[Senate Hearing 112-792]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-792
SUPERSTORM SANDY: THE DEVASTATING
IMPACT ON THE NATION'S
LARGEST TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SURFACE TRANSPORTATION
AND MERCHANT MARINE INFRASTRUCTURE,
SAFETY, AND SECURITY
of the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 6, 2012
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia, Chairman
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas,
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts Ranking
BARBARA BOXER, California OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine
BILL NELSON, Florida JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROY BLUNT, Missouri
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TOM UDALL, New Mexico PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
MARK WARNER, Virginia MARCO RUBIO, Florida
MARK BEGICH, Alaska KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire
DEAN HELLER, Nevada
Ellen L. Doneski, Staff Director
James Reid, Deputy Staff Director
John Williams, General Counsel
Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
David Quinalty, Republican Deputy Staff Director
Rebecca Seidel, Republican Chief Counsel and Chief Investigator
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SURFACE TRANSPORTATION AND MERCHANT MARINE
INFRASTRUCTURE, SAFETY, AND SECURITY
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey, ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi,
Chairman Ranking Member
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
BARBARA BOXER, California JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington ROY BLUNT, Missouri
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota MARCO RUBIO, Florida
TOM UDALL, New Mexico KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire
MARK WARNER, Virginia DEAN HELLER, Nevada
MARK BEGICH, Alaska
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on December 6, 2012................................. 1
Statement of Senator Lautenberg.................................. 1
Prepared statement of John Porcari, Deputy Secretary, U.S.
Department of Transportation............................... 15
Statement of Senator Wicker...................................... 4
Statement of Senator Nelson...................................... 6
Statement of Senator Klobuchar................................... 13
Witnesses
Hon. Charles E. Schumer, U.S. Senator from New York.............. 6
Hon. Robert Menendez, U.S. Senator from New Jersey............... 8
Hon. Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Senator from New York.............. 12
Joseph H. Boardman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Amtrak 19
Prepared statement........................................... 21
Joseph J. Lhota, Chairman and CEO, New York Metropolitan
Transportation Authority....................................... 24
Prepared statement........................................... 26
Patrick J. Foye, Executive Director, Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey................................................. 28
Prepared statement........................................... 30
James Weinstein, Executive Director, NJ Transit Corporation...... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 35
Appendix
Commissioner James P. Redeker, Connecticut Department of
Transportation, prepared statement............................. 41
Response to written questions submitted by Hon. John Thune to
John Porcari................................................... 43
SUPERSTORM SANDY: THE DEVASTATING
IMPACT ON THE NATION'S LARGEST
TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
----------
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2012
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and
Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:38 a.m. in
room SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Frank R.
Lautenberg, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK R. LAUTENBERG,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY
Senator Lautenberg. Good morning. I welcome everyone to
today's hearing, which I called to address the devastating
impact that the Superstorm Sandy had on our region's
transportation systems.
It hit squarely in our nation's most densely populated
area, home to the largest and most widely used public
transportation network in the country. The storm did
unprecedented damage to our transportation system. Estimates of
the damage have reached more than $7 billion. We are talking
about damage just to the transportation system. Across the
region, train tunnels, stations, and rail yards were flooded.
Rail tracks were damaged and critical equipment was ruined. And
some of that equipment, unfortunately, was fairly new and most
usable, and unfortunately, these pieces of equipment may have
been rendered almost useless. But we are going to hear about
that.
We see an almost incomprehensible example of the damage in
this picture with a boat and shipping container strewn across
New Jersey Transit tracks.
Senator Lautenberg. Roads and bridges were damaged and
littered with debris. And the Holland Tunnel--it is a major
commuting facility--carries thousands of vehicles every day
into New York City. It was flooded.
The damage to our infrastructure did not just cause
structural problems, it shut down our region. And for many
commuters, getting to work became a much longer, arduous, and
expensive experience.
And you can see why from this picture which shows flooding
at that Hoboken PATH station.
Senator Lautenberg. It is hard to imagine, but the water
was 6 feet high. And this station I have visited many times
over the years, a classic, old station was just put into such
terrible condition and we will talk about that. What do we do?
Do we just repair these things?
Anyway, with limited transit and rail access to New York,
some New Jerseyans suffered multi-hour commutes at two and
three times the usual cost. Or they were forced to sit in
endless traffic. And by the way, in case you were not aware,
there was heavy traffic before this, and so this just magnified
the problem that we already had.
Damage to our transportation system had severe economic
impacts. A prime example is the Port of New York and New
Jersey, the largest port on the East Coast which supports more
than 550,000 jobs in the region. Because of extensive flooding,
dangerous debris in the waterways and damaged electrical
systems, the port was largely shut down for days, nearly
grinding commerce to a halt.
Transportation in our region has a nationwide impact. The
millions of people throughout the country who ride our rails,
drive through our state, or use our products that come through
our port also felt the effects of Sandy.
While State and local agencies worked diligently to get our
systems running again, many problems still need to be fixed,
and they cannot do it all on their own.
A storm of this magnitude requires a response with the full
power of the Federal Government. It will take all of us working
together to make sure that our infrastructure is more resilient
and better prepared for the future.
One of the projects that is going to help us get there is a
new tunnel, the Amtrak Gateway Tunnel project, which will add
much-needed capacity into New York City for millions of
Americans using New Jersey Transit and Amtrak trains. This
modern tunnel would also be better protected against flooding
and provide an alternative route when disaster strikes. It
would help prevent damage like we see here where the Hudson
River tunnel that carries Amtrak and New Jersey Transit was
turned into a river.
Senator Lautenberg. You can see that their tracks are
visible through the water, and it is a shocking sight because
you know what kind of damage this means and what we must do in
such a hurry.
And now, we must also remember that Superstorm Sandy is a
sign of things to come. In this changing climate, the intensity
of storms has increased making extreme weather like Sandy more
and more common.
As we devote resources to recovering from this storm, we
have got to invest so we are better prepared for the future
ones as well. And if we make these smarter investments on the
front end, we can save a lot of money and heartache in the
future.
Each of the witnesses here, including my fellow colleagues
at the table from the region and our regional transportation
agencies, have played essential roles in response to this
storm. We have all been working together and we are in lockstep
together because what happens in my state, our State of New
Jersey, affects New York in a major way, and it is also true if
the flow is reversed.
So I thank you all for testifying to get our region up and
running again, and I look forward to hearing your testimony
about how we can do the best job possible.
I am pleased to be here with my colleague, the Ranking
Member, Senator Wicker. Senator Wicker, your comments please.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROGER F. WICKER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSISSIPPI
Senator Wicker. Thank you, Senator Lautenberg. I want to
thank you for holding this hearing and know we are eager to get
to our three colleagues who will testify in just a few moments.
But let me say as a Mississippian who has experienced
damage from devastating storms, I want to particularly assure
those in this room that you have my condolences and my empathy
at the damage and loss of life that Hurricane Sandy brought to
your region. I understand the impact that a major storm can
have on the lives of Americans. Even today, 7 years after
Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast, taking
the lives over 1,800 people and causing over $108 billion in
damage, many Mississippians are still trying to rebuild.
I witnessed firsthand the devastation of Hurricane Katrina,
and I can understand it can take years to recover fully. I hope
recovery in New York and New Jersey will not take so long as it
has for Hurricane Katrina, but I would not be surprised if,
regrettably, the recovery does take a long time.
This hearing today will focus on the effects of Sandy on
the transportation network of the New York-New Jersey region.
Transportation infrastructure is a crucial element of our
nation's economy, meeting the transportation needs for both
people and freight. When the transportation network of a major
city is crippled, the impacts can be felt throughout the United
States.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what
they are doing to repair the damage done by Hurricane Sandy.
I will take a moment to mention that the assistance we
Mississippians received during and after Katrina makes us all
the more eager to help our fellow Americans in the Northeast
recover from Sandy. For many Mississippians, helping those
affected by Hurricane Sandy is an especially meaningful
mission. Our own recovery following Katrina involved countless
contributions of volunteers, church groups, nonprofit
organizations, and emergency teams from across the Nation,
including the Northeast. And we appreciate that. Today
Mississippians are responding in kind by taking an active role
in disaster relief efforts to assist northeastern communities
in need.
For example, the Gulf Park Estates Volunteer Fire
Department in Ocean Springs, Mississippi has provided a pumper
truck it received after Katrina to the West Hamilton Beach
Volunteer Fire Department in New York. More than 100 staff and
volunteers from the Red Cross Mississippi Region did important
work at shelters and distributed supplies in Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, and New York. Dozens of volunteers with the Mississippi
Baptist Disaster Relief Task Force volunteered to serve meals
and to help remove debris and fallen trees.
I commend these volunteers as I commended the volunteers
from other sections of the country that helped us in
Mississippi for the valuable work they have done during this
crisis. We could not have made it and the recovery from Sandy
could not be complete without the help of charitable
organizations and volunteers.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to hearing
from our colleagues and the other witnesses.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks very much, Senator Wicker.
Have you got a short statement you would like to make?
Senator Nelson. Of course.
[Laughter.]
Senator Lautenberg. We are pleased to have our colleague
from Florida because we are talking about transportation.
STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON,
U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA
Senator Nelson. I will be short and say that hurricanes are
a way of life. It is part of our life in our state and,
therefore, we are much more prepared. Thank goodness we have
the head of FEMA who used to be the head of the emergency
management services in Florida. He went through all four
hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004. So he is a real
professional, Craig Fugate.
But what you all are suffering is that a hurricane is not
supposed to come to the Northeast and especially not in October
and especially not at high tide with a full moon. And so you
put all of that together and you are starting to experience
some of the things in a category 1 hurricane that we experience
in category 4 and 5 hurricanes. So I feel your pain and I want
to help.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks very much, Senator Nelson. We
appreciate your words and your experiences.
We are pleased to have our distinguished colleagues, Chuck
Schumer from New York and my colleague, Bob Menendez, from New
Jersey. And I believe that Senator Gillibrand will be here
shortly.
These Senators have been strong partners in this rebuilding
effort. It is a great privilege to work together. We are a
really strong team and we share the value of quick action and
sufficient resources to get this job done. I mentioned we are
in the largest commutation area in the country, and it takes
the diligence and the skill that we have with our friends and
colleagues.
So, Senator Schumer, we would like to hear from you.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. SCHUMER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW YORK
Senator Schumer. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. First,
thanks for holding this hearing but more importantly for your
great partnership as New York and New Jersey work together as a
bipartisan, bi-State delegation, along with colleagues from the
rest of the Northeast, to deal with this awful, awful
devastation. It is good that you are in so many important
positions here in this Senate that will have a lot of say in
how we deal with this, and we are grateful for that, as well as
your leadership.
I want to thank the Ranking Member, Senator Wicker, very
much. West Hamilton Beach was in my old congressional district.
It is one of the few volunteer fire departments in New York
City. It is a very cohesive community right on the water, right
on the great Jamaica Bay. And the generosity of Mississippians
to West Hamilton Beach has been noted and much appreciated by
us. And we are also glad in a certain sense--not that you
suffered the same damage, but you understand what we are going
through because of the devastation that Katrina wreaked on your
community.
And of course, to my friend, Bill Nelson, here who, as he
said, lives with hurricanes as a way of life--we are learning
how tough it is and we have renewed sympathy for the people of
Florida and the Gulf Coast who live with these things
regularly.
