safety the administration has a proposal for the first time in some forty five years to revisit the degree significantly the degree of federal involvement and or oversight in  in transit safety and we'll look forward to hearing that that presentation there's a i think one thing looms over this issue that also needs to be addressed and it's an ongoing and constant source of concern of the subcommittee is is the level of investment in our infrastructure or the lack thereof you can't look at transit systems nationwide with more than sixty billion dollars of deferred maintenance and capital needs  and say that some of our safety problems aren't due to the fact that we're running decrepit acquit me you know one of the big solutions here for the you know for dealing with the problem with the ancient antique ones in the middle that are past their date for refurbishment not exactly an optimal solution and if you look then over to the west coast of the bay area rapid transit and we think of california as having new things  they have an eight billion dollars backlog at bart for immediate capital and maintenance needs and that doesn't include the eight billion dollars to replace their thirty year old obsolete cars i think we have an investment crisis in transit systems across america and that just dealing with our legacy systems and not even beginning to talk about how we're going to build out a more efficient twenty first century infrastructure make people safe on that so i think that that you know in addition to the directed concerns about safety i don't think we can ignore the elephant in the room which is where you know we have gone from a first world transit and transportation system to what i call fourth world  that is we are investing you know a fraction of our g d p less than most third world countries in our transportation infrastructure and it's showing in the state of repair and it's going to show in fatalities on highways  with with obsolete interchanges and bridges and it's going to show on our transit system so you know i look forward both to hearing more directed testimony on how we can at least begin to look at this problem and provide more federal oversight but i don't think we're going to get this problem solved until we get a longer term authorization and more funding with that i would turn to whoever wishes to go first on the mr mike of the big kahuna goes for well  e efforts of cooperation we had the op opportunity to sit with the secretary and the administrator briefly yesterday and express some of those concerns and hear both their intent now we did not get the language i understand all about ten o'clock last night and we know that that was a work in progress and we look forward to being contributors to crafting legislation that will in fact  do the job i did express some concerns yesterday in the direction that we don't want to be heading and work again with everyone to try to see that we don't go somewhere where we do not need to go that we do address specific problems that we've we've seen having the federal government take a more significant role in transit safety is a laudable goal and i said i remember after the crash here in metro that got everyone's attention and sometimes it's a disaster that it doesn't get our attention that we may need to look at again federal standards that are set and enhanced some of those standards and see of course that we have oversight and that we also have  compliance and thirdly have been for small and i think we believe that all those things are important one of the things that does concern us is that you have to look at the record of where we have been and what we have done the federal government we have two primary primary roles as you know in the past federal government has had oversight some enforcement responsibilities and has had a regulatory regime  both in the freight rail business with f r a federal railroad administration and also over our nation's primary passenger intercity and long distance carrier  amtrak so we we have a record of of activity of the federal government and what we do but i'd like to submit for the record to is again taking this very seriously we have produced commuter rail and also by amtrak it's interesting to note that the two areas that do have a federal current federal regulatory oversight and enforcement and active  regulatory authority two of those the commuter rail and amtrak if we look at the fatalities by the modes of transit have had the highest number of  if you look at public transit which again has very limited federal participation you see that in fact that is the safest mode if you judge it by  again by the measure of fatalities you see about one fatality for what is it sixty five million  passengers with transit you see a much higher rate one four or five million passengers in commuter rail and then amtrak which has the probably the highest has some important information if we could put that slide up there people can get a look at again the fatalities by modes we also see transit as one of the safest areas and we want to keep it that way but we believe that we should concentrate first some of the areas where we have had the highest number of fatalities and those are two of the areas in which the federal government has already  had an extensive role and whatever we craft for transit we should be geared to dealing with the fatalities and experiences that we've had just to have additional inspectors or having people as they say in the industry walk the track and build additional bureaucracies we think that would be the wrong way to go what we found if you look at the crashes and the and washington metro was a very serious number of to talladega is not one acceptable do you find that that kind of inspection or enforcement or regulatory requirement additional regulatory requirement is possibly proposed right now by the administration may not and would not be that effective what we need are people with the very best qualifications possible people with technical skills that can not only deal with software but the fisted sophisticated and different types of technology used on these different public transit systems available the second thing that we need is that we need to  with financing when we had the metro rail crash i asked the f d a and the administration to loosen up the requirements currently fines are prohibited by that are granted from the federal government for going for safety activities to these entities and i ask that we consider some flexibility in that requirement what you find if you look at the systems that again need improvements in safety they not only need highly qualified personnel but they need cash and they need assistance to put in the proper safety measures and finally the technology that would eliminate some of the  crashes and fatalities that we have seen so in conclusion i want to thank you again for bringing this meeting together we have always worked on a cooperative bipartisan basis and we intend to do so we want to do that based on facts the facts and findings of a rather comprehensive report which we have this morning which i've asked mr chairman that he made part of the record today and i thank you so much for the opportunity to present our side and our priorities in this important matter without objection we made part of the record we have some charts and graphs too was slightly different statistics which  derived from official sources and we will also place lows in the record without objection with that i'm we're going to limit opening statements but i wouldn't give the ranking member an opportunity in unless the full committee chairman comes in we will then get to the testimony well thank you very much mr chairman thank you for calling this hearing and i want to first of all welcome secretary la hood and federal transfer the magistrate or ogilvy here this morning to describe the administration's proposal to expand the role of the federal government in overseeing safety in local transit systems i want to first of all thank secretary la hood for the job he's doing i think he  is certainly already become one of the most active and most effective secretaries of transportation that we've ever had and i appreciate the job that he's doing i know that safety is job one for state and federal transportation officials throughout safest mode of all of course everyone always wants to improve or do better i guess my main question or concern would be that we know that the funds of the department of transportation are not  unlimited and so we want to thank all of us want to make sure that the resources of the department are directed to the areas where the problems are the greatest and so apparently  secretary of thank you for being here and please proceed with your testimony thank you for holding this hearing mr chairman and to mr duncan and to mr mike and all the committee members the opportunity to testify and propose legislation to reform the department of transportation's role in overseeing the safety of our nation's rail transit system is a very very historic day for us today with me as peter rogoff the federal transit administrator traveling by rail transit in the united states remains extraordinarily safe yet serious accidents do occur such as this summer's tragic washington metro crash and other recent accidents in boston and san francisco we believe additional action is needed to make rail transit even safer rail transit is currently the only mode within the department that operates without comprehensive federal safety regulation oversight or in forstmann authority we must remedy that gap rail transit systems carry far more passengers daily than either our domestic airlines or passenger commuter railroads were safety is stringently regulated by systems that now serve more than fourteen million passengers every day this isn't an issue weighted law and it must be changed that's why the nation's major metropolitan subway and light rail systems from seattle and san francisco to chicago boston new york and atlanta are subject only to the federal transit administration safety state safety oversight program this program lacks federal statutory authority to establish meaningful minimum safety thresholds in states where rail transit systems operate each rail transit system is permitted to determine its own safety practices it's up to state governments not f d a to determine the extent of regulation oversight in enforcement authority granted each transit system this results in a patchwork of twenty seven separate oversight programs guided by a regulatory framework of inconsistent practices limited standards and marginal effectiveness what's more most states devote insufficient resources to these safety programs nationwide with one exception state safety oversight agencies employ on average less than one full time person per year to do this work under these conditions we risk transit safety problems going on identified and uncorrected especially as the transit infrastructure gets older and available revenues for transit remains tight clearly urgent reform is needed under the leadership of our deputy secretary john pocari our department has developed a legislative proposal that has now been formally submitted on behalf of the president to the speaker of the house and the president of the senate and i ask that you consider our reform proposal seriously and promptly our legislative proposal would accomplish three goals to strengthen certification program that would provide federal assistance to elop gibble states that elect to carry out federally approved public transportation safety programs and force federal regulations through this provision will seek to ensure that the states that the states will now have the manpower the training and the enforcement tools to conduct meaningful oversight in states that choose to opt out the f d a will enforce the new federal standards and three the program ensure that any state agency overseeing transit systems would be financially independent from the transit system it oversees this morning i inform congress that we would establish a transit rail advisory committee to develop new rail transit safety recommendations for f t s consideration the advisory committee will be made up of safety specialist from transit agencies labor and academia their expertise will guide much of our regulatory efforts our goal is not to impose highly detailed regulations but rather to encourage rail transit agencies to use modern risk analysis to identify their own unique safety vulnerabilities and then take action to address them safety remains our highest priority at d o t back in october i stablished the d o t safety council to tackle critical and cross cutting safety issues across all transportation modes our transit safety legislation proposal was brought  before the council and was approved through the input of safety experts across the entire department i believe our legislative proposal offers are critical and necessary step to provide the consistent oversight the rail transit industry needs to ensure safe operations for transit workers and the traveling public i look forward to your questions and mr chairman as i think maybe you know or you don't i need to leave here about  fifty but mr rogoff will stay for any continued questions and thank you so much for your leadership in holding this hearing just parent that equally i want you to know that peter and i were in new orleans recently announcing several million dollars worth of streetcar money and portland street car company was well represented at that announcement so i know that you have your own opinion about the authorisation but i thought maybe the street car news might be a little way to mitigate that so thank you for holding the hearing thank you a secretary and we'll be mindful of your time yes it made america streetcars which for the first time in seventy some odd years i think are a great thing and i hope i'd be happy if we had competition within the states but at the moment we are that fairly unique just thank god for being here and appreciate both of you and your attention to this important issue i'm just going to divert for a second because sense you mentioned the investment you're proposing a new start small starts with some unspent funds from all i can tell and from the tracking this committee has done which is fairly extraordinary  i mean very detailed i believe you've done a great job in getting the so called american recovery and reinvestment act funds out there on the street and underbid and underway i mean and to the best of my knowledge you know where we've got about the highest percentage of commitment and we're looking at pretty much seen the program begin to ramp down next spring is that coincide with what you have done and you well mr chairman first of all thank you for saying that we