replace them and substitute another car until the agreement the tw fourteen has arrived so yes we could we could substitute other vehicles this is north and good i just think it's important to point out for people who may not be familiar with these transactions this is not a transaction that's unique to when we've got we've trent rail car operators across the country that during the same period that will moderate entered into these transactions did the same thing in order to leverage some additional dollars out of their rolling stock i just want to clarify that anyone think that this is a the perfect storm so to speak when their rating dropped we were in technical default technical default because the agreement specified that the insurers had to have a certain see as well as minister apologies and what a district we're in technical default of our agreements given that the banks could no longer write off a loss because an interpretation by the internal revenue service that this transaction was not legal they came after the various agencies demanding payment even though we have made every lease payment required over the years no misstatements no m payments whatsoever and transit agencies and other minister apologies were in danger of losing hundreds of millions if not several billions of dollars in taxpayers money we came to congress and we also went to federal court to block the effort of that bank to do so we were successful to a certain degree in federal court and congress has also been very supportive most of the we're in the process now and we have unwind several of these agreements and we have unwind those agreements for the monies that were set aside for the payments so no additional costs to the taxpayers however there are still know there was a quote in there from the metro statement that said quote we will devote all of our resources and quote to developing additional protections can you give me some reassurances to we'll devote all of our resources and what that means pacifically we have a den a five for various programs we plan we plan on doing this year doing the budget year and my comment was that there is a recommendation in that identifies a capital project or need within the agency to ensure the safety of our system for customers and our employees i will reprogram those dollars to recommend to the board and move to reprogram those dollars to finding that program as you get the first tranche of dollars where where do you anticipate spending that first set of dollars if you had a prior ties maybe one two or even three what what what's the stop your l to be more specific than that implementing the recommendations outlined by the national transportation safety board that's number one on my understanding from ms hers men and correct me if i'm wrong in my from what i heard there have time just for the clarification of staff and myself when can we get some sort of summary as to which ones have not been implemented maybe some degree of justification as to why they were not let me move on  and in the essence of time here it is time short mr cato they would you encourage writers to record a report negligent behavior i mean we've had a couple of reports in the last couple weeks what would you say to writers and would you encourage not encourage that what should they operation of this organization to report that and how would you assess the morale and what are we going to do to help those that are they are working hard and diligently they do a good job but obviously the morale maybe suffers how would you what can we do any time you have an event in an organization such as occurred on june twenty second the morale is a lot but i can hear share with you also all that employees that i have discussed or had a discussion with concerning the videos that most of us have seen on t v or you tube angry angry at those workers because the overwhelming majority of employees do an outstanding job of providing customer service and all that takes is one or two or three to run the image in the reputation of the entire agency so morale of course is impacted by what occurred but also there is an anger of those individuals those few individuals who obviously are not following our safety procedures and policies and finally let me just ask you you know one of the the the general concerns is the idea of implementing best best practices and to the degree in which you're communicating maybe with counterparts and others to implement those best practices and understand what's working and not working my my time is up but could you maybe address that what you're doing or not doing in that regard how we could perhaps improve that that's if i understand the general overall question was the implementation of best practices and we do we have a safety safety officer looks at best safety practice operations staff look at best operations practice is defined by d n a isn't how would you grade yourself on that i grade ourselves high i mean i've not thought about an a or b a that regard but again i want to clarify the definition of best practices one organization might see their practices of bath i might not a great and therefore i went out implement those but is the best committee however i want to follow up on one question on the seventeenth when the the i think is a bond they call that in the circuit that was malfunctioning working properly our rockets and that it was working properly at that time the records i have seen again monthly we were running this past to determine whether or not they were problems with any of the circus in the system after the accident accident we did run that test and it demonstrated and it showed that this particular circuit was watering and over a period of time up to the accident itself and post accident i'm just i'm just wondering what happened immediately after the system on the seventeenth i guess  tell me about that now we do not run a bunch of test trains to determine if that particular circuit is running is with three thousand circuits in the system and we were going through a program to replace all of those circuits the operations room i believe is the manual task at the site but i'm turning around to look at  be there are a lot of challenges here and we're trying changing out some components and trying to identify what the problem is that's why the work is still ongoing but with respect to the redundancy i think that's what you're raising you know a vital that everyone is relying on to perform i think that's what our recommendation yesterday was about is to have a monitoring so that you know when something fails you've got to get an alert when something fails if people are relying on that system to be vital and one hundred percent of the time it's got to be accurate you've got to know when there's a malfunction or a loss of detection they can do that now by looking back at their data what we want is for there to be a real time notification when that happens that there is an alert so we've seen this on the pipeline side so for example if you're monitoring a pipeline you see a lot of pressure the person who's monitoring that pipeline gets an immediate alert that's aggressive that to grab their attention so they can start shutting that pipeline down if they're having a leak air traffic control if they have aircraft or they're coming too close to the ground they get a low altitude alert those air traffic controllers are compelled then to tell the pilot you need to pull up you know you're getting low  that's just