New York State, as you know, suffered nearly $7.3 billion
in transportation-related damages due to Superstorm Sandy. Of
that total, the New York MTA, Metropolitan Transit Authority,
sustained about $5 billion in damages. It is huge. I never saw
anything like it.
We have the longest underground tunnel in the world in the
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. I take it almost every day that I am
in New York City because my home in Brooklyn is connected to
it. And it was totally filled with water, both tubes from one
end to the other, from the Manhattan end to the Brooklyn end.
There were close to 100 million gallons of water that had to be
pumped out of that tunnel, and it is still not back up to
snuff. That is just one of many examples. There are so many.
The MTA did a very good job. I want to congratulate Joe
Lhota. They moved their rolling stock to high ground. They
tried to barricade this awful flood in the best way they could
but, boy, it is awful. And the MTA is the largest public
transportation system in the country. It is the lifeblood of
New York. It is our circulatory system. 3.5 million people go
on and off Manhattan Island every day to work. Wow. 3.5 million
people. I guess that is more than the number of people in
Mississippi and probably more than the number of people in Dade
County anyway. And we depend on it. 2.63 billion trips a year.
And as I said, the MTA took a lot of necessary precautions,
but this is a 108-year-old system. It is the first major subway
system in America, and it was never subjected, as you noted
correctly, Senator Nelson, to the full moon and the high tide
and the huge storm before. Never had anything like this. The
MTA tried to put up barriers. In many cases they worked, but I
other cases like the beautiful and new South Ferry Station
right near the World Trade Center--the barriers were just
knocked over by the high winds and flying debris. This one
subway station, South Ferry, is going to cost over $500
million, nearly $600 million, to repair.
Many more underwater tunnels that connected the systems
together are gone, and salt water, which of course we are a
salt water place, is corrosive to the switches, to the tracks,
and to everything else. So there is lots of permanent damage.
The system is still not running up to snuff and it is our
lifeblood.
So there are two points I would like to make to this
Committee.
The first, we need help with mitigation. We cannot just
rebuild a 108-year-old system and replace it with the parts
that existed then. Most of them do not exist anymore and it
does not make much sense to just redo it exactly as it is if,
God forbid, there is another flood like this. So we need help
with mitigation to make it stronger and better.
I know that Senator Wicker understands this. I think it
passed by one vote. I was that vote in the well of the House
when he and Thad Cochran--particularly it was Thad Cochran who
came to me. They had to move a freight line, a big rail freight
line, away from the flood plain in Mississippi. It cost close
to $1 billion, as I recall. I voted for it, understanding the
need for mitigation.
We have the same need for mitigation now because you cannot
replace exactly what has been damaged. But even if you could,
you would not want to. You want to make sure that the next
storm that occurs--now that we are so much the wiser, Senator
Nelson, we want to make sure that we are much more flood-proof.
So we are going to need all kinds of things. Inflatable plugs,
station seals at vulnerable points should be part of the
Federal proposal.
So, first point, we need help not just in replacement but
in mitigation, and it only makes sense in a large, old but
vital system like this.
Second point. We need some flexibility which is related.
And the good news is that we have a vehicle that is available.
That is the Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program.
FEMA has done a good job by and large. There were lots of
mistakes, but FEMA is doing its best under difficult
circumstances. But they are not experts on transportation. And
Mary Landrieu particularly told us that down in the Gulf area,
it was much better to deal with the Federal Transportation
Administration which would be dealt with if we put money into
the Public Transportation Emergency Program. It is an
authorized program. We did it last year in the transportation
bill, but the cupboard is bare. There is no money in it.
We all understand that under the Stafford Act, we get these
dollars. The MTA is a public system, but it would be much
better to put it under FTA, the Public Transportation Emergency
Relief Program, because they provide grants to states and
public transportation systems to protect, repair, and replace
equipment that has been damaged by a natural disaster. But
Congress created this program to create flexibility.
Despite what FEMA has tried to do in our localities--and
they are working real hard--FEMA is bound by the law to replace
items to a previous condition, and as I said, that does not
make sense. So the combination of having mitigation monies and
doing it through the Public Transportation Emergency Relief
Program makes sense. New Orleans, under the old program, was
forced to actually buy old buses. That made no sense. So we
need flexibility and that is why we need an FTA emergency
relief account.
Bottom line, in conclusion, New York has no choice. We have
to simultaneously rebuild and adapt to protect against future
storms. We are a waterfront region. New York and New Jersey is
a waterfront region. It has become abundantly clear we are in
the path of violent new weather realities and we have to adapt.
And I want to thank the Chair and the Committee for the
opportunity to speak.
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you very much, Senator Schumer.
Senator Menendez?
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I
particularly want to say that your leadership in this committee
and the Appropriations Committee is going to be so critical to
the reconstruction of New Jersey, and we appreciate not only
your leadership in those positions, but the leadership you have
shown alongside those of us who are trying to restore the lives
of New Jerseyans. And so you are critically important to our
collective success for the region.
And I appreciate the comments of the Ranking Member,
Senator Wicker, and Senator Nelson. As someone who has stood
with the people of Mississippi and Florida each and every time
that there has been an issue of devastation and recovery, I am
heartened to hear the remarks that you both made because it is
critically important to the people of New Jersey now. We do not
have that experience. This is the first time we have had the
experience. I have lived in the state my whole life and I have
never seen the breadth and scope of devastation that the state
has faced after Superstorm Sandy.
I appreciate the opportunity to give one or two dimensions
of that. There are many but for the purposes of this hearing,
just to give you a sense, the numbers are staggering across the
region. We lost 34 lives during the storm. It was the largest
mass transit disaster in our nation's history. Four out of 10
of the Nation's transit riders--of the Nation's total transit
riders--had their commutes disrupted by the storm and many of
them still do today.
New Jersey Transit alone had dozens of locomotives and rail
cars damaged in the flooding, miles and miles of tracks
damaged. The preliminary damage estimate provided by the State
is now up to about $37 billion. We are getting more damage
numbers, but the toll to transportation and commerce is truly
incalculable.
The Port of New York and New Jersey, which really most of
it is on the New Jersey side and is the mega-port of the east
coast, a quarter of a million jobs, $25 billion to $30 billion
of economic activity for the Nation, suffered widespread
damage. Ships were unloading during the course of the storm,
but a full recovery from the damage caused at the port is going
to take much longer.
The storm surge grew to 14 feet. Winds were about 90 miles
per hour. More than 700 cargo containers were damaged when the
surge and high winds toppled the containers onto each other. In
this picture, you can see that half of a Port Authority barge
was lifted onto a berth in Red Hook.
Senator Menendez. In Jersey City, a float used to move
railway cars broke in half and created significant damage. 150
feet of railroad track was washed away. Cargo-handling cranes
and other pieces of equipment were severely damaged.
And this is also important to national security issues
because in the last BRAC round, the only water port for the
military in Bayonne, New Jersey was closed. And so the use of a
commercial port for forward projection from the East Coast is
the Port of New York and New Jersey, and when it cannot operate
well, it is part of a national security imperative as well.
The trucking industry lost about 1,000 rigs to flooding at
the port and other locations where they were parked, which is
about 25 percent of all of the truck fleet that serves the port
region.
About 16,000 cars were destroyed, a total loss. The tangled
mess of colored metal scraps you see in the picture is a mix of
cars and hundreds of motorcycles destroyed by the storm.
Senator Menendez. Over 50 ships were diverted that were
headed for New York and New Jersey. Those ships were carrying
over 15,000 cargo containers and almost 10,000 automobiles.
That is just one dimension.
As far as other transportation damage up and down the New
Jersey coast, the sheer scope of the damage is difficult to
fathom. This next picture is the Mantoloking Bridge which
crosses Barnegat Bay and connects Brick with Mantoloking. As
you can see in the picture, the storm surge ripped a gash right
through Mantoloking, and this is some of the greatest
destruction of homes in that region.
Senator Menendez. Amazingly, the bridge can be repaired,
but many of the surrounding homes were lost and part of that
highway will need to be rebuilt.
This next picture is a shipping container and a large
pleasure boat tossed onto the Morgan Rail Bridge on the north
Jersey coastline, along with tons of debris, obviously killing
a main artery of the State's riders.
Senator Menendez. It took a lot of work to restore service
on New Jersey Transit which suffered disruptions on every rail
line.
And even today, as we speak, the Port Authority's PATH
terminal, which is the subway between New York and New Jersey
under the Hudson River, is inoperable and will not be back on
line for some time. Those are tens of thousands of riders every
day that are affected and, obviously, not only their commutes
but the cost of their commutes has dramatically grown in the
midst of a challenging economic time.
Corrosive seawater rushed into the PATH stations at
Exchange Place and Hoboken, and the Hoboken station may still
not be reopened for weeks.
So, Mr. Chairman, that is one dimension on transportation.
We have lost thousands of homes. We have thousands of people
who are out of a home. I am not talking about a second home
because many people think about the New Jersey shore and they
say, oh, that is about second homes. No. These are year-round
communities where people have made their lives and their
investments and now have seen them washed away. They do not
have a place to come back home to.
And so that is why it is critically important--the work of
this committee and to ask our colleagues--as we have stood with
the people of the Gulf Coast in Hurricane Katrina and in
Florida, the people of Joplin, Missouri after a tornado ravaged
their community, when the Mississippi flooded, when crops were
destroyed in the Midwest, we have been there. And since this is
the United States of America, we need you to be with us.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks very much, Senator Menendez.
Senator Gillibrand is relatively new here but really
fighting whenever it comes to the needs of our region and your
state obviously. We are pleased to have you here. Please, your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF HON. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW YORK
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
committee members, for attending today.
You know better than anyone, Mr. Chairman, how severe this
storm was and the type of destruction that was wrought
throughout New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the
surrounding region. We are still suffering gravely. There are
still families who cannot return to their homes. There are
businesses that are just in the early stages of figuring out
how to rebuild. There were so many lives lost, so many families
absolutely torn apart.
And I can tell you this is the job of the Federal
Government. It is our job to protect people. It is our job to
help communities rebuild when there are natural disasters that
local governments just cannot afford to be able to pay for on
their own.
Now, New York has been working very hard to come up with a
plan about how to rebuild, but the transportation
infrastructure has taken an unbelievable beating. In New York
alone, 2,000 miles of roads were destroyed or damaged. 11
tunnels were flooded. And our city and our State really relies
on mass transit. We are the number one users of mass transit in
the country. And with our mass transit system, miles of tracks
and tunnels were flooded with corrosive salt water. 12 subway
stations were damaged or destroyed, and half a million transit
riders are still experiencing severe disruptions.
Now, you will have the MTA Chairman come in, which is
fantastic because he can give you the nuts and bolts of the
loss, the repairs, where we stand. A lot of the service is up
and running now, but there are long-term repairs that must be
done. You can see the nature of the storm. It just filled up
the subways. When we built these subways 100 years ago, they
could not have imagined this kind of flooding, this kind of
storm. And so the water just rushed in and that corrosive salt
water really did affect the electrical systems and the ability
to get these stations back up and running.
So it is a massive undertaking. The initial estimates are
that just fixing our mass transit system could cost about $5
billion. So you can see the extent of the kind of damage and
how much it really takes to do.
This is our rail system. These are the Rockaway tracks. The
tracks are just washed out. So if you know anything about the
geography of New York State and New York City, we have rail
lines coming in and out of New York City straight up, straight
west, straight east, and they are essential for commuters to
get to and from work. You know, New York City is a city of 8
million people, but you have got millions of people on Long
Island that come into the city every day. They either come by
road or they come by rail. So that is the kind of work that is
going to be needed to be done just to get our city up and
running again.