agree with you but we work hard every day to get this money spent the way that you all asked us to spend it more than sixty percent of the highway money is obligated and out the door almost all of the transit money is out the door all of the airport money is out the door and it came in under bid so we provided us a billion dollars we spent one point one billion because the bids came in lower so we're actually able to do more on airports  and peter and his team have done a great job on the transit we've done a good job on highways i've traveled to more than thirty states and more than seventy cities and i can tell you there are a lot of people that have worked this year on repaving roads on building roads on bridges in this program has worked and i think when you hear the president's words today at the brookings institution about the path forward it will reflect the success of what you all passed and what we've been able to do and so we're proud of what we've done and we think we've done it by the book according to what you all asked us to do   i hope to hear that from the president today but his statement last week was the merits some correction are concerned he said the term shovel ready let's be honest that doesn't always live up to the billing and he went on from there to say that infrastructure just takes too long and it wasn't getting out there so apparently you know he's just getting the same memo that was provided to him last february from some members of his economic team and there are a ignoring the reality of what's actually happened between february and today in terms of spending those funds that i and i'm hoping that we can get a different memo to him and hopefully get one for today's a fan can i just also say that early next year we'll be making announcements on the one point five billion none of that money has been spent the so called tiger grants and we're all and what was the what was the value of the the he well well well oversubscribed i think it was like fifty billion dollars out of fifty to sixty billion dollars or one and a half billion dollars whereas are correct and that does indicate a little need out there and we i can tell you we've received some very innovative creative intermodal proposals we will also be making announcements early next year on our high speed passenger rail which was eight billion dollars so those two pots of money and none of that has been spent will be making and again very creative ideas coming in on high speed passenger rail from all over the country but going from no federal investment to high speed passenger rail to actually beginning to get money out the door the beginning the year i think is kind of like light speed for the federal government and i appreciate that ok couple questions on the issues of the conditions of our transit infrastructure and safety of our transit systems are inextricably linked deferred maintenance items if deferred long enough are left undetected can become a critical safety risk i certainly agree with that and i guess the question fit in the budget well sir the first thing i'd like to point out is the state of good repair has been adopted by this administration as one of the very short list of new priority goals for the department of that's just not in transit that also overlays the aviation infrastructure the highway infrastructure you made reference to at the beginning of your presentation about decrepit equipment and we were reminded back in a couple of years ago in chicago we had a very bad transit accident head of the c t a just last friday who date that this would be at least fifty five if not sixty years old the the head of the c t a and i just met this past friday who informed me that there are plenty of these still in his system and that's what results in slow orders over his system so it's not just a matter of of the state of good repair potentially posing a safety risk it also poses a real liability drag on the transit system and the ability of the people of chicago to use transit and undermines the productivity of the economic productivity of the people who have to go six miles per hour over equipment that looks like this you know that said we want to make clear i'd like to get one of those that they can provide next time they take it they assure me they've got plenty concerns me is they've got plenty still in the system but that said you are correct that the additional regulatory burden that might be brought about as a role result of this law could and i emphasize could result in certain instances on additional cost but one of the things i'd want to emphasize that was in the secretary's testimony is we are not looking to recreate the f r a rule book that's this thick we are really looking to try to get to performance based measures every regulation that would be put out under this law would be subject a cost benefit analysis and would have to show that the benefits exceed the costs but our the position of the administration is that the safety dollar really needs to be the first expenditure of these transit systems not the last and therefore we need to make sure that they are spending their capital dollars at whatever level on their greatest safety vulnerabilities can i just say mr chairman when mr cato called us the day after the wal mart of crash and asked to meet with us for requests for one hundred fifty billion dollars  to buy new cars what we said was you can come to the department and we'll meet with you but we're going to talk about safety first that has to be our priority and that's really the purpose of the legislation i think everyone in this region woke up the next day after that crash and said who's responsible for looking after safety and there really was nobody so when we talked to mr cato we talked about safety first before we talked about anything else it to me it's somewhat reminiscent of some things that have gone on from time to time in aviation where when the industry is under extraordinary financial stress there is some temptation to find ways to save money or defer expenses and i worry a lot about that in these days  with our transit systems and i appreciate you're sending the message i mean if they and in this case safety made it's apparently meant a lot more manual control slightly slower performance but that's what we need to do to keep people safe until the equipment is upgraded and that needs to be the priority just one last quick question mr of i guess i don't know whether they use different measures or not and i always you know getting updated on aviation but but what is the in terms of cost benefit do you know what value they're putting on a life these days would want to regulate first it's really about getting the agencies to establish more robust systems to know where their assets are and manage them so that they are addressing their greatest safety vulnerability first and we don't see that having a hugely burdensome cost ok thank you  duncan well thank you very much mr chairman let me ask you first some nuts and bolts question is do we know how much this new supervision or federal supervision will cost and how many employees it will require you need sir those budgetary numbers are being fine tune with o m b right now i think you'll see them come out as part of our two thousand and twelve budget but the thing i can assure you is they'll be well under one percent of the f t s total budget so we're talking about you know less than a one percent uptick particularly for the safety mission and and i know that you set standards about certain things and in regard to grant requests that are made do you do you presently or have you in the past set safety requirements are our safety standards and consider are in regard to some of the grant requests that are made by these systems well increasingly and i'll quote it my predecessor jim simpson for this in terms of as we approach some of the new star projects we we've got a dilemma as an agency at the f d a about agencies that want to expand their footprint and build extensions to reach new communities that may not be adequately investing in their existing footprint and we've got systems like that around the country because often they come to us and ask for us to cause share in the expansion we are concerned about that we are pursuing things with that with other projects where we are asking the tough questions about before you expand out to the next community how can you assure us that you are adequately investing in the current it's a dilemma for us because we want to see expanded transit service but we also want to see safe and reliable transit service say are do a better job in regard to safety than others yes they do but i think it's tough when you look at individual incidents a particularly safe system may have one tragic incident that will skew the numbers you know for for that year you know thankfully the catastrophic incidents are few and far between but when they occur they are truly catastrophic and they're hit or miss on on on which system is a hit and if the congress  mr secretary gives you this authority how long or when the congress gives you this oversight authority how long do you think it will be to say it will take to set up a program we think it'll take upwards of three years no more than three years but it will take some time to do it and we want to do it in cooperation with the transit districts around the country and with congress and we think it'll take upwards of three years do you think you can make sure that the states that are doing a good job now are not overburdened with all sorts of inspections or requirements if they are doing a pretty effective job right now will they get credit for that yes or they'll have an opt out provision  in the legislation that we presented to the speaker in the present to the senate which you'll all have a chance to see sometime today there is an opt out provision for states i think importantly so we're also proposing to use some of that addition budgetary resource to help staff train and handle the travel expenses of those state agencies for those that want to continue to participate was our real goal is to try to raise the level of expertise and the ability to oversee those systems right now those agencies as the secretary pointed out in his opening statement with the exception of california which is sort of the gold standard you take them out of the equation they average than one employee for the entire state and we'd like to boost those numbers and boost their expertise and boost their capability all right thank you very much i will go in the order in which members  questions first and i know following the tragic accident here on our metro system i introduced along with all of the members of our delegation you know as h r thirty three thirty eight which is essentially sort of goes to the core of your recommendation and proposal and the fact is that because there aren't safety standards there's this hodgepodge of quote unquote safety that's going on around the country none of it particularly invested in and so we just follow up really on the recommendations that have been made time after time after time by the national transportation safety board to establish a federal safety standard these recommendations that have followed almost every one of these catastrophic incidents but it hasn't been done and so i think it's high time in especially in a moment where we're going into a period i hope of significant  investment in this nation's infrastructure both the existing infrastructure and adding new systems and not leaving safety to the last consideration because of questions around being able to support general operations and maintenance  my question to you is whether you whether you believe that the proposal that you have will enable the states to play a role should they want to and in monitoring and overseeing safety or whether in fact that is something that really should be at the base the responsibility of the federal government well congressman first of all let me thank you for your leadership on this we looked at your legislation and i think if you look ours there's a lot of similarities so thank you so much for for your leadership on this issue also weeks we sort of took a page out of your legislation and what we're trying to do and what will be at the speaker's office today we think there are some states that get it but but it is a mixed bag it's it's it's a real you know it's it is a real mixed bag and when when people get on a train or a light rail or a bus they want to be delivered safely and if they're not they want to know who's accountable when they're not and as i said after the woman out of crash we were all sort of scratching our heads about you know how come there's no there's not somebody around here who is you know sounding all the alarms and so some states get it some states simply don't have the resources for it some states haven't had the you know really do anything because they've had a very good safety record so it is a mixed bag and that's a reason we felt it was very important for our department to step up and follow your lead in the lead of others and in trying to put forth some some very good safety legislation i appreciate that i mean the other question that's been raised following that accident and now it is true that in the washington metro system we have wireless access but there also is a problem around the country of not having adequate wireless access even for nine one one emergency calls and so i wonder if you could give me some guidance as to how we might accommodate those needs as we move states it's also true of the systems and that is it is a mixed bag in terms of what wireless access they are provided sometimes they have waited for a vendor to come in be it rising or a competitor  provide that wireless access but it is not currently considered as an elemental safety safety opportunity for all systems and therefore we do not have it in all systems the irony is of course i mean this isn't about a federal investment because the wireless companies want to be able to come in and just do it but i do think it's important for us to recognize that there might be elements specifically around nine one one access where we could  encourage systems to engage with with those those wireless companies and let them go to the business of doing what their business is i don't want to install wireless but they do so whatever guidance you could continue to give along that range would be  more flexibility because there was a i wasn't really aware of it you don't pay much attention to sometimes how federal money is disbursed or what restrictions but there are there were i found restrictions on using some of this money for safety and safety and and for spent and i asked if we could have some flexibility their initial response was no and also we had