the seven largest systems we're updating that study to even incorporate a larger universe of systems but this is really a more macro issue for reauthorization because one of the things obviously we see in these studies metro rail is a comparatively young deferred maintenance issue sort of head on because you know as we could say generically not in the context of this particular accident or any other one but deferred maintenance issues if deferred long enough become a safety issue and that's an issue that  describe what what the challenges are that we're facing because our experience mr chairman is that there's a great deal of half information misinformation misleading information which is  in circulation at the present time and we would really appreciate from the n t s b and this is why i took the delegate norton time a little bit to try to focus the issue because if we if we could just get the public to understand just what it is that we're wrestling with at this point i think that would go a long way in reassuring the public that we want to have manual operation we want thirty five speed mile an hour speed limit on the red line and it would also better focus a discussion of what we're dealing with thank you thank you mr cato many of the speakers today really from a broad perspective talked about the issues as we look at public transportation now and into the future there must be a balance a balance of system expansion but what that expansion and assurance that they are to maintain the system when we look at all capital programs we can't just look on the side of what are we going to get and what type of celebration we're going to have because of the new line but we must also plan for the maintenance of that by for the next decades into the future and this is a discussion that's going on within the industry today the state of good repair of the or times might be difficult because it takes time but if oversight is focused on the safety of a system to ensure the safety of our customers that are welcome and also to provide the necessary authority on the part of the  norton chairman graham i will definitely take those back and take them to heart we make many recommendations based on what we think is best we don't have to consider cost benefit analysis when we make our recommendations and today we held a board meeting determine the probable cause of the accident that occurred up in the green line in newton massachusetts we had a fatal operator that was killed up there last year we made a recommendation that board meeting this morning for the federal transit administration and for a look at putting positive train control on that line we understand that that's a cost constraint for  them the green line is the only line that doesn't have a form of positive train control on it we know it's their oldest line up there too and that will be a significant cost to them but we do believe that that's what's needed to save lives  we do make recommendations ms norton and we don't we don't have to pay for them and so i do recognize the frustration but our charge is not to do that part of it our charge is to recommend what we think is in the best interest for the safety community where the conscience and the compass of the transportation industry and they get to decide if or how they implement it with respect to chairman graham's concerns we do have a number of rail investigations that are pending about sixteen  we will work very hard to get the cause of this determined we have another m b t a wreck or another n b c accident i was up on mother's day for another greenline accident and so we have many in the queue but even if we don't complete a final report on the metro accident we will do as we did yesterday when we identify safety issues that are acute in nature we will issue recommendations to address you know whatever improvements we think need to take place and so  we recognize everyone would like us to determine the probable cause of the accident yesterday will work to do it quickly as we can but in the meantime we'll put out recommendations to address the issues we think we need to look at thank you mr repair which was planned several months before the accident and we be hosting it together just just last week i want to number has been raised the issue of the recommendation because it's very telling on this whole issue about whether we need to reform the legal authorities as it relates to safety enforcement her recommendation or i should say the board's recommendation to the f d a is to facilitate the installation of positive train control the reason why it says facilitate is because we are not allowed by law to mandate it at the very same time the federal railroad administration is moving the regulation to mandate positive train control on the rail operators on the systems that they inspect and they have the legal authority over so it really brings to a head to the legal issues are raising here now we've talked a lot here about the f d a model versus the f r a model and i want to emphasize there are other models out there that may be appropriate for a reform in federal transit administration within the federal motor carrier system the motor carrier safety administration within pipeline safety we provide federal funds to state enforcement agents so they would be adequately resourced to not only enforce state regulation but also federal regulation so you know we recognize the need to take a hard and fresh look at these author is these legal authorities but we don't want to just run out and say we need to federalize this right mr chairman i would just reiterate from the s s o standpoint the need for funding and legislation that actually gives the s s o some authority there are currently twenty seven s s o's throughout the country and i mean i've met most of them and they're really good people and we don't want to imply by anything that happens that say that that the lack of authority doesn't mean that there is isn't a lack of effort on the part of the people who work in the s s they work very hard with the resources that they have and we try to make our systems the safest possible thank you out want to thank you for your willingness to come before this committee and offer it off your testimony to help us just in closing you know  we all have a special responsibility here running a public transit authority is a very serious responsibility we had you know we had nine people who went out to work on my bike we all do every day got on the metro and and you know put their trust in the system probably not giving it a second thought because of the level of trust that was built up in that system over  years and because a failure in the system members of the public were killed those families are dealing with those consequences and and there were dozens of riders that were hurt that day and still have not recovered those a very serious consequences when we don't run the system as well as we should and so you know i i think that everyone's heart and mind is in the right place on this and what we need to do and others some of those needs will be met but it will require i diligence to make sure that that money is spent properly and that top priorities are what they should be and you know we thank you all for your role in this  and making it safer for the riding public and you know we just we will just continue to work with you as we move forward and trying to improve the system for everyone thank you very much appreciate your testimony today