I will not give much more detail. I do rely on the
testimony that has been given previously and the testimony that
is to come. But I just want to emphasize for our colleagues the
reason why these hearings matter is because the rest of
Congress, the rest of the Senate has not necessarily been to
New York since the storm. They have not seen the devastation in
these communities. They have not seen the destruction that was
caused to so many families and so many businesses. And you
know, we have seen storms before. We have seen storms all
across the country. We have seen wildfires. We have seen
tornadoes. We saw what happened with Hurricane Katrina. And so
we know what suffering looks like. And I can tell you New York
has never suffered on this level because of a natural disaster
ever. And so to have the ability and wherewithal to begin to
rebuild will mean that we will rely on the Federal Government.
So I want to thank you for holding this hearing, and I want
to thank you for giving us the opportunity to tell these
stories and to show you what really happened in New York. Thank
you.
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you very much, Senator
Gillibrand.
Senator Klobuchar requested an opportunity to give a
statement. We welcome her statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much. I just wanted,
while Senator Gillibrand is still here, to thank all four of
you, Mr. Chairman, as well as Senator Menendez and Senator
Schumer. And I have specifically talked to Senator Gillibrand
at length about this, and I know, having had some version of
this in Minnesota with flooding in the Red River Valley--and
everyone remembers Grand Forks, but we have had similar close
calls with Fargo and Morehead--what this is like for the
families. And I really appreciate how you have brought this
home to us in terms of the actual effects it had on people, and
I think we have to remember that.
And what I remember is that New York State and New Jersey
and the rest of the country stood by Minnesota and North Dakota
when we had our severe weather and our severe floods or when
the 35W bridge collapsed and we were able to rebuild that
bridge in a year. And we saw firsthand what that was like to
have a major infrastructure destruction right in the middle of
our major city.
And so I think it is very important that during a time of
divisiveness that we stand together and we stand for those that
have been affected by this horrible storm.
I do know that our Minnesota National Guard has been out
there. We consider them the best Guard in the country, Senator
Gillibrand and Mr. Chairman, but you may think otherwise. But
they have been out there helping, and I think that is just much
of the spirit that we bring here. And we all have to understand
that just as importantly as getting those emergency supplies to
people, we are now at the next stage. We are at the stage of
rebuilding and rebuilding means rebuilding infrastructure.
Thank you very much.
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you very much, Senator Klobuchar.
Now we will call our second panel to testify. We welcome
this panel of transportation experts. We know that each of you
in your routine duties have got so much on your hands.
The one thing I wanted to make certain that we understood
is the magnitude of the support teams that came in from all
over the country and the fact that it took some time to get
things going, and Senator Wicker reminded us about that. But
the devastation was so enormous that when we look back, a lot
was done in a relatively short period of time.
So you each have major transportation responsibilities and
we are glad to have you as experts testifying. And I would ask,
if you can, to keep your statements within a 5-minute limit. We
will allow you a couple seconds here or there if necessary, but
otherwise I would ask that you do that. I will first call on
Mr. Boardman.
Did Amtrak get a new name? What are we calling the
organization?
Mr. Boardman. Do you mean for the Northeast, the
infrastructure and investment development business line for the
Northeast? I am not sure of your----
Senator Lautenberg. No. I see National Passenger Rail
Corporation.
Mr. Boardman. Oh, OK. The official title.
Senator Lautenberg. I think of good, old Amtrak.
Mr. Boardman. Amtrak, America's railroad, Senator.
Senator Lautenberg. Before we start, I would like to
acknowledge the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, John
Porcari. Is John here? Well, I would have acknowledged him if
he was here. I follow instructions. OK?
And we have testimony from Deputy Secretary Porcari, and I
ask unanimous consent that it be placed in the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Porcari follows:]
Prepared Statement of John Porcari, Deputy Secretary,
U.S. Department of Transportation
Chairman Lautenberg, Ranking Member Wicker, and Members of the
Subcommittee:
Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today to discuss the
impact of Hurricane Sandy on the transportation system in the affected
states. I welcome the Subcommittee's interest in this critically
important topic.
Hurricane Sandy had a devastating effect on our Nation's citizens
living along the Eastern Seaboard. There were 131 fatalities in the
states where the hurricane came ashore, and about 8.3 million people
lost electrical power. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses have
been damaged or destroyed, and many will be homeless for months while
the damage is repaired. Just two weeks ago I was able to visit New
Jersey with Vice President Biden, Senator Lautenberg, and other New
Jersey officials to see first-hand the devastation that had occurred.
Secretary LaHood joins me in expressing our condolences to the families
who have lost their loved ones, and our determination to do everything
we can to get the families whose homes have been destroyed back on
their feet. The transportation system also suffered extensive damage,
amounting to billions of dollars. At the same time, the affected cities
and states have done an impressive job of responding to the disaster,
with the help of their Federal partners.
The devastating effects of the storm raise important questions
about how to rebuild and how we can mitigate the effects of similar
storms in the future. As we rebuild, we need to focus our attention on
ensuring that our transportation system is more resilient, on building
more redundancy into the system, and on approaching the transportation
planning process in a more regional way so as to coordinate the plans
of the affected states.
I want to discuss briefly the damage that was done to the
transportation system, how the local authorities and the Department of
Transportation (DOT) acted to mitigate and repair that damage, and what
we need to do as we move forward to reduce the severity of such natural
disasters in the future. I want to make clear that any damage estimates
I am citing should not be construed as requests for Federal funding.
That is impacted by another set of issues, including statutory
eligibility and the applicability of private insurance, that we are
working with operators on to understand better where these questions
are applicable.
Damage to the Transportation System
Hurricane Sandy did not bring with it the powerful winds that some
hurricanes have had. But it did bring with it an extremely powerful
storm surge which, combined with high tides, caused a 14-foot storm
surge in New York harbor that caused extensive flooding in New York,
New Jersey, and Connecticut. Sandy had tropical force winds over an
820-mile-wide area, and its ``destruction potential,'' as measured by
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, measured 5.8 on a
scale of 6.
The most damaging impact of the storm, from a transportation
standpoint, was on the highway, transit, and rail tunnels in and out of
Manhattan. All seven of the subway tunnels under the East River
flooded, as did the Hudson River subway tunnel, the East River and
Hudson River commuter rail tunnels, and the subway tunnels in lower
Manhattan. Three of the four highway tunnels into Manhattan flooded,
leaving only the Lincoln Tunnel open. While some subway service was
restored three days after the storm, the PATH train service to the
World Trade Center was only restored on November 26, four weeks after
the storm, and subway service between the Rockaway peninsula and Howard
Beach is not expected to be re-opened for months.
In New Jersey, commuter rail and transit damage included flood
damage to 72 locomotives and 311 cars at the Meadowlands Maintenance
Complex and Hoboken Terminal, damage to 3 moveable bridges, and damage
to the catenary on the Gladstone line, which only returned to service
this week. We are working with both New York and New Jersey to
thoroughly assess the cost associated with the overall damage to subway
lines and other transit equipment. Note that the recently-passed
transportation reauthorization, MAP-21, authorized the Public
Transportation Emergency Relief Program. That authorization positions
the Federal Transit Administration to better assist its State and local
partners in responding to disasters in concert with, but without
duplicating the work of, the Federal Emergency Management
Administration (FEMA), once funds are appropriated.
Highways were extensively damaged in all the affected states, but
particularly in New Jersey and New York. This includes damage to
tunnels, movable bridges, and traffic signals, especially due to
mechanical and electrical systems being submerged in salt water. In New
Jersey, Route 35 along the Jersey shore was particularly hard hit, and
in New York the Ocean Parkway in Nassau and Suffolk Counties was
extensively damaged. Significant damage also occurred in Connecticut,
Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Virginia. Hurricane Sandy also
damaged roads on Federal lands in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island,
West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.
While some highways were closed due to flooding and other damage,
more people were trying to use the highways that were open. With much
of the transit system shut down, gridlock quickly appeared on many
roads, especially in Manhattan. Car-pooling restrictions were imposed
on all the bridges into Manhattan (except the George Washington Bridge)
to allow more traffic movement. Five petroleum terminals in New Jersey
and New York were shut down due to flooding, and loss of electrical
power caused the Colonial Pipeline terminal in Linden, New Jersey to be
shut down. Shutdowns in pipelines and petroleum terminals led to
shortages of gasoline and diesel fuel at service stations, and some
stations that had fuel could not pump it because they lacked electrical
power to operate their pumps. Sixty-seven percent of the service
stations in the New York metropolitan area were closed on November 2
due to lack of fuel or electrical power. Fuel shortages were worsened
by fuel demands from people using emergency generators (in New Jersey,
65 percent of customers lost power). As a result, many people who lost
transit service also effectively lost the ability to use highways as
well.
The aviation system was also extensively damaged. Both LaGuardia
and John F. Kennedy Airports flooded, and Newark Airport was also
closed. The three major airports were able to restore normal air
traffic operations by the end of the week. Some of the air navigation
systems were located on piers out in the water and were severely
damaged, and some electric power distribution systems may require
immediate replacement or replacement prior to normal replacement
schedules.
Amtrak was fully shut down in the New York area for two days, and
full service was not restored until November 19. Amtrak had four
tunnels flood, causing significant damage to its signal systems and
burning out pumps. Track was damaged by washouts, debris slides, and
damage to ballast, and six hi-rail and work trucks were lost. Amtrak
had to remove 80 trees from its right-of-way, including 15 that had
damaged the catenary. Freight railroads in the region generally did not
have serious damage, except for the NY/NJ Railroad (formerly the NY
Cross Harbor Railroad), which had four trailers housing office space
swept into the harbor, two float barges destroyed, and a float bridge
damaged. We understand that Amtrak and NY/NJ Railroad will file
insurance claims on their losses.
The seaports were also adversely affected by the storm. All the
seaports from Baltimore to Boston closed as a precaution on October 29,
and all had re-opened two days later except for the Port of New York
and New Jersey (PONY/NJ). PONY/NJ suffered from lack of electric power
and damage to equipment that prevented it from fully re-opening until
November 7th. Marine petroleum terminals were also damaged, making it
impossible for several days to deliver petroleum products to customers.
About 6,000 containers and 3,500 vehicles were diverted to other ports,
primarily the Port of Virginia. Press reports of estimates by private
consultants suggest that costs to privately-owned cargo shippers and
carriers due to delays will be about $1 billion. The extent of cargo
diversion was reduced because shipowners slowed their vessels at sea to
delay their arrival.
The pipeline system also suffered damage and lost electrical power
to run pumps, leading to shut-downs of several days. In some cases
pipelines with damaged automatic controls were operated manually with
emergency generators to maintain deliveries. Natural gas transmission
and distribution systems were much more heavily affected than petroleum
product pipelines.
Emergency Responders, State and Local Government Agencies, and
Ordinary Citizens Responded Creatively to the Crisis
Despite the widespread damage and dangerous conditions, emergency
responders performed heroically in the face of the unprecedented
destruction. They saved lives of people in danger at substantial risk
to themselves. Moreover, ordinary citizens, transportation authorities,
and government agencies in the storm-struck area responded creatively
to the challenge. Water ferries between New Jersey and Manhattan
quickly became a popular option, as did the East River Ferry after it
resumed service on November 1. New ferry services were started between
the Rockaways and Manhattan and between Staten Island and Manhattan,
and alternative rail and bus service was provided. The Metropolitan
Transportation Authority (MTA) implemented a system of ``bus bridges,''
or temporary shuttle bus networks, to replace the lost transit service
through the East River subway tunnels. The New York City Department of
Transportation established dedicated bus lanes on the Williamsburg and
Manhattan Bridges, as well as on several Manhattan streets, to keep the
buses moving. Bicycle ridership on the East River Bridges tripled.