restrictions on grants some of the grants given what we now now are you more inclined to to change your opinion about the use of federal money usually what we find and we've all looked at these cases is that if we don't have the standards and i have no problem with enhancing some of the standards but if we we do in fact and put standards or mandates that they to as far as safety that it always goes back to the cash they don't have the cash and i think we're headed in the right direction try to make safety their priority and if we have federal mine i and cash is the agencies be allowed to use a portion of their fifty three zero seven point zero grants and use their federal formula dollars as a way of paying the costs of their overseer and we have continued to worry and be concerned about the potential conflict of interest when the regulated transit agency holds the purse strings to the agency that's supposed to oversee and regulate them it's obviously something we don't allow in the in the federal railroad universe we don't allow the freight railroads to decide how much to compensate f r a inspectors we don't allow the airlines to do the same with f a a inspectors we believe our legislative proposal fixes that problem and gets federal dollars into the hands of the state safety oversight people however it does so without being passed through the transit agencies it is a direct grant to the participating states to do better oversight so i think we've captured your solution but we've done it in a way that eliminates any risk of conflict of interest my only concern is if we mix all of the and force manner over a regular tory compliance into sort of one cattle that we start diluting the soup and you see that i mean you're you're always faced with congress passing well intended legislation and then you're stretching your bucks so we already saw a have serious problems with fatalities and problems and amtrak and with freight rail fatalities i just want to pour a little bit more money in there and dilute the soup across the board so we're neglecting what we already have to say grace over initiative fully built out as being less than one percent of our total budget so we did not see this is as a huge drag again on agency resources i don't think anyone is talking about diluting our efforts in aviation or commuter rail safety through the f r a this is really about getting at the rail transit agencies not currently regulated by the f r a and where we do see some statistics that truly worry us about about their  leave begin by thanking the secretary for taking very expeditious and good action in the matter i brought this attention with respect to f h w a i should tell you that a meeting with the port authority of new york new jersey clarify my understanding is that if the state is strong safety standards regulations in place they would not be displaced by the federal regular system from what i understand of the proposal states will not be preempted from establishing more stringent safety standards is that correct that is correct sir we do not have preemption the state would have to apply to us to show that their standard is safer but we would grant that application if we found it to be so that's the opt in opt out provision the opted in opt out really pertains to whether the state oversight agency wants to perform the federal oversight or whether the state would continue to do it at federal expense i appreciate that and i commend the approach there is so often we see  the federal government trying to displace the states from more stringent standards whatever areas and i'm glad to see that's not the case here secondly one of the effects of the current economic downturn is that state and local revenue sources  transit projects have decreased as we know and local governments are currently facing revenue shortages and have to make difficult budget choices how do you expect transit agencies to make progress and their safety and maintenance projects without further revenues and specifically without a long term authorization would you agree that the transit agencies will lack the physical ability to make comprehensive transportation safety advances before we get a long t manager he gets that and understands that he's done this successfully in other systems part of what we want to do with this new regime is help certain transit agencies to gain the expertise to identify what those greatest safety vulnerabilities are i think it's fair to say especially on things like assets we've got agencies all over the map we have agencies who do very very good management of their assets we have other agencies that couldn't even tell you where all their assets are right now and everything in between we sort of want to raise the level of all of them and make sure that their dollars are spent first on safety but we also see safety as sort of a non negotiable expense and we also think our role can maybe help help cities approach city councils approach their state legislatures approach their governor with serious concerns about their state a good repair and i would i would of course agree that safety is a nonnegotiable expense and that it comes before anything else and i don't think you'll find anybody who disagrees with that at least rhetorically but when agencies are faced with extreme stringencies and pressures on safety and getting the trains running on time and getting the buses and getting the people paid they're going to look for savings in every area and whatever their good intentions too often we know that safety is going to suffer to some extent along with other things and so i would say again it's not it's not snubbing our committee he's just pulled in many different directions i know it full well i want to thank you mr rogan for taking this initiative this is a very very important move on safety we've learned all too well in the past with the f a a and other government agencies then when you get into a tombstone mentality and start reacting with people die then it's too late to make the wrong decisions this is a very good move in anticipation of a broader initiative on safety because me and further i want to highlight the secretary's initiative long overdue forty three years overdue in bringing the administrators together of the various modes of transportation on a safety initiative paralleling the bill that we reported from subcommittee that establishes a national transportation safety  all my goodness they're taking the initiative away from the states and all we have to leave this word you know this safety is a partnership safety requires a culture of safety at the top level that means the states the federal government says this transportation initiative has always been a partnership and when one partner doesn't do the job well then then the other has to take the take the lead people travel to one state we're not isolated little states here we're not isolated principalities this is a nation some from new york travels to california they expect same level of safety there is a headwind state they lost so we need to engage all the states and the federal government in this partnership for safety so that we don't head into a graveyard gravestone mentality this is the start of a long dialogue an for the opportunity to really step up here and be a part of what we think is a very strong safety agenda i know that on thursday there is an r a meeting and i want to express my thanks as i did to the chair of the subcommittee for your support on our work on getting the our money out the door into the hands of people who can put people to work and you can look at the record to see what i said to mr de fazio in the committee numbers that we're here but you have been  a stalwart in making sure that we're doing it by the book and then supporting us when we've done that and i appreciate that very much i won't be here for the hearing on thursday mr corey will be here but  absence of that i want to say thank you to you and to other members of the committee that have stood by us on this we think we've done it the right way and we think a lot of people have gone to work this year yes as a matter of fact under just the highway transit and the safety programs three hundred fifty thousand jobs direct indirect those in the supply chain ten billion dollars payroll nine hundred million dollars being paid in taxes people off unemployment rolls getting a payroll check instead of an unemployment check paying their mortgage and getting their health insurance reinstated that's what this recovery act is all about we just need to get that over to a few folk over in the white house they just simply need to know that as you know the president's making a speech today and mr de fazio already referred to that mr de fazio on my way out the door may i present this as a christmas gift to you and i think it meets the all of the  i have a couple of questions sir in let me preface this by saying that we've been warned for the past month by many folks that we have to control costs at the federal level because of the racing deficits that we are creating in and moody's has come out and warned us that if we do not stop the spending we could be in jeopardy of losing aaa rating in the next three to four years which would be catastrophic for the united states so having said that i am very concerned about any spending that we do here on capitol hill because that could lead to a deficit my concern is when you said that it's less than one percent of the budget for the overall cost of this is a three things in my question first off what is the actual dollar amount of the one less than one percent to be asking us for an increase in your budget over the next few years to sustain that and three as states look at their own  budgets and their own budget shortfalls what would prohibit them from opting in and letting the federal government pay that their tab and have you factor all that into your cost or would that be even more cost to your proposal let me take those in order ma'am what i said was that it's less than one percent of the federal transit administration's budget we are currently a ten billion dollar agency so i believe i said well less than one percent so we're talking about well less than one hundred million dollars one hundred million dollars is that is the one hundred million dollars it is when you look across the safety expenditures across the entire d o t d it is it is quite modest and one thing i can't discuss in any detail because obviously the president's twenty twelve budget is still under development twenty eleven but just on a development but that doesn't necessarily that it that all of that is in the form of an uptick in the overall that there are obviously offsets that will be accompany the president's budget when when when they come up i think importantly you asked about the conditions of the of the states our initiative in some ways will be cost relieving to the states in that we are proposing to eliminate the can the concern that a number of states have had that this is an unfunded mandate on our current law that we would begin to take over the cost requirements of these safety inspectors  for their training pay for their travel and get them to a level of expertise that we think is worthy of of the safety regime we need i think importantly when you really look at the big dollars in my agency they are in the form of grants to all these transit agencies some forty to fifty percent of all the transit capital expenditures in the country are appropriated dollars from my agency and as such to ensure that those dollars are being spent wisely and given rise to save systems we believe that a gating less than one percent of our agency to better ensure safety is a wise investment follow up to to your responses so this hundred million dollars that you call modest that will include i think i said well less than yeah that would the state agency the states that that takes into account if all fifty states opt into the federal program basically the costs are roughly the same whether a state opt in or ups out because we would pay for the state inspectors to do that job if they opted out we would need to put federal inspectors on the job so those costs are relatively the same but actually they're not sir and that's because states  forty nine out of fifty states i believe have to balance their budgets the federal government is not in so that would increase the federal deficit which is what my concern is with moody's and the second is you mentioned the two thousand twelve budget so you are looking at this  with a anticipation that there will be an increase in the two thousand and twelve budget for your agency or not i said that there would be an increment for this initiative we anticipate in the president's two thousand and eleven budget that will be will be transmitted in february the president's budget is still under development and i couldn't say that whether that is a net increase or a net decrease because i frankly don't know what the levels are for the other elements of the department of transportation i like for you you will be asking for more money to implement we will be asking for money to implement th but if you could tell me what's being done to improve the rail transit worker safety we actually among the statistics i said earlier that we are mr mica had raised some issues as it related to the fatality levels and  thankfully the fatality levels in the rail transit area have remained low though one incidence cues those one of the areas we are greatly concerned is about worker fatalities we are we believe this proposal helps address that in the i we got into a discussion of why these individual incidents keep or occurring and one of the things he pointed out that that concerns us greatly is the fact that seniority on the workplace in terms of average seniority is going down we've got a combination of an increasing number of retirements we have you know challenges with adequate wages to keep people on the job and we're losing a lot of expertise either through retirements or our inability to retain people in the industry we need to do you know i we've talked specifically this morning about the need to raise the ability of the federal inspectors be them state employees or federal employees we really need to do a better job of just raising the level of safety expertise and cognizance over safety issues on the whole workforce including those in the transit agencies so i've had conversations with abt about how we can do that but we have we have a number of programs in place that have included you know areas where we have tried to better educate both the line workers right away workers as well as management to right away safety i think if we have the opportunity to break through the prohibition and approach some regulation in this area we would want to make sure that