Transit authorities and customers used social media to keep informed of
which transit lines were open and which were closed, and the MTA
provided revised service maps to show which lines were operating. As
highway tunnels were restored to service, they were restored first for
transit buses, and later to all vehicles. The New York City Police
Department stepped forward to enforce carpooling restrictions on
bridges, regulate lines at gas stations, and regulate lines at bus
stops. The Governor of New Jersey and the City of New York both
established an odd/even gasoline rationing system to reduce lines at
gas stations. Overall, states and local governments, and the people of
New York and New Jersey, met the challenge in their typically
indomitable spirit.
What Has USDOT Done to Assist the States and Cities Affected by the
Hurricane?
The Department of Transportation is responsible under the National
Response Framework, in coordination with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), for coordinating Emergency Transportation
issues as part of the overall Federal emergency response. Prior to
Hurricane Sandy's landfall, our National Response Program staff
deployed to FEMA's National and Regional Response Coordination Centers
and to their Joint Field Offices. A wide range of DOT agencies
responded immediately with the resources available to them to help the
people and communities stricken by the hurricane.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) used its ``Quick
Release'' Emergency Relief authority between October 30 and November 1
to release $29 million to five states for emergency repairs: $10
million each to New York and New Jersey, $4 million to North Carolina,
$3 million to Rhode Island, and $2 million to Connecticut. These Quick
Release funds are the first installment of FHWA's Emergency Relief
assistance. Another $20 million was released to New York State last
week. FHWA also expedited the movement of overweight and oversize loads
into the affected area.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) issued an
Eastern Regional Emergency Declaration, temporarily lifting hours-of-
service requirements and other regulations on interstate trucking
carriers to speed the movement of emergency supplies into the affected
area. DOT also established an Interstate Petroleum Transport Team to
resolve issues that might impede speedy delivery of fuel and relief
supplies to the affected region. For example, FMCSA connected FEMA and
the Defense Logistics Agency with fuel haulers and other trucking
carriers that could move fuel and equipment to repair electric power
transmission facilities.
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has provided technical
assistance to affected transit authorities and has worked with FEMA
through the General Services Administration's Federal Acquisition
Service to procure 250 buses to replace lost commuter rail and transit
service in New Jersey, particularly allowing commuters to take buses to
ferry terminals for the trip into Manhattan. FTA also worked with the
Chicago Transit Authority to secure signal equipment to replace
equipment damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) opened an Emergency
Relief Docket before the hurricane made landfall that allowed FRA to
provide waivers to its hours of service and equipment inspection
requirements to facilitate response and recovery. FRA conducted a
series of conference calls with affected railroads to assess their
needs and process requests under the Emergency Relief Docket.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), despite damage to its
Air Navigation Services equipment, was able to restore normal air
traffic operations quickly by using emergency equipment and making
necessary repairs and replacements. I would like to caution that FAA's
cost estimates are still preliminary, because FAA continues to inspect
its equipment to determine if permanent replacements need to be made
and to ensure that no latent damage will cause the equipment to
malfunction in the future. While the functionality of some equipment
has been degraded, FAA constantly updates the aviation community
through Notices to Airmen to advise pilots of current system status and
restrictions related to equipment or airspace limitations. These
adjustments ensure that a full margin of safety is maintained in the
face of service degradations caused by system outages.
The Maritime Administration (MARAD) activated two training ships
from the New York and Massachusetts maritime academies to provide
emergency relief support--the Training Ship Empire State from the State
University of New York Maritime College and the Training Ship Kennedy
from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. MARAD also activated one of
its Ready Reserve Force ships, the SS Wright, from Baltimore, MD. Over
the past month, these vessels have housed and fed nearly 900 emergency
responders every day--urban search and rescue teams, disaster medical
assistance teams, DHS surge personnel, FEMA Corps volunteers, Red Cross
and other non-governmental organization teams, and community relations
teams. MARAD also consulted with the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) on issuing special purpose waivers of the Jones Act to facilitate
deliveries of refined petroleum products to the New York/New Jersey
area. MARAD consulted quickly with U.S.-Flag vessel operators to assess
U.S.-Flag vessel availability before advising DHS on the need for
waivers. Eleven vessels made use of the waivers and carried more than
2.7 million barrels of petroleum products into the affected area. The
U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point was also affected by the
hurricane, experiencing a 14-foot storm surge and loss of electrical
power. Back-up power allowed basic services to continue until
commercial power was restored.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)
issued emergency special permits allowing manual control of fuel
transfer systems at petroleum terminals. PHMSA also assisted in
coordinating emergency repair of gas distribution lines, tracked the
availability of fuel distribution facilities, monitored damage and
restoration, authorized waivers of hazardous materials regulations to
speed transport of relief supplies, and advised other government
agencies on safe transportation of hazardous materials.
Finally, 58 DOT employees were deployed at Joint Field Offices in
New York and New Jersey to assist state and local governments and other
infrastructure owners to restore transportation infrastructure.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The devastation of Hurricane Sandy brings into sharp relief the
need for us to do a better job of building a transportation system that
can survive a disaster like this and recover quickly. I think we need
to emphasize three ``R''s in thinking about how to rebuild in the wake
of this disaster: Resilience, Redundancy, and Regionalism.
First, we need to build our transportation systems so that they are
more resilient in the face of high winds and storm surges. By far the
most significant damage was due to flooding of tunnels. We need to
design highway, rail, and subway tunnels so that they are more
resistant to flooding. The MTA had taken some steps, in response to
past flooding due to intense rainstorms and Hurricane Irene in 2011, to
make the subways tunnels more flood-proof. These efforts have included
raising station entrances and ventilating grates, improving pumps, and
pre-deploying pumps and personnel to speed MTA's emergency response
capability. But they were clearly not enough and we need to do more. We
need to provide transportation agencies with better information and
tools to enhance the resilience of their infrastructure. At DOT, we are
conducting research to identify vulnerable infrastructure and ways of
making it more resistant to damage. This includes a comprehensive study
in the Gulf Coast region, another area vulnerable to extreme weather
events, as well as several pilot projects to conduct system and
infrastructure risk assessments, including one in New Jersey.
Second, we need to build more redundancy into our transportation
system, so that when one part of the system goes down, other parts can
pick up the slack. We could see the importance of this in the reaction
to Hurricane Sandy. When the subway tunnels went down, we had to rely
more on transit buses. We enhanced the effectiveness of transit buses
by creating more bus-only lanes. We relied more on ferry service, and
established dedicated transit bus lines to transport passengers to the
ferry terminals. Ferry service has been critical not only in the case
of Hurricane Sandy, but in earlier disasters like the 9/11 terrorist
attacks and the Northeast Blackout of 2003 as well. We relied more on
walking and bicycling. We need to reduce the necessity of passengers
substituting private automobiles for transit service; as we have seen,
that approach leads to gridlocked roads and gasoline shortages.
Third, we need to address these problems in a regional way.
Particularly for a metropolitan area like New York, which extends
across parts of three states, the need for a regional approach is
critical. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the North
Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, and the New York Metropolitan
Transportation Council, of course, provide venues for regional planning
and coordination. Other coordinating mechanisms, such as the Northeast
Corridor Commission, the I-95 Corridor Coalition, and the Coalition of
Northeastern Governors, provide additional opportunities to coordinate
transportation planning, but we need more than those.
One promising effort is the FRA's NEC Future program--an effort to
define, evaluate, and prioritize future investment alternatives for the
Northeast Corridor through the year 2040. This program will develop a
Passenger Rail Corridor Investment Plan to guide investments in the
Northeast Corridor over the next 30 years. NEC Future gives us the
opportunity to develop a more resilient rail network in the Northeast
Corridor that provides redundancy for other passenger modes and that
grows out of a regional dialogue with states and other stakeholders in
the Northeast Corridor.
Part of that regional effort is the Gateway Project to expand rail
capacity from New Jersey into New York Penn Station. This project,
which would double passenger rail capacity between Newark and New York
and expand capacity at Penn Station by 50 percent, is vital to meeting
the future transportation needs of the New York region and building in
the redundancy needed to preserve transportation capacity in the face
of events like Hurricane Sandy. It would involve building a new tunnel
under the Hudson that would be designed to prevent flooding and to
permit rapid recovery from emergencies and disruptions. It would also
harden Penn Station and other rail tunnels against future flooding. We
look forward to working closely with Amtrak, the states of New Jersey
and New York, and local authorities in both states to complete this
critically important project. It is an essential part of a regional
approach, and an important example of the kind of resilience and
redundancy we need to build into our transportation system--protecting
the rail system and offering an alternative to air and highway capacity
when the capacity of those systems is curtailed by storms and other
emergency events.
The National Freight Strategic Plan that is mandated by MAP-21
gives us an opportunity to look at the resilience and redundancy needs
of the freight system, and how they can be incorporated into our
freight infrastructure investment programs. As states develop State
Freight Plans, they need to reach out to neighboring states to
coordinate their planning efforts. We need to make efforts to expand
the regional coordination of these plans so as to build resilience and
redundancy into an overall regional transportation plan.
Hurricane Sandy has been a tragic but important wake-up call on the
need to build more resilience, redundancy, and regional coordination
into our transportation system. Last week, Senator Schumer called for a
comprehensive study of the range of options available to protect New
York harbor and the surrounding area from disastrous storms in the
future. The Department of Transportation stands ready to work with our
federal, state, and local partners, public and private, to address
these needs in a regionally coordinated way.
I thank the Subcommittee for inviting me to testify today and would
be happy to respond to any questions that you have.
Senator Lautenberg. So coming from where each of you has
been in these past weeks, I know that there has got to be
enormous frustration, enormous heartbreak in what you have seen
and I'm sure each of you understands so intimately what the
penalty is with having systems that cannot operate. You have
used judgment and I think you have made good decisions. We will
explore them a little bit here just to see what we can find out
for the benefit of the record and our plans for the future.
So, Joe Boardman, the President and CEO, Amtrak is going to
talk about the damage directly to Amtrak caused by the storm
and how we can better protect our rail system in the future.
Mr. Boardman?
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH H. BOARDMAN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, AMTRAK
Mr. Boardman. Thank you, Senator. Thank you for your
support for Amtrak for so many years. We understand what you
do. And we thank all the Senators here.
I think the first thing that I would like to say--and I do
have written testimony and I will be very brief here to get
through this for you--is that it also impacts both other
Senators here. Senator Wicker, your Crescent Service was unable
to complete its trip because of what happened in New York City.
And the Empire Builder, while it continued on to Chicago, could
not make the transfer no matter what the case was to get to New
York City. And this is the time of year when those families
that are scattered across the country really are bonded by the
ability of Amtrak to move them, and that is something that is
not captured in the dollars and the cents here.
When we look at what we really lost in terms of revenue, we
are at about $30 million just in terms of the few days that we
were out of business, and then direct cost to get things fixed
were another $30 million. So I think you are going to hear the
smallest numbers today from Amtrak in terms of our actual
costs, around $60 million of impact right this minute.
Initially what we understood was that we were going to have
a tail of impact of reduced revenues, and that has not
happened. And one of the reasons that has not happened is that
the real story here is the coordination and cooperation of the
leadership that got together, and it is about the men and women
of Amtrak, the men and women of New Jersey Transit, and the men
and women of MTA and the Port Authority that delivered a no-
nonsense delivery of services for the future.
We had four of the seven tunnels that go in New York
plugged with water, and on those four tunnels, we also--and you
have heard this before--had the electric system inundated by
salt water which meant that we have and still have difficulties
making those kinds of improvements.
And then we had the flooded electrical substation called
Sub 41 in Kearny, New Jersey that did not give us enough power
to move the trains in and out of New York.
But the real story for us to get done as quickly as we
did--and before the end of October, we were returning service
to Newark and then by early November, into New York, and even
by the 2nd of November, we had service between Washington and
Boston back--was the fact that we had funding in our general
capital that we used after the lessons we learned of 2001, 9/
11, to invest. And we invested in standpipes and fire and life
safety, and those helped us pump out the tunnels. And if they
had not been there, Senator, we would be not talking just days
but we would be talking weeks before we would have returned
service to New York City. So the right decision was made to
invest.
Second, we took Recovery Act funds and we began to clear
our right-of-ways early. We only had 80 downed trees on our
right-of-way which allowed us again to move things back much
quicker. So investment does work.
We were lucky, though. We were lucky because this is
century-old infrastructure, and it has got to be rebuilt. You
asked for a response about that leadership, not just of folks
here but all over the Northeast, and I heard it here and will
not go through it again. It was about the people that did
heroic things to make this come back.
But enough is enough. It is time to repair, rebuild, and
invest. We need to rebuild Substation 41. Substation 41 would
have been done under ARC. It will be done under Gateway, but it
needs to be done now. And our total ask here, what we are
looking for to rebuild that, to plan for high density signal
systems on the East River tunnels, which are four in number,
and the need for us to really get the job done, is 336 million
bucks. We need that investment now, not later. We have to take
action and deliver, just like we did after 9/11, the things
that are necessary for us to get this done today. And when I
mean today, I mean we need to start moving, planning, and
constructing.
And one final project is absolutely critical to New York
State, New Jersey, and even to Minnesota, and that is that we
have to preserve the next two tunnels going into New York for
the future. And they will be built and designed so that there
is no water that can go in there. We cannot shut down the two
tunnels under what transit people call the North River and I
call the Hudson today at all. The only two ways in from New
Jersey are through those two tubes. We need two more so that we
can rebuild the existing tubes so we do not have this
difficulty in the future. I need your help with that.
I appreciate the time you have given me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Boardman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joseph H. Boardman, President and
Chief Executive Officer, Amtrak
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the invitation to
testify today.
As you know, Hurricane Sandy was a sudden and unprecedented event,
leaving us no more than a couple of days to plan and prepare for impact
and recovery. I think we came through it well, and I'd like to pay
tribute up front to the men and women of Amtrak and to our partner
carriers. All of these folks really came together and pooled their
resources very effectively to prepare for the storm and get service
restored once it had hit. They helped us and we helped them, and that
cooperation was a very important part of the larger effort to get the
region moving again in the aftermath of the storm.
While we didn't get much time to prepare, I think we made good use
of the time we had. Our Engineering staff began planning on October 25,
while the center of the storm was still south of Florida. We fueled
vehicles, and we positioned them along with materials and equipment to
address likely problems with the electric traction and signal systems.
We inspected areas that were known to be at risk for flooding, and we
disabled several of the remotely controlled signal and switch
complexes--what we call ``interlockings''--that were at risk from high
water. On the 26th and 27th we positioned 22 repair crews for our
electrical system at strategic spots, we removed critical equipment
from low-lying areas, and we brought in generators and other equipment
to ensure we had pumping capacity and backup power capacity at likely
spots. We manned all of our communication centers to ensure that we
were tracking events and coordinating the inspection teams that we
dispatched to monitor the system's condition. In coordination with the
other NEC commuter railroads, we made a deliberate decision to shut
down the railroad on Monday, October 29, and this allowed us to bring
equipment into the yards and park it, and kept us from having to deal
with stranded trains and passengers.
While I'm going to speak to the damage we had to deal with and our
efforts to address it, I do want to stop before I go any further to
highlight a couple of key points that I'm sure many of the other people
here today will testify to. One is that we had an absolutely tremendous
amount of cooperation and assistance from our partner railroads who
were also affected--this includes Long Island Railroad, Norfolk
Southern, CSXT Transportation, of course, and Metro-North and New
Jersey Transit, and we worked with other carriers up and down the
Eastern Seaboard. But the cooperation and teamwork in the New York area
played a big part in the speedy restoration of service, and before I
talk about the sterling work our folks did, I want to make sure that
you know that our partners were with us every step of the way, and we
appreciate all of their help.
And we needed it, because Sandy lived up to billing. The storm
surge in lower Manhattan inundated the West Side Yard and flowed back
toward Penn Station. When it came to the Manhattan end of the North
River tunnels it flowed down into them--ultimately some 3.25 million
gallons of water flowed down into those two tunnels. The track damage
was minor, but the signal system and the electrically-powered sump
pumps were basically destroyed and required complete replacement. The
East River Tunnels were more heavily damaged, with more significant
track damage and a much higher degree of immersion, since they were
nearly full--they had more than 7 million gallons of water in them,
although the two parallel tunnels which are operated by the Long Island
Railroad were fortunately not flooded.
The Con-Ed power outages in Long Island deprived Penn Station and
Sunnyside Yard in Queens of electrical power, freezing trains in place;
other outages disabled the electrical system at various points south of
Wilmington. The electrical and signal systems suffered damage both from
high winds, which blew debris into wires and ripped down lines, and
from water infiltration, which caused electrical shorts and other
problems. The Kearny electrical substation that provides power to a
section of the NEC Leading to the Hudson River tunnels was totally
flooded. High winds damaged crossing gates and blew debris such as
metal roofing onto the tracks. Debris also clogged drains, leading to
pooling of water and requiring immediate cleaning to avert further
damage. In some places, track and roadbed structure was flooded or
eroded. Large movable components such as switches were jammed with
debris; smaller movable components such as relays were destroyed by
flying debris and required replacement. Many structures suffered damage
from winds or water. Two New Jersey Transit stations served by Amtrak,
Princeton Junction station and Trenton suffered from roof damage and
flooding, respectively, while water infiltration at the Washington
Union station control center required pumping. Approximately nine miles
of the New York City-Albany line were flooded to just below track level
by the Hudson River.
I think we kept abreast of the accumulating damage pretty well, so
we always had a picture of what the storm was doing and had done.
Diesel locomotives and inspection cars patrolled the territory around
the clock during and after the storm, to identify damage and assess
risk of further damage. Most areas were inspected multiple times, for a
total of nearly 2,353 miles of infrastructure inspection (Amtrak is
responsible for maintaining 363 miles of the 457 mile NECmainline).
Work began early on clearance and recovery. Trains of rock ballast
were loaded and positioned prior to storm landfall on Monday morning to
address erosion and flooding and the entire right-of-way was inspected
during and after the storm to identify damage and ensure safety. Every
movable bridge was inspected and as the storm moderated we were able to
begin the work of recovery. We ultimately had to remove 80 trees from
the right-of-way and repair the electrical system in 15 places--which
is, for reasons I will get into shortly, fewer than we might have
expected. There were two washouts to be replaced and a serious debris
slide, but once the water receded, we were able to quickly and easily
restore the four interlockings we shut down. CSXT helped us get a
ballast train from Albany down to Trenton, and New Jersey Transit
loaned us their ``Aqua Train'' which is very helpful in clearing light
deadfall off the right-of-way and washing the ballast, so that we could
keep the drainage-ways clear to ensure a solid and stable track
structure. With a lot of support from our partner railroads,
contractors, and our own workforce, which put in a lot of long hours
under very difficult conditions, we were able to reduce our challenges
to the Hudson River tunnels and the Kearny substation pretty quickly,
and we restored service between Washington and Newark, New Jersey on
Tuesday, October 31.
The tunnels serving New York were, however, a different matter.
They required pumping, and once the water level was down, they had to
be dried out and thoroughly inspected. The electric traction systems
were generally fine, because the water didn't get high enough to knock
them out, but the signal systems and internal pumping systems were
basically destroyed and required wholesale replacement. The Kearny
substation was under water, and it had to be pumped out, cleaned out,
inspected, and a lot of key electrical components had to be either
repaired or replaced. We were able to reopen the southernmost of the
Hudson River tunnels, known to the railroad as the North River tunnels
on Wednesday, November 1, and with the support and assistance of Long
Island Railroad, we were able to restore a limited Boston to Washington
service on the evening of Friday, November 2. The East River tunnels
were put back into service on November 10 and 11, and the northern
North River tube came back into service on November 12. It took about
four days to get the Kearny Substation restored, but that came back
online on November 16. During this time, we were able to provide some
assistance to our partners at Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit,
and Metro-North, and I hope we were as helpful to them as they were to
us.
While the work that went into the recovery effort was absolutely
tremendous, there's another aspect of it that I alluded to before, and
that's ``the work we didn't have to do.'' I want to make sure I mention
that, because I know how hard many members of this Committee have
worked to ensure that our capital program is adequately funded. Over
the last decade, Congress has invested substantial sums in our capital
program. Some of this money has come in annual appropriations, and some
came in the $1.3 billion grant Amtrak received directly under the terms
of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). While we're
typically familiar with the contributions this funding makes to the
most visible parts of our capital program--replacement of
infrastructure or equipment that is in disrepair or in danger of
``aging out''--it has also been used for programs that improve the
resilience of our system.
The first area is our Fire and Life Safety program for the tunnels
into and out of New York. We realized in 2001 that Amtrak had some
potential vulnerabilities associated with the New York tunnels, and I
give my predecessors credit for the speed with which they moved to
address these vulnerabilities once they were identified, and the work
that was done to ensure that the improvements were funded. A standpipe
system was installed; this was designed to allow the fire department to
pipe water into the tunnels in the event of a fire. Vertical turbine
pumps with a capacity of 700 gallons per minute were installed to
assist with drainage, access stairways were rebuilt and a basket
recovery system installed. Ventilation shafts were rebuilt and new
ventilating plants installed at the tops of the shafts to ensure a
sufficient supply of air into the tunnels.
The wisdom of these investments became apparent when we found
ourselves with four flooded tunnels. The access improvements allowed us
to get down into the tunnels to inspect them; the standpipe system gave
us a point to hook the pumps up to and a means to evacuate the water
from the tunnels, and the turbine pumps helped us pump the water out of
the tunnels. Finally, the ventilation system helped us get the diesel
fumes from the pumps out of the tunnel and dry out the tunnels once the
water was pumped out. These improvements meant a difference of days,
and perhaps weeks, in the restoration of service into and out of New
York, and up and down the East Coast.
Similarly, one of the very first projects we undertook with ARRA
money was the cleanup of our right-of-way. Trees are beautiful things,
so this was not an easy task, but they're a challenge to a railroad,
particularly if it's electrified like the Northeast Corridor is.
Whenever you get a good strong wind, something blows down, and it
doesn't necessarily need to be a whole tree. A dead limb can shut down
the electrical or signal systems if it falls in the right place. So we
undertook a right-of-way cleaning and clearing program as soon as we
had the money we took on the task of undertaking the necessary pruning
and tree removal. We've done about 230 miles of tree removal since
2008, and the result wasn't a complete absence of deadfall--this storm
was much too strong for that--but a manageable amount.