discussions of worker safety are part of that mix just one one quick comment i  my colleagues the schmitz you know question but i would just say to you this is the first time in forty some years we're talking about having a bill and less than one percent and i don't  a number obviously but you know i don't know what price you can put on public safety and it would seem to me that you know i'm concerned about deficits as well but i'm more concerned quite candidly about to say to the people that write these things every single day and i think if it's less than one percent whatever the percent is it could be seven tenths of one percent i don't know but i certainly hope we can get you the funds necessary to be able to implement this i mean after forty some years and i want to commend you and and i was just going to say about  i know him well and i think he's done a wonderful job and i appreciate the fact that you know that the president has decided to do this i think it's well overdue and if we don't do it now well you know when are we ever going to get this thing done so i appreciate you comment today i would certainly look forward to supporting the bill that the administration is talking about for safety and we will handle the deficit but we also have have to handle the debts and we have to handle that the injuries that come from that so with all due respect to mo i would defer i think to forty some years of that have been you know a safety bill in place well i think there are other parts of that picture that play into the nation's productivity as well i mean these systems need to be reliable and safe for people to feel comfortable to ride them if we're really going to lower our dependence on foreign oil we need adequate safe and reliable transit so part of this one percent and it's well less than one percent increment to ensure safety we feel is really just being a good steward of the my questions were her him and hopefully you'll be able to carry him if you can answer them today and part of it is involving safety we've been working on that for a long time in california as you well know  one of the things that bothers me is that sometimes the states are preempted from establishing more stringent safety standards and railroads to protect against local safety hazards is if the regulation does not affect interstate commerce could you comment on that yes ma'am the proposed legislation that the we were transmitted to the speaker last evening does not assume federal preemption in this area we do explicit procedures where states that have stronger safety standards need only apply to us and demonstrate that their standard is safer in which case we would we would agree with that and allow those safer standards in the states to take place that that is a difference from what you see in another a number of other d o t modes  that mean we would not need a federal mandate to do it you would do it without having to come through us though if we were given the authority to issue regulations which is what we're seeking under this legislation the issuance of those regulations would put a process in place where we need not preempt the states because the states could apply to us to maintain their own standard one of the other questions was the issue with the pos train control have you any idea where the rerolled are to meet those deadlines that congress you know we passed a new safety standard ma'am that that rule is handled by the federal railroad administration we actually have representatives from the f r a here and maybe if i could i could bring our chief safety officer from the f r a to the table with the chairman's permission if they want to get into that issue here i would like to have  her safety officer for the federal railroad administration currently the status of the positive train control is that it is in clearance we expect that it will be issued shortly the next deadline that words have to me is they have to file their implementation plans by april sixteenth of two thousand and ten at that time after a while review and approve the plans or disapprove them and modify them as we need to and everything is on target for the december thirty first two thousand and fifteen implementation date thank you very much that clarifies that went the other question i have is there's been a lot of focus and making sure that high speed rail trains and cars are made in america and there was a form recently on the issue should we be focusing on making more transit new focus on the new high speed rail initiative there was a lot of press attention but we did have the opportunity to meet with those manufacturers and we hope that the expanded presence of of and expanded investment in this country and real manufacture will will come coincidentally with a greater supply chain based in the u s for transit investment and transit rail cars right here in the u s we need the jobs here just as we need them when we're producing high speed rail mr chairman there's been a little talk about the washington act and i'd like to talk a little bit about the accident in california on september eighth to tell i'm sorry september eighteenth two thousand and eight twenty five people were killed  hundred thirty five were injured forty of which were critically injured the investigation is being led by the n t s b it was found that the metrolink engineer ran a red light that preceded by two yellow lights that warned of an upcoming stop the b also said the engineer was text messaging before the crash so the collisions could've had more than one cause the reports also released in december stated that the red light that could have prevented the crash was not as bright as the other lights on the same track side warning device additionally there were other communications issues the engineer response responsible for checking the signals and abiding by them didn't happen when the engineering counter to signal he's supposed to radio the train conductor who is supposed to radio back confirming the signals color which did not happen this allows the conductor to apply the brakes should the driver appear to be incapacitated for any reason however according to the data video the last two signals were not reported and the conductor did not apply the brakes so my question to you sir is in light of what has happened with that accident where do we stand and are there any impediments of us achieving a better goal well we view this legislation well while metrolink is regulated as a commuter rail agency by the f r a we obviously and the f r a is working diligently on improving safety every day in that area and that the tragic chatsworth crash informs their thinking and is a large part as you know behind the recent rule making procedures and positive train control so progress is being made there what we're trying to do with this legislation is trying to gain the authority for the first time since the agency was formed in the mid sixty's to have safety regulatory authority for systems like community for systems like the l a m t a where currently there are no federal safety minimums and then regulations of any kind and we do this is a huge step forward for rail transit passengers in cities around the country so in light of that i think one of the issues that we talked about in california is that the worker requirements are not consistent for example a lot of the work that has been done for example with union pacific and on that level is not the same in terms of for some of these metrolink so i have not had a chance to view the president in your legislative proposal does it include specific worker requirements bringing things and saying  we do not go in great specificity in the law in precisely which areas we would regulate first we the the secretary has convened and has announced that we will be forming as of today the papers will be delivered today transit rail safety advisory committee but i can assure you and some of the things that we look at and some of the distinctions between existing rules as it relates to freight and commuter rail versus existing rules that we don't have issues like the fact that we have train operators that do not have to go through an annual physical in this area is while we they are required for commercial driver's licenses and for pilots and for locomotive engineers in other areas you know you'll hear from the n t s b on the next panel but all of us have recommendations from the n t s b to deal with issues as it relates to the health and ability of operators we really can't as an agency at the f d a respond to them because we don't have the statutory authority and that's the authority we're seeking here so as you seek to get that authority one of the things that will be key in getting my support will be addressing some of the worker issues that the work you've done on the national level we now need to do on the state and on the local absolute is i told mr hare earlier you know that the issue of the ability of workers to operate a says safe system but also the ability of workers to work on a system safely and protect themselves is essential to our thinking ok i've only got forty six seconds left or my last question is how will you determine how many staff at the state level are adequate to enforce these federal regulations and where would you find the funding for such staff to come from and who would provide the training the training we already do some training through the f d a that's all voluntary activity that we can do out of available budget resources but we would invision doing a great deal more we have budgeted through through our process with zero and b to pay for both the state the state state in force mythologies that do opt in or federal enforcement authorities that do opt out we are making room for that in our budget that that's the figure i was talking about with mishmash as it related to being less than one percent of our total our total budget thank you thank you mr chairman thank generally with that we would turn to  the june twenty second tragic collision nine people killed seven of them from the district of columbia wherever they are from we look at this and and try to see how we can keep this from happening anywhere else there have been some questions as you might expect on budget and i and i have processed your answer and i think that what you're doing with the out opt out  with the states nominally makes sense first though you will have to make me understand why paying for fifty  different safety agencies unlike what we do anywhere else with safety in transportation paying completely for fifty different states state agencies and let me add sir you will be paying for the district of columbia and five territories as well why in the world that is not demonstrably more costly than having regulation as we have it for every other system in the federal government why would anybody out to have you regulate it you're say that for the following reasons we we did not develop a whole new scheme here whole cloth we are pretty much taking a page from a playbook that we have in other d o t modes specifically in the federal motor carrier safety administration we have a thing called the mixed up program we make grants to states to enforce federal standards that is potentially what we're talking about doing on the standards are you talking about well the federal motor carrier safety  does commercial motor vehicle basically truck safety standards in some cases the federal agents do that in forstmann those states in others we pay states how many how many of the states do it on their  own i don't have the precise number but quite a many of the states have agencies as we speak in motor carrier safety no four twenty seven now we have twenty seven state agencies right now who oversee transit safety those are the agency here with this are my time is limited the district this region is emblematic of what we have across the country you don't have anything these agencies have been catch as catch can the district's agency was so pathetic it had no staff it here right in the mouth of the federal government could hardly be called an agency or you know a true that all of these agencies isn't it true that we would have fifty start ups to meet the standards you yourself have laid out in the in the bill well we think among those twenty seven that there are a variety of stray me one of those agencies that you would consider adequate today you're going to hear from them on the next panel california you can't name one california you can if they're going to be on the next panel mel but if i could just address that yeah i think you're going to your concerns about the adequacy of the existing state agencies is right at the heart of our proposal we are not just going to start revenue sharing with them we have in vision and if they want to continue to be federal partners they are going to have to be much stronger let me tell you what that's going to take mr ragab that's going to take legislation and almost all the state so this is what i'm vision fifty states and territories in the district of columbia go have to look at what they have now whatever california has i believe i can say without much contradiction the states on their own have had no incentive from the federal government and by the way why not why is is the o prohibited for in sportsmen in this area it was in the original and i think statute for upton sixty five and why was what was the reason given at the time i mean the transit universe in sixty five was a dramatically different chairman thank you mr rogan i'm pleased to have you present this proposed legislation to us here in this subcommittee i'm from the state of michigan where i think there is finally a realization especially in the southeastern part of the state that transit in various forms is imperative for the economy for attracting knowledge base workers for reducing  carbon emissions for more efficient travel so i appreciate your proposal on making sure that all forms of transit are safe i also  works so again i want to mention one of the benefits is prevention as transit is being expanded in my state in this country i think we can't lose the fact that we're not talking about making sure that existing transit systems are safe but those that are being established all of the protocols all of the systems so that's rhetorical i would assume you would agree with that and that is one of the benefits absolutely thank you  i want to clarify something that you said there's been appropriate talk about budget impacts and state budgets federal budgets that i hear you correctly that states would not bear the cost of these new safety requirements whether they opt in or opt out that there would be federal dollars whether they're state workers or federal workers is that in indeed we would alleviate the states of the cost of the inspector salar the