Similarly, we did a lot of work cleaning out the culverts and
ditches that carry runoff water away from our roadbed. Doing this
ensures effective drainage, and prevents water accumulation and the
challenges that come with it, such as erosion damage or the wholesale
washout of track structure and electrical and signal components. We did
have two washouts, but set against the magnitude of the storm, that's a
pretty low number.
So if there's a single idea I would ask the Committee to take away
from this hearing, it's this: investment works. We may take the
benefits of it for granted sometimes, but storms like this really
illustrate the vital point, which is that investment buys more than
just capacity--it buys resilience. That's a resilience the larger
community needs in times like this, to help it recovery from the
effects of the disaster.
I say this because we have spent a great deal of money on this
infrastructure, and I'm confident that we can keep it in service for
decades to come. But storms like this highlight the fragility of
century old structures, and the challenges that come when we're
confronted with weather and conditions the designers never anticipated.
They also highlight the lack of capacity. If we are going to continue
to support the region and provide for its growth, capacity is going to
be an issue, and we will need to address it. That means making the
investments we need now for systems that will provide additional
capacity of a day-to-day basis, and additional resilience in a crisis
like this one.
One lesson we've learned is that high density signaling in the East
River Tunnels between New York and Queens would be a simple and
comparatively inexpensive improvement that would greatly improve our
operational flexibility. We have high density signaling in the two
North River Tunnels between New York and New Jersey to accommodate the
traffic, but it hasn't been installed in the East River Tunnels because
there are four of them. Because the damage in the two flooded East
River tunnels was more extensive, we have not yet been able to return
them to full service, and that meant that the undamaged pair of tunnels
has had to carry a heavier traffic load. We can do it, but high density
signaling would allow us to carry a much heavier traffic load on the
same infrastructure, and would provide a much greater degree of
flexibility and resilience. We would like to obtain planning funding to
begin the process of improving the signal system.
While we've been able to restore Substation 41 at Kearny to
service, it's clearly vulnerable to flooding and we want to rebuild it
atop a platform that will be above the high water line, and we would
like to make the platform's footprint large enough so that we could add
additional electrical capacity at some point in the future to support
our plans for additional capacity into and out of New York. We also
need to improve the resilience of the infrastructure at Penn Station,
so we can ensure that the station's infrastructure and power supply are
capable of resisting a flood of the magnitude of Sandy.
We need this because I believe we need the Gateway Program. As you
know, Amtrak has a vision for expanded track, tunnel and terminal
capacity in New York City, and you, Chairman Lautenberg, and other
members of this Committee have supported it energetically. We've always
known that the city needs more rail capacity, and now it should be
clear that our rail transportation system as a whole needs more
resilience. That means a better ability to resist damage, recover from
an event, and return the system to service, and those requirements
translate into more capacity, pure and simple. We will continue to work
with the existing infrastructure, of course, but there are finite
limits to what we can accomplish, and the southern entrance to the
city's rail terminals is basically operating at those limits on a good
day. To address these three infrastructure needs--improving our
signals, hardening the infrastructure, and beginning the design and
construction of the Gateway project--and to cover the estimated
operating losses we incurred during the storm, Amtrak will need a total
of about $336 million.
We need a system that's robust enough to support our operational
needs not just on good days, but every day. And for that reason, I
would close by thanking Senator Lautenberg, the Committee and the
Department of Transportation for all the support they have given us as
we have developed and publicized this plan. We appreciate your support,
and we look forward to working with you to making the Gateway Project a
reality.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks very much, Mr. Boardman.
Mr. Lhota is from MTA, a pretty big operation, and we are
happy to have you here and ask if you would give us your view
on the recovery efforts and what the damage looks like for MTA.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH J. LHOTA, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, NEW YORK
METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
Mr. Lhota. Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chairman and
other Senators here. And thank you for inviting me to testify
before this committee on this critically important issue.
I am the Chairman and CEO of the New York State
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is the largest
transportation provider in the country. Every day the MTA moves
8.5 million people safely and securely to their jobs, their
schools, shopping, medical appointments. You name it; we get
them there.
Our network includes not just the New York City subway
system, but the New York City buses, the Staten Island Railway,
the Long Island Railroad, and Metro-North, as well as seven
vehicular bridges and two tunnels.
Along with other transportation systems represented on this
panel, the MTA is the lifeblood, as Senator Schumer said, of a
$1.4 trillion regional economy, the largest in the country,
which makes up 11 percent of the GDP of the entire country.
Just over a month ago, Hurricane Sandy brought our system
to its knees. We experienced a level of destruction that is
completely unprecedented in our 108-year history. Left in the
storm's wake were eight flooded subway tunnels and two
vehicular tunnels, 12 subway stations with major damage, some
of them absolutely destroyed. We lost an entire bridge and a
rail line serving the Rockaways in Queens, 15 miles of damaged
or destroyed signaling, and we had rail yards and maintenance
shops underwater and damaged.
Just as the superstorm was unprecedented, so was the level
of our preparation, and under the leadership of Governor Andrew
Cuomo, we shut down the entire system just for the second time
in our 108-year history.
As it turned out, even our preparations would not, actually
could not, have protected our entire system from the full force
of Sandy's wrath. At the height of the storm surge, the
Governor and I met at the Hugh L. Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel
in Lower Manhattan and what we saw there was truly
unbelievable. We watched more than 86 million gallons of
seawater flood and rush into the two tubes of that tunnel
alone.
Once Hurricane Sandy passed, our top priority was to
restore service as quickly and as safely as possible. And I
have to say this. I simply could not be more proud of the
workers of the MTA, labor and management, who worked so well on
behalf of all the people. We had buses up and running 7 hours
after the storm. Nine hours after that, we were at a complete
bus schedule. A few of our commuter rail lines were up and
running in less than 24 hours, and we had limited subway
service back in 36 hours.
Due to the complete loss of the flooded tunnels under the
East River, the subway service between Brooklyn and Manhattan
was completely halted. So for 3 days, we had to improvise. We
used 330 buses from our existing bus fleet to replace service
for the 1.4 million customers who commute every day between
Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Once our tunnels were cleared and power was restored, most
service was restored within a week. And today, most of our
transit system is up and running.
But let me be clear. We have not restored service to the
full capacity. We are nowhere near normal operations, and that
will not be for quite some time. It is important to remember
that hundreds of millions of gallons of salt water completely
inundated our system that is over 100 years old. We will be
feeling the residual effect of this storm for months, if not
years to come.
In our efforts to restore service, we used over 80 percent
of our inventory of equipment, nearly exhausting all of our
replacement supplies. The useful life for many of our signals,
switches, and relays have depleted exponentially. The South
Ferry/Whitehall Station, a critical stop for riders coming in
to Manhattan from Staten Island or for those workers on Wall
Street was completely destroyed. The subway lines along the
bridge connecting the Rockaway Peninsula to the rest of Queens
is just gone. The subway tunnel for the R train connecting
Brooklyn Heights to Manhattan still is not operational. We have
subway lines running at slower headways, resulting in longer
commutes and severe crowding.
Nearly a half million of our customers either have no
service, reduced service, or have to take alternative routes.
To put that into perspective, that is equal to the entire
populations of the cities of Miami, Cleveland, Atlanta, or
Pittsburgh that have no transportation or have their commute
significantly longer.
While our preparations and quick recovery helped to limit
the impact of our storm, our preliminary estimates total nearly
$5 billion in damages and this figure could possibly rise. As
you know, salt water and metal and salt water and electronic
devices do not mix very, very well. After marinating for weeks,
the useful life for many of our signals, switches, and relays
have depleted exponentially. But this figure represents just
what we need to get the system back to where we were the day
before the storm hit. Over and above that, it is critical that
we make the critical investments we need to protect our system
from future storms.
As President Obama has said, we must act and we must
rebuild. When you consider the fact that the New York
metropolitan region completely shuts down without the MTA and
that that region makes up 11 percent of our country's GDP, this
is clearly much more than a New York issue or a New York need.
This is a national issue. It is a national need, and we are
going to need the help of the Federal Government to help us
rebuild the MTA.
And, Senator, thank you very much for this opportunity, and
I look forward to questions later.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lhota follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joseph J. Lhota, Chairman and CEO, New York
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Good morning, Chairman Lautenberg, Ranking Member Wicker, and other
members of the Committee.
Thank you for inviting me to testify on this critically important
issue. I'm Joseph Lhota and I am the Chairman and CEO of New York
State's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the largest
transportation provider in the country. Every day, the MTA moves eight
and a half million people safely and securely to their jobs, their
schools, shopping, medical appointments, you name it--we take them
there.
Our network includes the New York City Subways and Buses, the
Staten Island Railway, the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North
Railroad, as well as seven vehicular bridges and two tunnels.
Along with the other transportation systems represented on this
panel, the MTA is the lifeblood of a $1.4 trillion regional economy--
the largest in the country and making up 11 percent of the Nation's
GDP.
But just over a month ago, Hurricane Sandy brought our system to
its knees. We experienced a level of destruction that is completely
unprecedented in our 108-year history.
Left in the storm's wake were eight subway tunnels and two
vehicular tunnels that were flooded, some completely from floor to
ceiling; 12 subway stations with major damage or completely destroyed;
we lost an entire bridge and rail line serving the a critical subway
line serving the Rockaways in Queens; 15 miles of damaged or destroyed
signaling; rail yards and maintenance shops under-water and damaged--
all adding up to billions and billions of dollars in damages.
Just as this superstorm was unprecedented, so was the level of our
preparation. We knew it was going to be bad and we prepared for the
worst. Under the leadership of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, we shut
down the entire system for just the second time in our 108-year
history--suspending service on each of our five operating agencies, and
closing our two tunnels and all seven of our bridges.
As it turned out, even all our preparations would not--could not--
have protected our system from the full force of Sandy's wrath. At the
height of the superstorm's surge, Governor Cuomo and I met at the Hugh
L. Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in Lower Manhattan, and what we saw
there was truly unbelievable. We watched as more than 86 million
gallons of seawater flooded the two tubes of that that tunnel alone.
Once Hurricane Sandy passed, our top priority was to restore
service as quickly and as safely possible. And I have to say this, I
simply could not be more proud of the MTA labor and management and how
they handled the storm.
Even before the superstorm was over, they were out there repairing
the system. We had buses up-and-running seven hours after the storm.
Only nine hours after that, buses were running full-schedule. A few of
our commuter trains were running less than 24 hours after the storm
passed. Limited subway service was back 36 hours after the storm.
Due to the complete loss of the flooded tunnels under the East
River, subway service between Brooklyn and Manhattan was at a complete
halt. So for three days, we had to improvise. We used 330 buses from
our existing bus fleet to replace service for the 1.4 million customers
who commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan every day.
Some people chose to drive during this time and as a result, New
York City was completely gridlocked--inundated with cars. When our
network is running at full strength, it is estimated that the MTA keeps
approximately 700,000 cars from entering New York City's Central
Business District every day. And with our transit system crippled, cars
didn't just ``block the box.'' They blocked the entire island of
Manhattan.
Once our tunnels were cleared and power was restored, most service
was restored within a week. And today, most of our transit system is
up-and-running.
But let me be clear: While we have restored service, we are nowhere
close to normal operations and won't be for quite some time. It's
important to remember that hundreds of millions of gallons of salt
water completely inundated a system that's over 100 years old. We will
be feeling the residual effect of this storm for months, if not years
to come.
In our efforts to restore service, we used over 80 percent of our
inventory of equipment, nearly exhausting all of our replacement
supplies. South Ferry/Whitehall Station, which is a critical stop for
those riders coming from Staten Island, as well as those riders that
work near Wall Street, was completely destroyed. The subway line, along
with the bridge, connecting the Rockaways Peninsula and the rest of
Queens is just gone. The subway tunnel for the R train connecting
Brooklyn and Manhattan still isn't operational. We have subway lines
running at slower headways, resulting in longer commutes and severe
crowding.
Nearly half a million of our customers either have no service,
reduced service, or have to take alternative routes. To put that in
perspective, that's equal to the entire populations of the cities of
Miami, Cleveland, Atlanta, or Pittsburgh having no transportation or
having their commute become significantly longer.
While our preparations and quick recovery helped to limit the
impact of the storm, our preliminary estimates total nearly $5 billion
in damages and this figure could rise. As you know, salt water and
metal, and salt water and electronic devices, don't mix very well.
After marinating for weeks, the useful life for many of our signals,
switches and relays have depleted exponentially. But this figure
represents just what we need to get the system back to where it was the
day before the storm. Over and above that, it's critical that we make
the critical investments we need to protect our system from future
storms.
As President Obama has said, we must and we will rebuild. New
Yorkers are resilient and we always bounce back. When you consider the
fact that the New York metropolitan region completely shuts down
without the MTA . . . and that the region makes up a full 11 percent of
our entire nation's GDP, this is clearly much more than a New York
story, or a New York need. This is a national issue. A national need.
And we're going to need the Federal Government's help to rebuild.
Once again, Chairman Lautenberg, thank you for holding this
important hearing and for giving me the opportunity to testify before
the Committee. I welcome any questions you may have.
Senator Lautenberg. We almost need the constant reminders
about the national heirloom of this event. This is not just
regional. It is not just a bi-State thing. This threads through
our entire economy. And thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. Foye, you are the Executive Director of the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey. We will hear from you
about the Port Authority's efforts to recover from damage to
the authority's tunnels, trains, airports, and port.
And I take a moment to remind you, Mr. Foye, that I was a
Commissioner of the Port Authority before I came here, and
actually I was driven to my interest here as a result of the
traffic. The company I was running was ADP, a very large
company, and we had vehicles crossing the river and they took
longer and longer and longer to get to their destination and
back. And were it not for the technology that now you see runs
rampant through our lives, we never could have done it. But the
situation in the New York region is really miraculous in so
many ways, and I think the agency is a great agency, not
without its faults.
STATEMENT OF PATRICK J. FOYE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PORT
AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY
Mr. Foye. Well, Chairman Lautenberg, let me begin by
thanking you for your service to our country and the private
sector as a Commissioner to the Port Authority and in the
Senate.
Chairman Lautenberg and members of the Committee, thank you
for holding this important hearing.
On behalf of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,
Senator Lautenberg, I want to thank you personally for your
tireless support of the Port Authority and our region. It is a
privilege today to testify before you and this esteemed
committee.
I also want to thank Governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and
Chris Christie of New Jersey for their strong leadership
before, during, and after Superstorm Sandy. We are truly
fortunate to have such remarkable Governors leading the region
through this incredibly difficult time.
I am Pat Foye, Executive Director of the Port Authority of
New York and New Jersey. For those unfamiliar with the agency,
we operate what is the most important multi-mode transportation
network in the world.
Briefly our transportation assets include five airports,
three of which comprise the busiest airport system in the
country: JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports. We also maintain
and operate four bridges, including the George Washington
Bridge, as you know, Senator Lautenberg, the busiest vehicular
in the world, and the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels which link
New York and New Jersey. Our other assets include the world's
busiest bus terminal, the largest port complex on the east
coast, and a bi-State inter-rail system known as PATH.
Annually more than 109 million people use our airports,
which also handle more than 2.1 million tons of cargo. About
465 million people use our Hudson River and Staten Island
bridges and tunnels. Seventy-seven million people ride PATH,
and about 3.4 million cargo containers move through our ports.
All told, we transport nearly 700 million people a year and
billions of dollars worth of goods through our vital and
indispensable transportation network.
As we all now know, however, Superstorm Sandy brought this
critical transportation network to a complete halt just over a
month ago. Knowing a potential for widespread damage, we took
all possible precautions under the direction of our Governors.
At the Port Authority we conduct exercises and drills
throughout the year for all types of hazards, including major
weather events. Days before Sandy arrived, we filled and placed
thousands of sandbags, secured all items that could become
flying debris, and installed floodgates. We also shut down
vulnerable facilities a full day before the storm. For example,
we took PATH out of service, brought our trains to higher
ground, and closed our airports as airline tenants canceled
10,000 flights.
When Sandy struck, the devastation was great. The tidal
surge that reached over 13 feet exceeded the 100-year flood
level for Lower Manhattan by more than 2 feet. The storm
crippled our transportation system, causing widespread flooding
and power outages. We had no choice but to shutter most of our
facilities.
As soon as the storm subsided, we began assessing the
damage at all of our facilities. Our ports suffered extensive
flooding with toppled cargo containers, washed-out access
roads, twisted rail track, barges and debris tossed about on
piers and, less visible but perhaps more critical, damaged
electrical infrastructure. The flooding at the ports disrupted
the region's supply chain, stranding cargo for weeks, and
caused significant damage, including the destruction of more
than 15,000 automobiles by salt water.
At the airports, LaGuardia alone had an estimated 100
million gallons of seawater flood the airfield, and at one
point, you could not distinguish parts of the aeronautical
areas, our runways and taxiways, from Flushing Bay. Newark,
JFK, and Teterboro airports also suffered significant flooding
and power outages.
The Port Authority bus terminal, the primary bus facility
for New York City and the region, experienced a tremendous blow
as commuter bus carriers completely halted their service,
disrupting travel for over 200,000 daily passengers. The
Holland Tunnel also flooded, forcing the closure of this vital
transportation link between New York and New Jersey for days.
As bad as the impact was to these facilities, it soon
became apparent that PATH suffered the most severe blow. This
vital interstate link, built more than 100 years ago, was
completely devastated by flooding. The storm water soaked
caissons containing racks of critical and decades-old signal
and communications equipment with corrosive seawater, causing
extensive and in some cases irreparable damage.
Our PATH team worked around the clock to pump out tunnels
and stations and go through the painstaking process of
restoring power to the substations, testing and repairing or
replacing equipment along the entire route. One of our workers,
Tom O'Neill, risked his own life literally, jumping into
several feet of flood water so he could restart a critical
pump. Tom told me he was simply doing his job, much like the
hundreds of PATH workers still toiling to restore full service
to our network.
Men and women of the Port Authority Police Department made
lifesaving contributions.
In spite of the devastating damage to our transit
infrastructure, just one day after the storm, we were able to
reopen four bridges, an action that was vital to reestablishing
the connection between New York and New Jersey across the
Hudson as quickly as possible.
On October 31, remarkably less than 2 days after the storm,
JFK and Newark airports reopened, and the following day
LaGuardia Airport restarted flight operations.
As for PATH, we were able to restore limited service one
week after the storm and have since restored service to all our
stations with the exception of Hoboken Station where today 90
to 100 people are working. Hoboken terminal suffered the most
extreme damage.
The Port Authority has not traveled this difficult road
alone. Many of the agency's partners, including USDOT, FRA, and
FTA, have been incredibly supportive, as have Invensys Rail in
Louisville, Kentucky; Trilogy Communications in Senator
Wicker's home State of Mississippi, Pearl, Mississippi; Ansaldo
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Alstom in Rochester, New York; and
GE, which opened a factory in Puerto Rico at our request to
manufacture PATH replacement parts that have not been made for
years.
What happens in our port district and to our port district
affects the entire nation. Our losses from Superstorm Sandy
ripple through the entire country. We must never lose sight
that recovering from Sandy is not a local issue. It is a
national matter.
As Governor Cuomo noted, the past few years have shown that
100-year storms are not reserved for once in a century. It is
critical that we rebuild with greater resiliency and
redundancy. We will rebuild, but we need the Federal
Government's help.
As you know, Senator Lautenberg, the Port Authority
receives no taxpayer money from either New York or New Jersey.
We rely solely on user fees, rents, tolls, and fares, and all
of those revenue streams have their limitations. We are still
assessing exact costs of repair and recovery, but clearly our
needs are enormous. We face hundreds of millions of dollars and
immediate repair costs and billions of dollars to install a
mitigation project such as protecting and elevating electrical
substations at PATH and the airports, as well as additional
pumping capacity at LaGuardia and JFK airports to safeguard our
system in the future.
In conclusion, the Obama Administration and this Congress
have been great partners throughout this process, and for that
we are grateful. The costs, no doubt, will be high, but they
would be unfathomable in terms of the cost of lost
productivity, disabled economies, and a fractured
transportation network should we fail to make those repairs and
investments.
The road ahead will be a challenge, but with the help of
the Federal Government and our partners in the Federal
Government, we know that recovery is possible.
Thank you for holding this hearing, Senator.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Foye follows:]
Prepared Statement of Patrick J. Foye, Executive Director, Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey
Chairman Lautenberg, Ranking Member Wicker, and members of the
Committee, thank you for holding this important hearing.
Chairman Lautenberg, on behalf of the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey, I thank you for your tireless support of the Port
Authority and the region. It is a privilege to testify before you and
this esteemed committee.
I also want to thank Governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris
Christie of New Jersey for their strong leadership before, during and
after Superstorm Sandy. We are truly fortunate to have such remarkable
governors leading the region through this incredibly difficult time.
I am Pat Foye, Executive Director of The Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey. For those unfamiliar with our agency, we operate what
is arguably the most important multi-mode transportation network in the
world.
Our transportation assets include five airports, three of which
comprise the busiest airport system in the country: JFK, LaGuardia, and
Newark Airports. We also maintain and operate four bridges including
the George Washington Bridge, the busiest vehicular crossing in the
world, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, which link New York and New
Jersey. Other assets include the world's busiest bus terminal; the
largest port complex on the East Coast; and a bi-state commuter rail
system known as PATH.
Annually, more than 109 million people use our airports, which also
handle more than 2.1 million tons of cargo . . . about 465 million
people use our Hudson River and Staten Island bridges and tunnels . . .
77 million people ride PATH . . . and about 3.4 million cargo
containers move through our ports. All told, we transport nearly 700
million people a year and billions of dollars worth of goods through
our vital and indispensable transportation network.
As we all now know, however, Superstorm Sandy brought this critical
transportation network to a complete halt just over a month ago. We
knew this storm would be an unprecedented weather event with the
potential for widespread damage, and under the direction of our
governors, we took all possible precautions.
We conducted exercises and drills throughout the year for all types
of hazards, including major weather events. Days before Sandy arrived,
we filled and placed thousands of sandbags, we secured all items that
could become flying debris, and we closed floodgates--in short, we did
everything within our power to prepare. We also shut down vulnerable
parts of our facilities on Sunday, October 28, a full day before the
storm. For example, we took PATH out of service and brought our trains
to higher ground. We followed suit at our airports, as airline tenants
worked to cancel flights and move their aircraft out of the region.
When Sandy struck, it wasn't long before our facilities were
overwhelmed by the historic storm surge that followed. On the evening
of Monday, October 29, as the storm swept through, the tidal surge
eventually reached over 13 feet. To put this in context, the 100-year
flood level for lower Manhattan is 11 feet. Superstorm Sandy exceeded
this level by more than two feet.