travel the training and that is how we see to address the fact that the states have stood up so little since this program was initiated and ice t in a new one so we certainly have to pay attention to our federal spending but this won't add to federal budget proper state budget problems no it would be to the extent that the states are making expenditures of any meaningful nature now would be cost relieving to the states and we believe we're doing it at the federal level in a very cost effective way that's that's good news that's very good news i'll take that back to my state if you have any idea on the job impact would you know since this is not adequately being done around the country you have any idea about how many jobs would be created to ensure public safety for all of our transit systems will need to be guarded and that the budget is under development i currently we have no if we're averaging less than one f t e per agency of twenty seven agencies we are effectively having fewer than twenty seven people in the space now we obviously see the need for a much more robust presence something approaching you know a tripling or quadrupling of that level i'll be at you know getting people with the expertise that are needed to actually oversee these systems in a meaningful way thank you given this economy jobs every job savings overall we talk about this from an outlay standpoint you have any idea of determining how much money would be saved at varying levels by avoiding some of these accidents or problems well i think it's obviously hard to pin down a number but i think there are savings opportunities in a variety of areas not only from avoiding the costly harz of an accident but also making sure that systems are kept to a state a good repair that there is reliability and they're getting people to work and they're getting people home and in the savings you know that is essential to the mission of the f d a and that is the president's goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil that is a large when you see what kind of drain happens on the family budget that's a big chunk is transportation right after housing i would urge you to look at savings look at job impacts and so forth going forward i would  this displays the rail track it's oversight programs of the various of the states and the existing powers so just a little over forty five percent forty six plus have safety standards the next roughly sixty one percent nowhere near total number of states conduct safety inspections unannounced inspections issue emergency orders zero issue citations fifteen percent have the ability to find the transit agency when they're not in compliance and to have an effect in influencing operations that's pretty dismal record for anyone who says that the federal government shouldn't be engaged here because states are doing such a great job just take a look at these numbers states are not doing uniformly a good job and the in under previous management of this committee hearing was held in two thousand and six on the safety oversight program state safety oversight program and the result of that hearing was a direction to g a o to record that the training varied widely from state to state that limited staff and insufficient funding i think the proposal that d o t comes forward with a response to that adequate to sure that each state will have an adequate number of fully train staff that they have sufficient authority granted by the state legislature and the governor that  compel compliance by the transit agencies and that those various entities have financial independence like our n t s b i think those are reasonable propositions and i'd you know i think safety safety is our number one responsibility and transportation number two is moving people and goods you fish  lays and and effectively in commerce and reduce congestion and all the rest that we try to do this committee but first responsibility safety and this proposal parallels what we do is in e p a give  states authority and funding to develop a strong program to control discharges and be in compliance with water quality standards that are governed sets of standards states stablish entities to meet those standards if they're income if they have the capability they're given authority to manage the program with federal oversight we do that in a number of areas of highway safety we do the same thing bridge oversight i think we should do a lot more and we will do not get our six year bill passed out that's not your principal responsibility but i have to say that every time we have an opportunity and so i think this follows of very clear this proposal that you're offering falls a very clear pattern well what have you does have you determined what number that of course vary from state to state sir in the legislation is clearly enumerated the type of powers that we would anticipate an adequate state partner to have and ms norton did identify something that was was accurate and that is that in order for this those state partners to have those powers it will require action by state legislatures and governors if at the end of that period we did not find them full adequately empowered and adequately staffed even on our dollar then we would not accept them into the program and we would have to in that instance have the fed that the federal government fulfill that role and that in that regard it's not completely unlike what we do in f m c s a with them except program where we have to find the states capable in order to to capable and adequately staffed to oversee the federal regulations for truck safety and isn't the underlying principle here the federal government is providing funds to these transit agencies and has an interest in the safe operation of the programs that they're funding absolutely not only funds to do it but also some federal rules some core federal regulations that makes clear what they should be focused on well that's efficient for the moment i'd i think it's important to see this chart and also a more detailed rail transit safety oversight program document that should i think is available for all members and their packets yes it is i see it and invite members to review the state safety oversight authority in these various agencies in the very state agencies very important to expect you have that information as well mr ok and we do i expect we'll have more consultation as we move along with this this proposal if i could i would just want to add that mr mica had some fatality rates that i think were important to note we would also if we could for the record share some data as it relates to collision rates and to relevant rates that we see is quite troubling in the rail transit space that we think is also worthy of the committee's attention and we submit those for the record yes i i'm somewhat skeptical though of  figures in transit in transportation safety that measure fatalities by hundreds of millions of miles or tens of thousands of trips taken each one of those human being absolutely has a family has has relationships and putting a dollar value on human life we've seen it in aviation the real translated maritime is always an attempt to calibrate the value human life that's terribly misleading and i think also sir we have very few put fatalities in pipelines in the pipeline safety area we have very few fatalities in the hazmat safety area but we don't talk about not sure that safety is paramount and in doing so we have to figure out a way to pay to make sure that we have the save the safest light lines possible but we also have to make sure that we don't increase our federal deficit i know that there are ways that we can cut other programs to meet that one of the areas that i'm looking at is the urban area formula grants which is about a five billion dollars program and i know we've been doing this for about twenty years it's been an automatic in any budget in that goes for bus shelters in historic preservation and part yes training bicycle access and transit connections and signage and public art and landscaping but you know if this is going to cost your agency one hundred million dollars right around that figure if you took one percent out of the five billion dollars urban area formula grant that would get you to half of that money that might be a way  what i'm concerned about is a the constitution we have federal and state and since one thousand nine hundred sixty four when we first started federally funding streetcars by electrical co ops and city governments to the first federal transit funding bill in sixty four transits have been considered to be an inherently local activity transit is not an interstate commerce in from the big picture perspective i'm concerned about this takeover would it be more costly less costly or do you know if we provided for the states that are not up to par like california  appears to be in federal safety standards grants that would require them to do so keeping in mind that any time that a state spends money it has to balance its budget in doing so whereas the federal government does not so when you look at costs and you look at raising the deficit when you're comparing a state to a federal level the state doesn't add to the deficit but the federal spending can lead lead to the deficit so i guess my biggest part of the question is how do we do this and control the cost in doing so well i'd like to take those two issues in order first in terms of if funding had to be derived or some folk program  back in order to pay for this initiative i would not go to urban area formula grants because because frankly mr schmidt you identified things like bus shelters and other expenditures that can be used for that dollars but those formula grants are the core federal investment that meets is about forty to fifty percent of the transit capital expenditures of these major rail systems so taking that money down i don't think it vance's the safety agenda as it relates to what we should do about funding this in a cost effective manner i believe we've done that by involving state partnership as i said earlier you will see when we bring forward the two thousand and eleven budget in february i think you'll see a very fiscally responsible budget brought forward by the president that will include increment for this but i'm not prepared to say that you know the offsets for that increased spending would necessarily come out of the f d a or out of d o t or elsewhere in the federal budget  has been debated at length and there have been for votes in the house over the over the value of that program frankly we view that program as having merit in a variety of areas because it does a lot of things to what we do is call attack of the last  and that is to provide bicycle and pedestrian access to get people to transit services so we wouldn't necessarily see that as a value lavs erling percent your urban area grants have to be used for enhancements and that's what i'm going after we have to be concerned about in so what would be the problem with taking a little bit of that one percent insurance men and using it for safety well mr schmidt i think you'll see when we bring forward our proposal that we will fund the safety initiative in a responsible letter which across the entire president's budget will be fiscally responsible i don't necessarily believe that the f d a any more than any other area of spending within d o t or outside of t you know that that is for the president to determine and o m b to assist him in just terminating how to best balance the entire picture i do not believe that putting my mode into the safety business necessarily need to be paid out of other transit investments the follow up so are you saying it would be a outside of the this would be a general fund request so we can go back and forth for a while and i still will seek to not end up in your good friends from ohio measurement that noble suggestion but over my dead body announce the sad news of the loss of our chief counsel walter may the special investigative committee on the federal aid highway program began in one nine hundred fifty nine a direction of speaker sam rayburn and under the chairmanship of my predecessor john block mike walter may lead the experienced team of former f b i investigators and served on the mcallen rackets  and inappropriate activities and right away acquisition construction of the interstate and wanted to stop it in the bud before it as rayburn said before it gave this program a bad name my predecessor john block in a cabinet combat paratrooper in world war two parachuted behind nazi lines in what is today slovenia rescuing american airmen who'd been shot down on the return bombing runs over the oil fields in romania is a tough guy microbiologist scientist but he could stare death in the face and and stand up against  it pick the right guy blah take pick the right team wilder made john can stand he george capecchi and the results of those investigations thirty six people went to federal and state prison when they started no state had internal audit and review procedures no state had accounting to keep track of the tens of millions of dollars in those days lots of money that they are receiving from the federal highway trust  fund as a result of the hearings every state established internal audit review procedures every state stablished the tracking program for its federal funding and walter may lead that whole and investigative team documentation we have the report walter man john bolton they got together said we have to go and tell the speaker and then we have to publish this report and speak of mccormick to his credit said well walter you've got the details jo you have the facts released the report the opening paragraph of that report read the massachusetts department of public works as a cesspool of political pestilence it was a front page of the boston globe right in the midst of this hot senate race the walter knew the right thing to do and so did john but like the committee staff then went on to to oversee the other great debt of gratitude for his service he died at age ninety one i didn't know he was ill something went amiss in the last two days and and i just now got the word and testimony i assume other members a panel of those who are here for the most part have either read it or not and so i would suggest two minutes you can summarize what you want to say in one minute to react to the  proposal that would go to a cigarette now you won't be commenting on the ministrations proposal but go right ahead i'll do my best chairman to fozzy you members of the committee thank you for inviting us to this hearing i'm going to cover two topics today first the result of a report that we issued to this committee in two thousand and six that was about the state safety oversight program and second our observations that we have an overview we received of the d o t proposal as you know the oversight program currently exists covers rail transit systems are not subject to f r a oversight that receive new stars urbanized area federal funds under this program the states oversee try this in an f p s role is to oversee the state agencies thank you we found in two thousand and six the state oversight and transit agencies generally view the program positively for example they told us that the required safety plans or beneficial reviews by state safety oversight agencies in some cases had helped them to make important safety related capital investments but our report also found several challenges to the program's effectiveness funding challenges in state government limited the number of staff to a level that fourteen of the twenty four we contacted said were not sufficient we thought and expertise among the state agencies eleven had staff without expertise in real safety nineteen of the state agencies at that time had no one force in authority is transit agencies had not filed their safety recommendations or violated standards finally after  fallen behind in its management and oversight of the program we recommended that f d a reinvigorate the program establish a training curriculum and provide funds to assist with travel for training f d a has acted on those recommendations in the intervening years while we have received only a high level briefing on deity's proposal we can provide observations on how it's enacted it would address the challenges that i mentioned the proposals likely to address the challenge of staffing levels because it would require  programs and provide funds to these agencies by providing an explicit enforcement authority it would also address states having no power to compel safety improvements by transit agencies in conclusion mr chairman there are also several issues for congress to consider with regard to this reliably typically funded by taxes third what is the cost of the program and as you mentioned what would be the source of those funds and finally what would be the challenges in federal regulation of an enormously varied industry that concludes my statement i'm happy to answer questions opportunity to appear on behalf of the national transportation safety board since the one nine hundred seventy s n t s b has made numerous safety recommendations to the department of transportation and the federal transfer ministration predecessors to improve the safety of rail transit systems our recommendations have urged the department of transportation to seek the legislative authority necessary to establish minimum better safety standards in force compliance conduct inspections and  understand safety issues directly related to accidents the adequacy of operating rules execution in compliance track safety and rest requirements for train operators n t s b is also made a number of safety recommendations to improve state safety oversight programs we support legislation that would give the department of transportation authority to establish an enforcement of rail transport safety standards this is particularly important when state safety oversight programs and honored to welcome richard clarke director of the consumer protection safety division of the california public utilities commission has been in my directory for many years working directly with the director clarke and i worked together on many safety transportation issues through the years he's justified at the railroad subcommittee hearings held in my district in two thousand and seven regarding railroad safety issues and have agency which among other things oversees the safety and security of all rail operations in the state of california including railroads both freight and passenger rail transit saying real crossings the p c is responsible had this responsibility since one thousand and eleven p c s quiz i legislative rulemaking authority and for some authority with the power to assess penalties of up to twenty thousand dollars per violation and to shut down unsafe rail transit operations their twelve rail transit operations systems and under the c p s each jurisdiction were responsible for investigating all reportable accidents conducting regular audits and inspections of rail transit systems moreover all rail transit agency new projects extensions and retrofits must pass the rigorous c p c safety certification process before we will allow them to carry passengers we believe strongly that safety is no accident prevent states from imposing their own regulations as long as they are at least as strict as the federal regulations that will provide us with much needed training better communication between us and the federal transit ministration and much needed financial support for achieving adequate staffing salaries are staffing levels thank you for this opportunity to appear before you will be happy answering questions you might have missed a lot president american public transportation association chairman and members of the committee were very pleased to be here on behalf of the fifteen hundred members of the american public transportation association i have three points to make in my oral testimony first public transportation systems in america are safe and well used in two thousand and eight americans took a modern seven ten point seven billion trips on public transportation some to fifteen times the number of trips taken on our domestic airlines and according to deal with the data and we certainly heard in the first panel this repeated many times a person traveling on public transportation in america is many many times safer than if they were a passenger in a motor vehicle that's sad we're always looking for ways to make public transit even safer my second point apt in the transit industry have worked for decades to develop and promote wide ranging safety management programs and standards as well as conduct safety audits to continually improve our safety record apt itself has developed nearly one hundred consensus based voluntary rail transit safety standards has conducted more than four hundred fifteen safety audit over the last twenty years and we would hope that this good work big could be used as the basis for whatever additional safety work the committee may determine is appropriate third while it will take many many actions to improve transepts and be able safety record it will also take significant financial investment that is financial investment to bring systems up to a state of good repair financial investment to make sure the men and women who work in our industry are well trained and are able to do their jobs in the most safe way possible and financial assistance to correct whatever safety deficiencies might be identified if safety is to be improved to the so called next level investments must be made in all these areas mr chairman we look forward to working with you with the administration and others as this topic moves along and legislation is developed thank you very much thank you we'll  training we do not have access to adequate training for our staff much of our much of our expertise is gleaned from on the job training from institutional knowledge that we've developed over the years and that sort of thing we could use some really good training so you would like some sort of federal certification process which includes the training regime yes sir i have beyond that  i mean that's that's really the biggest thing for us is the training element because our our vision for our news ation is that our people will be experts in their fields and we don't feel that we can achieve that level of expertise at  mean safety we can have all you know safety inspectors that's great but you know if if the leg bolts are rotten or totally the center great and below a certain you know and less we're pulling back and check on him physically or we have a computer program that says the life of this and certain area is x and they must be replaced when want to comment on the need for the huge backlog in investment and the view of the obama administration that you're just not ready to spend the money there's no way to spend the money infrastructure should be at the bottom of the list after a green grid soon god only knows what other fanciful things they want to pay for now they may want to comment on that mr m was german i'd be very happy to you are correct in making the link between stated good repair and safety there's no doubt that if systems are kept up to good as a safe system if the latest and safest technologies can be applied it goes without saying that there will be safer operation the federal transfer the ministration did us all a good service last year in completing a report on the state a good repair in the industry they found that roughly a quarter of the nation's boston r assets are in need of attention and a third of the largest transit systems both bus and rail are in marginal or poor conditions so it's clear that additional investment needs to be made  as was apparent from colloquy between yourself and the secretary and the administrator this is ministration is done a good job of getting the arrow funds out there but we need additional money to bring these systems up to a state of good repair and fortunately the president is unaware that his department has done a good job because his economic team thinks the money hasn't been spent but maybe that message will get through anybody care to quantify the needed on that mr oh that's right about that sir the state of good repair report that we came out with earlier quantified for the seven largest rail systems that serve about eighty percent of the rail rail transit traffic a backlog of roughly fifty billion dollars fifty billion that's a billion we are now at the secretary's insistence surveying a larger universe going to the additional road transit rail transit providers that have not given us that data to give us a more robust figure which is why as i said the state of good repair has become a priority not only within the f d a but for the whole department across the across all modes ok and you believe you were at a press conference last week and you threw out a twenty billion dollars number which i believe was ready to go hundred twenty days is that part of this fifty billion  we released last week was a recent survey of our members that indicates over fifteen billion dollars worth of projects is already high in the sky or you think this is reality i think it's reality i think what our members of done as the existing r of funds have i have allowed us to really step up our programs now they're up there ready to go they know to take on new projects they know how to do it so i believe that we could wisely invest many many many billions of dollars in this area and by else our mr chairman i can comment on the state of good repair in the state of california in some instances such as san francisco muni where we've had a number of the rail months where we found some serious problems with the track not being inspected not being repaired and there are some issues with dead man switches that are not being tested in adjusted and that sort of things that may or may not have been cause of an accident and in terms of cost recovery there's been a lot of discussion about cost recovery here quite frankly with just two of the collisions that happened in san francisco between in total for muni vehicles we could have paid for my entire program for a year the major advantage of state safety oversight is that all the different systems in the state of california are different everyone is different everyone needs a separate set of eyes with particular expertise developed with regard to that system i don't think it's possible that the federal level to have that level of flexibility we do strongly support minimum standards but in terms of having that sort of flexibility at the state level we think we're in a position to respond more quickly to particular situations along with what state authorities are necessary for successful state safety oversight the major one is that each of the agencies have a system safety program plan and then by by that system safety program plan and that the agency that oversees their implementation of that as well as their accident investigations and those sorts of things that that agency be separately funded that it have rulemaking authority that it has been foresman authority and that it be not an ancillary inspection force for the for the transit agency but an overseer of the process itself to ensure that the agency is doing what it should be doing on a more global level very good and lastly what kinds of the economy of scale activities with the federal government be able to provide successfully i think that they would be able to help us economy of scale with again with with minimum standards again with training with certification with doing background checks quite frankly on the on the employees that we hire to to do the inspections of these transit agencies and there are probably others that i'm not thinking about at the moment that we actually do have a provision specifically in the bill that addresses multi state systems to make sure that there is well understood that they have a unified approach and a single entity that is  in charge and we don't have a you know sort of diffuse responsibility where no one takes ownership and everyone points the other way and only then would we certify that state partners being  just out of curiosity do you envision then you take a system where you have three jurisdictions that have responsibility and you know one state makes its regulatory decisions that meet federal standards another state  regulatory standards that exceed federal standards and how you balance that well i think we would want a common picture and for that matter would model would need to have a common set of enforcement authorities that we be working under they would certainly be working under a  common federal safety regime we believe we can get at that but you're right i mean in terms of certifying a state safety partner is being adequate the multi state systems will have the added burden of showing consistency i just look forward to continuing to work with you all to figure that that quotient out and i think from an implementation standpoint whether it's really something that could work given that kind of diffuse hazards do you feel this is currently a problem and would you please explain why well the i believe that the law you're speaking of actually is one that's administered by the federal railroad administration with regard to freight railroads and certain passenger railroads we strongly object to the preemption that exists in railroad safety we're very happy to see that that's not the case in the proposal here with the federal transit also the training that we found a couple years ago was the cd and a book and here's your training new employees or we're going to require them to be able to have a better training system if we implement something in our rule book and require that maintenance be provided in any funds that federal government may be giving towards that and again i believe you're talking about the  railroads that's where all the doraemon curd and that sort of thing they're doing much better in that regard the federal railroad administration has stepped up its inspected efforts it's running their geometry cars over those tracks much more frequently  found were quite happy with the downward trend in the in the broken rail the rail problems track problems that we've had and i'm sorry the second part of your question had to do with the funding right well you talked about it systems in  proposal as we understand it would be very helpful for us in terms of our being able to increase our expertise we can then relay to the people who are responsible for safety within their arguments asians within the transit organizations what their responsibilities are and have the means and the manners and the methods to be able to enforce those standards if they're not being adhered to thank you very much thank you mr chairman thank you congressman generally with that i'm going to turn the gavel over to ms norton i will ask a final round of questions and after that she will dismiss the panel i just want to thank you on behalf of the panel for your time your testimony i thank the chairman again for for initiating this hearing before the year was it's not only important to us but i can i can tell from the response you and your testimony that it's  struck by a sentence in your reported page to the said in two thousand and six thirteen state oversight agencies were devoting the equivalent of less than one full time employee to oversight functions what does that tell us about the capacity of the states to quickly take on this responsibility well ms norton i think that's an important challenge one thing we do need to keep in mind when we look at the low s t numbers which our concern is that many of the states did use contractors to supplement the work they were doing but i think as you pointed out earlier in your questioning that there will be a somewhat a long gated transition period if this legislation isn't acted on there will be states that will have to enact their own legislation to provide enforcement authority to the states to be able to actually carry out the federal mandate that will occur and there will be an a lot of training and a resource increase does the need to happen in terms of getting states states able to carry out what the federal government has in mind i do want to point out that enforcement is a very important part of that we haven't heard a lot about what the actual enforcement  be when we have looked at regulations or transit for example with regard to the americans with disabilities act generally speaking the f d a has been reluctant to withhold funds because of the impact that that has on the transit system riders and here it would be on the hook for people already who are already there they may already be paying for because essentially the these agencies are paid for by the federal government in principle i like the idea and if in fact we had a system where agencies were already as we often do when we enact legislation where agencies are already in the business it would seem perhaps more realistic to me i in principle i i  in fact i think it has a lot to do with how you've had legislation passed here you know you know you don't set up a whole new agency here what you do to the states is you say you say you said you all all fifty of you in the territories in d c you set up your own agenc and we'll pay for them i don't have any problem with that along as long as we have the kind of oversight that would be necessary as you may have told been able to tell from my past a lot of questioning i've been in congress long enough to ask up the road questions and the up the road question to me is whether or not you think as i've indicated before that the start up and reproducing this effort in states there is something in place in every state that has a regulated transit agency at this time and it certainly is not uncommon for the department transportation and other federal agencies to go through state agencies to enforce and oversee activities in the state so this we're going to really have a federal agency also has power here we have it looks like a federal agency new to the area and let me ask you besides california i want to i want to ask california the california representative a question are there any agencies that given your testimony that you would consider  functioning agencies that the public should trust safety with as i speak right now i would mention two other agencies along with the california  case which of course is the goal i think the gold standard with regard to this particular activity the new york state agency also develops a significant number of resources and has some authority as the state of massachusetts oversight agency the systems have grown like topsy that is to say in the beginning i don't know why somebody said you can't understand why that was put in because it was something that literally kept the states from regulating and i've  no answer to why somebody would say you can't but but indeed i can understand why there was little regulation when who was doing it was new york even d c was late to the notion and of course california is a kind of  state that has always been in the forefront of regulation we found here that the cars were not crashworthy and now questions are being raised as to whether or not even the newer cars one hundred eighty s lea cars where the newer cars crashworthy and one of the reasons is that there are no national crashworthy standards where would you expect those standards to come from so that we wouldn't have an accident like the one we've had in the district of columbia why would certainly want to hear from him in on this as well but what i imagine that the administration is talking about is developing what we would typically call performance space standards since the industry to be regulated here is very wide light rail heavy rail inclined planes trolleys cable cars are a variety of different types of rail transit that would fall under this legislation the performance based standards would essentially state expectations for how the system would crash or the standards and we're talking about regulation that at least that's a war across states would in the crash were the standards have to be centrally administered by the federal government in order to  assure that well certainly a federal standard in that area would not only be beneficial to the individual transit agencies but for the manufacturers that need to supply the industry they would need to know what they're building to i mean we would obviously envision regulating in that area if we found it to be you know a true safety risk that needed to be addressed soon now the issue of the crashworthiness of the series one thousand cars is an interesting test because it's one of these situations where we also have to be cognizant of what we are putting on the agencies so if you will modest choice right now to get rid of the series one thousand cars would be to eliminate a third of their fleet that's not practical or for that matter safe of the it's all those old model riders on the highway so we need to balance that against the need to do better by way of a crash where there's somebody who said it's very very important because it was some prior conversation you had with the panel discussion about cost benefit and benefit and cost matter and let me pose to you and any and any of the panel  the multiple times before and they came back to metro with the appropriate recommendation and they did it for at least ten years after their work crashes after crash until the ultimate crash occurred there were people who died but nothing like what we head on june twenty second each time metro told them the truth metro did not ha because for five days of the week the federal employees ride metro and the federal government would have to close down tomorrow if metro closed down tomorrow it took those of us in this region a half dozen years to even get the bill also right the first hundred and the and over and over again there were hearings that said this system needs a rush  of of cash for capital in movements only the first not until two thousand and seven when the democrats came to power didn't even get authorized after several years of trying to get it done and this year after the june twenty second crash the first hundred fifty million of one point five billion over ten years was appropriated now there is not another system in the united states that has the call on federal funding and even though we had a life and death of the federal government call we were hardly able to get the funds and only after a deadly crash occurred did we no state is in a position now or will be in a position for a very long time to do investment to assure that these kinds of safety first what a lot of words here spoken replacements occur at the n t s b hearing and i see we have an n t s b witness here i pointed out to the witness that after the crash occurred the union which operates the trains of course every day suggested without having any safety standards that at least a common sense thing for b to say and they were saying it now to metro was at least on port the oldest cars are been fraud and all they did was to look at the evidence and the evidence was that the people who were not in those cars survived and all of the death occurred in the older cars so they said why don't you put it at the run and at the end let me tell you nobody has done any work because nobody in this country has had any requirement to do any work on crashworthiness but is a common sense standard without any expertise but as the tested to do that is what metro has has done my concern is not so much with that as a standard my concern is that the  s b continued to give a recommendation after each and every crash that it knew could not be met by the transit system here and then if the district of columbia maryland virginia and california even which is put a lot of regulation into says you can see with your bare eyes we can do that isn't the only other thing to do to have the agency also equipped to offer standards pending the state of the art replacement standards or are we going to be left in the position that this region was left in parroting what any follow could see could not be done until people were killed and of course the federal government got up off of money  at least half dozen years ago done so i am interested not in parroting safety first here i'm interested in what happens when every transit system in the united states hears these mandates says  you kidding me what then does the safety agency say or are we going to be left as we were with n t s b saying well you heard what i said go get the money so i like all of you to take i'll take that on because this is what is on the minds of many of us here in this region especially since we cannot see as it is today if they use every bit of this money will top probably take four years of this money this ten money just to replace these cars what do we do with all of the other capital improvements they're supposed to be doing with these cars is a state the person spend all the money on that or is a safety board or safety standard going to be any good to us hearing you had with the n t s b chair debbie hersman at that time and got to hear your dialogue with her on this issue it has been the longstanding statutory responsibility of the n t s b to put forward safety recommendations and they put forward those recommendations frankly without regard for cost and that has been the model that we have set up with the independent n t s b those recommendations are not binding on any of the agencies be at the think that's how the n t s b model has evolved the result is that when agencies my agency doesn't even have the authority right now to do this but that is what the statutory proposal is about that we're discussing but in the in the situation of regulate in the area and the n t s b does what's called a close to unacceptable risk lance one of the things i've had to face and contemplating the possibility that congress may go forward and regulate and give us the authority to do transit regulation in this area is i will join the ranks of the other modes and periodically having a closed on acceptable response because we will bring have to bring cost benefit analysis to bear on these regulations and not withstanding the n t s b is adamant that this is the gold standard for safety we need we may not be able to get there in a fiscally constrained reality based assessment so i think you know we are we take our safety responsibilities very seriously but we also have to take in mind the available financing to to the agencies we regulate would you would you just close and say well i wouldn't say they don't have the money so it's nothing we can do well i think we would now have a case in point where that's exactly what was done and i'm asking you is that the only alternatives will be left to us or is that i think in the case i mean obviously we are looking at you specifically with the model we're looking at the new authorization is a path forward and we have been very adamant with will model and saying the federal the administration may be in a position to support those funds so long as they are spent on their greatest safety safety needs and they're not just go you know into the core system without inattention to safety you know i spend money on funds to replace  and i need to know whether you think in order to have a safety standard one needs to look at the state of the art and add some other thing you must at least do rather than close the case absolutely we are as i said when you go through a cost benefit analysis you also need to take a look at what is the reality on the ground in terms of their ability to achieve this standard you know we could we could have a lead encased rail cars but there value in it i mean they'd be very crashworthy but they wouldn't do much for trends and they would move people very quickly so you know we the other thing that we have to be mindful of is as i've said earlier in the hearing forty to fifty percent of their capital investment money is federal money they're federal grants so we have to think of what the burden is you know we have to be mindful of the fact that we are in fact compensating them for half the investment and that will be central to our thinking too and that is why we envision a regulatory regime that really comes in at the ten thousand foot level and say what is the most acute safety net of this agency first and have them attend to it mr miller yes ms norton as you and i have talked before we think the general approach that you're contemplating your legislation is a good one we have expressed to you concern that we would hope that n t s b if that's the way that the congress chooses to go would be required to consult with outside expertise because it is a very technical area and if i might say a moment ago you had a conversation going here about safety standards structural safety standards of rail cars and i wanted to participate in that  within the last year the in two thousand and eight that the american society of mechanical engineers has issued both a safety standard for light rail vehicles as well as heavy rail vehicles  so we should be aware such things exist but you're quite right it's a moving target and even if we have them at one moment we will learn things over the coming years will always need to be improving those so we will always be in a situation where some of the cars in a fleet will be at a lower standard than the newest car ours are bad nonetheless i do think it's important for the committee to realize that those standards do exist and as i said in my testimony we would hope that such standards as our existence would be used as the basis for the new program going forward i would thank you for that intervention mr miller and i want to thank the a p a for going ahead even though there are no standards here is an outside organization without a dime and that dollar that that's the only thing i've heard that's ready to be served served up what mr miller was referring to is that i was so distressed at the testimony mr ro remembers that the union had gone ahead and suggested something that that metro had immediately done and that to the contrary n had simply continued to say go get some money which would amount to millions upon millions of dollars until we had this accident the piece of legislation that mr miller is referring to i only the gold standard where gold standards are even when they are not costly matt many of us fear we're just on to another bureaucratic set of regulations and we do believe that the federal government and the state agencies that you would authorize to be developed here cannot be held responsible for saying do something that isn't safe we also know there are ways to make sure that the gold standard is always out there and there is the expertise if we develop this system to say for example whether or not you shouldn't put nineteen seventies cars as the lead cars in one could say that in a way this to indicate this is not crash worthy but we know what is absolutely crash prone and we know it from this accident it is if we set up a case in point and that's often how they find out whether something is crash where they crash something well guess what folks blind and that's what we think the n t s b was blind when they kept just saying the thing same thing by rote so that metro didn't hear him anymore and why should they have they didn't have a dime to  move forward on mr clarke yes ma'am a couple thoughts i think this is actually the opportunity and again i'm not saying the bills are not examined in detail but i think it's an opportunity to really step up safety and rail transit but first of all the federal government saying that there is an expectation of a safety culture within in the organization and accepts federal money to build or operate for to build a rail transit system i don't know if this bill puts in performance standards that safety performance hundreds that say essentially that you're not going to get any more money for four extensions unless nuclear standard to say you don't get your friends transportation money well but but the only the only option that exists now is to cut off all transportation funding to the state or cut off a certain percentage  for all projects in the state i'm talking about a much more surgical approach if there's all paid off a metro you know thanks a lot no no no that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is that instead of giving money for building a new extension that will give you some money to improve your system here because we know because we're an agency that's now paying much more attention i'm speaking for the f d a not for myself so i do your existing funds you could you would you would say that also produce a plethora of lobby but i can see what you're saying you wouldn't you wouldn't cut off funds but you would have a don't come to us for a new extension when you can't even tell us that you are operating we're going to we're going to pin this one and we think that you need some more money in this direction safety direction instead because we now have the expertise because we've gathered the data that we didn't have before before the federal transit us do this kind of thing anymore but you will you do remember the fifty mile an hour the booking of transportation infrastructure fund to reduction we had a new home a savings and lives as a result i can tell you one thing i was on the committee that people rushed to meet that i don't know if they thought we would cut off all the fines and i don't remember exact mr rogan do you remember what we said we were that was under chairman howard of new jersey i think there was a sanction on federal aid obligation funding their core highway formula funds if they averaged higher than a certain amount over the speed limit able to somehow do and is of course the last thing anybody would want to do and if we would take a look at some of of what we've already done and perhaps what what mr clarke is speaking about  it would be helpful my major concern is you don't have to say something mr obama if in fact you believe that there is something less than spending money the expertise is either the ultimate expertise is going to be you because of the state say they're going to do something and it isn't up to what you think is safe you're going to have to speak out so i don't see how this cop can take that from the federal government if in fact the state of the art go out and spend a lot of money is not possible for the federal government much less for the states then somebody is going to have to advise the states perhaps to milk mr miller's long expertise over the a non governmental institution which has not which is not fail to say spent a lot of money but also has expertise about what you should do if you don't have a lot of money unless we're willing to do that what we're doing here seems to me to be the kind of exercise that we've just seen fail when it came to the district of columbia if i could just make two quick points first as it relates to voluntary standards along the lines of what what mr bill are was talking about we will find in the legislation that we submitted yesterday evening a specific mention of our taking a look at voluntary standards as a first step we will look in what do you mean by  mr mullard talked about some standards that have been developed for example he specifically spoke on the area of crashworthiness of vehicles but there are other voluntary standards that both apt and i believe the society of mechanical engineers of come up with and frankly more roughly half of the voluntary standard development after is funded by the f d a and we feel i don't you know i consider when the f d a will find that that it means that these are the standards that the f d a well importantly these are voluntary standards and we need to take a fresh look at them as a regulator and decided not only if we don't necessarily want to regulate in each one of those areas especially where there is widespread industry compliance but we also have to take a fresh look at them there's a difference between a voluntary standard in a federal regulation that we have to be mindful of that the other or the point i would point i would point out along the lines of your thinking ms norton is that we do reserve the right we are trying to give the states every tool financial and otherwise to boost their capability to be full trained and adequate partner we also reserve the right in the same legislation to find them inadequate and federalize it where we need to and the legislation very skillfully drawn in that way let me suggest to you mr roboto i mentioned in my  earlier question how ill prepared i believe the states were to accept this was sponsible nobody's told when to do it no one to give them incentive to do it and they have often decided not to spend their money there some on the rather than the straight on them on the system than on somebody to over over and over side of the system it does seem to me in light of the talk here about incentives isn't and all is that you will have to state legislatures are going to slow walk you and dare you they could only slow walk us so long until we don't have them as a state partner i tell you they can slow walk you this way they can slow walk if you're on your matteis frame you've got a you've got to find a reasonable time frame by which legislation nobody has legislation at the state level of the quality you are speaking about you've got to give them a timeframe for enacting the appropriate legislation specially since you are funding these agencies you need basically a timeframe states know how to start up agencies you need a timeframe for you know you have you know exactly when the state's going to into session and let me tell you about timeframes because we waited out so long that three times three states maryland virginia and the district of columbia could not get this money unless they put it with an amount of money up and we had no dedicated system so that means they had to come up with a system where we're put one hundred fifty million every year for chand you have to put it the district jumped in to do it first took virginia and maryland from time to do it and only when they saw we really were serious near the very end of this period did they finally come in with their funds since you're paying for it all you need to do is say the time frame it that i don't know you will know better than i am to legislative sessions to get it done and the start up time frame is even should be less than that because states it seems to me know how to start up an agency or else we to be waiting a very long time for anything to happen in the missing or in the legislation does have an explicit three year time frame in the bill for the whole thing to be in place at the end of three years we would we would begin making judgments as to whether the state system is adequate and in the minute that interim period we would seek to try and boost their strength through federal funding and i think that's excellent  so i wasn't suggesting that you should somehow have had a whole hold set of steps you have then not even an enforcement agency i'm not sure what the n t s b is i'd almost cruel and unusual punishment to send then some folks who act like cops and head and cannot in fact arrest somebody if you'll forgive the analogy but mischief but that's that's the position you were put in you don't have any basis  crashworthy stay and then it's were you had no basis to tell the agencies what to do and yet you had to go in there and act like you were a cop when everybody knew you weren't and you were nordic least in this region do you have anything any comments on that characteri would note that the n t s b is charged with the responsibility to and to investigate accidents independently to look at what the cause of the action is and to look for recommendations to prevent future accidents and you do a very good will perform better in accidents for event recorders to be installed on cars so that not only the n t s b but transferred agencies can understand the circumstances of an accident better and look for areas to make for track safety improvements and standards as we saw in the chicago transit accident there was a lack of adequate inspection of the track and then oversight to make sure that deficiencies were  locations in the country where operators failed to comply with operating rules and we felt that there needs to be adequate oversight to be sure that one there's a good operating standard requirements in place at the transferred agencies and that there's adequate oversight to be sure that train operators are complying with those standards and what we found is that there's been a big difference between the different locations in the country for state oversight to be sure that these types of safety issues are being addressed we support legislation for the f d a to have authority and to also allow the states to do those inspections where they have the i certainly don't mean to imply that investigative agency ought to be an enforcement agency that's got to be just as it is the agency that looks at the and has a look at the accident period who it is who and forces it is entirely different   speaking about and have they been useful to you yes ma'am the voluntary standards that are developed within the industry can be good standards but the problem is they can't be enforced by either a state or a federal agency and therefore if it is really a good standard those standards can be incorporated by reference into federal regulations or a state regulations so it's important and we think there are some good standards out there and that they can be incorporated then the standards and other standards when we feel that they're appropriate i think that's important very important to understand it's not as if the states have been left out there with no reference and i'm really frank frank and mr miller with what you've done and a number of others i'm not sure what the states would have done nobody has the capacity on his own to dream up what would be the best thing to do that's what the federal government is here for i want to thank all of you certainly have helped me to understand how to go i can't thank the administration enough we were left over here without  any sense of anything so we had to move and that's why this region introduced a bill that would would in fact begin to regulate by by far the best way to do it is through an administration that has the purview over the entire country and they can realistically put before us legislation they can pastime very much appreciate what the administration has done and i must say for these witnesses you have immensely educated this member and i believe all of those who were here and finally i want to thank the chairman of this subcommittee we are about to go out of session if the senate would just let  us but here the chairman of this subcommittee saw this matter as of such importance of the nation that even before we go out of session he has held this hearing which i think helps to speed along what the administration is doing thank you again for your testimony today b