The destruction wrought by Superstorm Sandy on the Port Authority
was unprecedented and it crippled our transportation system. Through
the night and into early Tuesday morning, October 30, we saw widespread
flooding and power outages, forcing us to close all of our facilities
except for the Lincoln Tunnel and Stewart Airport--the only facilities
largely spared from the storm in great part simply because of their
geographical locations.
With the airports closed and airline carriers cancelling more than
10,000 flights, the ripple effect was far and wide. Fifteen to 20
percent of all U.S. flights pass through the Port Authority's airports,
and 18 percent of our Nation's international flights use New York as a
gateway.
As soon as the storm subsided, we began assessing the damage at all
of our facilities. Our ports suffered extensive flooding with toppled
cargo containers, washed-out access roads, twisted rail track, barges
and debris tossed about on piers, and, less visible--but perhaps more
critical--damaged electrical infrastructure. The flooding at the ports
disrupted the region's supply chain stranding cargo for weeks, and
causing significant damage, including the destruction of more than
15,000 cars by the salt water.
At the airports, LaGuardia alone had an estimated 100 million
gallons of seawater flood the airfield, and at one point, you could not
distinguish parts of the aeronautical areas--our runways and taxiways--
from Flushing Bay. Newark, JFK and Teterboro airports also suffered
significant flooding and power outages.
The Port Authority Bus Terminal, the primary bus facility for New
York City and the region, experienced a tremendous blow as commuter bus
carriers completely halted their service. You can imagine the
disruptions this caused for the 200,000 daily passengers who rely on
the bus lines that serve the PABT between New York City and all of the
outlying areas across several states. Sandy's impact to the region's
commuter transportation network at the terminal continues to this day.
The Holland Tunnel also flooded, forcing the closure of this vital
transit link between New York and New Jersey for days.
As bad as the impact was to all of our facilities, it soon became
apparent that PATH suffered the most severe blow. This vital interstate
link that each year carries 77 million people between Newark, Jersey
City, Hoboken, midtown Manhattan and lower Manhattan was completely
devastated by flooding.
The historic storm surge flooded the PATH tunnels that were built
more than 100 years ago underneath the Hudson River, soaking caissons
containing racks of critical and decades-old signal and communications
equipment with corrosive seawater, causing extensive, and in some
cases, irreparable damage.
Our PATH team worked around the clock to pump out the tunnels and
stations and go through the painstaking process of restoring power to
the substations, testing and repairing or replacing equipment along the
entire route. One of our workers, Tom O'Neill, risked his own well-
being jumping into several feet of floodwaters so he could restart a
critical pump. Tom O'Neill, told me he was simply ``doing his job,''
much like the hundreds of PATH workers still toiling around-the-clock
to restore full service to our network, something I will describe in
more detail in a minute.
First, let me give you a quick summary of our efforts to return the
agency's operations to normal. By late Tuesday morning, October 30,
just one day after the storm, we were able to reopen our four bridges,
an action that was vital to re-establishing the interstate vehicular
link as quickly as possible.
On Wednesday, October 31, remarkably less than two full days after
the storm, JFK and Newark airports reopened, and the following day,
Thursday, November 1, LaGuardia Airport restarted flight operations.
Our airport operations and maintenance crews, together with the FAA,
pumped out and restored critical airfield lighting and electronics on a
remarkable timetable. They cleared mountains of debris, including boats
and barges that had washed up on our runways in order to get the
airports reopened and to get critically needed goods and people flowing
into the region again.
By Friday, November 2, the Holland Tunnel, the interstate traffic
artery between Jersey City and lower Manhattan severed by the storm,
reopened to buses following one of many, many heroic efforts by Port
Authority staff. In the case of the Holland Tunnel, our crews pumped
out an estimated 20 million gallons of water from the tubes to return
them to service.
By Sunday, November 4, after the U.S. Coast Guard had surveyed the
harbor to ensure the safety of ships, the first container ships began
arriving at our ports, and by the following day, all the port
facilities had reopened.
As for PATH, thanks to round-the-clock efforts of our team, we were
able to restore limited service on PATH on Tuesday, November 6, one
week after the storm, between Jersey City and midtown Manhattan, and
have since restored service to all our stations with the exception of
Hoboken Terminal, which suffered the most significant damage. Hoboken
Station serves 8.5 million passengers a year or the equivalent of
29,000 people every weekday, so restoring this service is our number
one priority. To enable crews to work on critically needed repairs, we
are currently running service between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. This allows us
to complete work that would otherwise take months longer.
The Port Authority has not traveled this difficult road alone. Many
of the agency's partners including the USDOT, FRA and FTA have been
incredibly supportive. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Invensys
Rail, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, whose teams have worked
day and night to build a replacement switch system for us. In addition,
the folks at Trilogy Communications in Pearl, Mississippi, who supplied
us with 3,200 pounds of a critical communications cable on 36 hours
notice over a weekend, no less. Also, the employees of Ansaldo based in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are building critical components so that we
can restore PATH service fully and GE opened a factory in Puerto Rico
at our request to manufacture replacement parts that haven't been made
for years.
What happens in our Port District--and what happens to our Port
District--affects the Nation. Now we are concerned that losses in
productivity as a direct result of Superstorm Sandy also will ripple
throughout the country.
With PATH operating at less than full strength and as NJ Transit
continues its efforts to return to full service, people are taking
longer and longer to get to work and return home. What may normally
have been a 45-minute commute for many has now doubled--or worse.
We are talking about impacts to millions of people: Regional
businesses and government entities employ more than eight million
workers, many of whom cannot move about without public transportation.
On a normal workday, up to one million travelers use the Port
Authority's Interstate Transportation Network--whether by car, train,
or ferry. Another example: Ten thousand people who work at LaGuardia,
nearly half the workforce there, use public transportation. At JFK, the
numbers are even greater: 55 percent of the workforce or more than
35,000 people rely on mass transit. When the MTA shuts down or runs
limited service, it has a direct impact on our ability to run our
airports--and an incalculable impact on the livelihoods of our region's
households. We are a densely populated region, the Nation's most
concentrated economic center, all made possible by a vital, functioning
transportation network.
The PATH system alone provides a critical transit link across the
Hudson River. Commuters use PATH to travel to their offices and work
locations in Lower Manhattan and Midtown and the current outages have
caused significant additional burdens on workers and employers by
shifting commuter flows onto already congested crossings. On a normal
workday, 392,000 people travel to work in the NY metro region from New
Jersey, while 127,000 travel from NY to the New Jersey counties of the
Port Authority region. These last weeks have been anything but normal.
Our facilities have a tremendous impact on the regional and
national economies. Our airports facilitate transport of passengers and
cargo across the entire United States and the port facilities have been
an increasingly important gateway for cargo on the Eastern Seaboard.
Roughly 40 percent of all containerized cargo arriving at the port is
destined for the Midwest or other locations in the country, so it is
important that we do not lose sight of a central fact: recovering from
Sandy is not a local issue for us; it is a national economic and
security issue for everyone.
We will rebuild, but along with the States of New York and New
Jersey, the Port Authority will need the Federal government's help. The
Port Authority receives no taxpayer money from either New York or New
Jersey. We rely exclusively on user fees, rents and bonds, and all of
those revenue streams have their limitations. We are still assessing
exact costs of repair and recovery and determining what insurance may
cover, but clearly our needs are enormous: We are facing hundreds of
millions of dollars in immediate repair costs, and billions more in
mitigation and resiliency measures.
The Obama Administration and Congress have been such great partners
throughout this process--and for that we are grateful. The costs no
doubt will be high, but the costs--should we fail to make these repairs
and investments--are unfathomable in terms of the cost of lost
productivity, disabled economies, and a fractured transportation
network.
The road ahead will be a challenge to us all, but with your help
and support, I am confident we will rebuild better and stronger.
Thank you for all you have done, and for inviting me to speak
today.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks very much.
Mr. Weinstein, we know each other so well. We are neighbors
at our professional office space across the street, and because
of the densely populated character of our area, we have a lot
of service to supply. And, Jim, I think you have done it well
and we are proud of the people at New Jersey Transit and the
sacrifices so many of them made to be on the job regardless of
how they got to do it. So we are glad to hear from you.
STATEMENT OF JAMES WEINSTEIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
NJ TRANSIT CORPORATION
Mr. Weinstein. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to
be here this morning, and I thank you for that, you and the
other Senators. And it is an honor to have you as our senior
Senator.
New Jersey Transit, like its sister agencies, began
monitoring and planning for Sandy days before the storm came
ashore. Personnel were put on alert, buildings battened down,
equipment marshaled based on the best available weather
forecasts, historical experience, and other information we had.
Shutting down and securing the largest statewide transit
system in the country is a complex and time-consuming task. It
takes at least 12 hours to shut down the railroad, and it must
be done in a way that keeps our customers safe, our employees
safe, and our equipment protected as best possible. Thus, the
process must be completed hours before a storm's arrival.
Nonetheless, despite the successful shutdown of our system,
the damage Sandy inflicted on our transit network was
unprecedented. Every one of New Jersey Transit's 12 rail lines
was damaged. Systemwide, more than 630 trees fell on rights-of-
way, along with 23 miles of catenary and other wire that came
down. 90-foot catenary poles 40 miles inland were snapped in
half. 9 bridges, including two draw bridges, one of which you
have seen in the illustrations today, suffered severe damage,
including one that was knocked askew from its supports when it
was hit by boats set adrift in the storm.
In addition, key electrical substations were destroyed,
while signal and other critical systems were impacted. The
historic Hoboken terminal and other facilities, including New
Jersey Transit's main maintenance and repair facility, were
flooded. The damage to rail cars and locomotives is a
particular focus of our ongoing post-storm recovery efforts and
analysis.
New Jersey Transit also suffered damage to the rights-of-
way of our three light rail lines around the state and some
effects at our 17 bus garages. But there is no denying it. The
brunt of the storm fell on our rail system.
Altogether, we estimate the cost of curing Sandy's damage
at nearly $400 million. That breaks down roughly to $100
million for rail equipment, including rolling stock, and some
$300 million to fix and replace track, wires, signaling,
electrical substations and equipment, as well as to cover the
costs of emergency supplemental bus and ferry service that we
provided and lost revenue.
Moreover, this $400 million does not include what we
believe would need to be an $800 million investment necessary
to make our system more resilient and redundant in the face of
future storms like Sandy.
New Jersey Transit staff, in close coordination with
Governor Christie's office, continues to work with the Federal
Transit Administration, USDOT, FEMA, Amtrak, the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey, private industry, and our insurance
adjustors on all aspects of storm recovery. In the immediate
wake of the storm, we created new bus and ferry service that
carried thousands of commuters to and from New York while
emergency repairs were made to the rail system. Rail workers
fixed washouts, restrung catenary lines, removed trees, utility
poles and even boats from rights-of-way and did so in record
time.
Thanks to their dedication and that of the 11,000 employees
of our agency, I am proud to report that New Jersey Transit's
12 rail lines are again running at more than 90 percent of full
service and that we are back to full pre-hurricane service
levels on our bus, light rail, and Access Link Para Transit
modes.
Most importantly, I want to express my thanks to the
hundreds of thousands of daily customers for their patience and
understanding while New Jersey Transit and, indeed, the entire
state of New Jersey continues to rebuild after this terrible
storm.
Although the system has returned to near normal for our
daily customers, repairs are continuing and will go on,
frankly, for months. For example, two of the electrical
substations that were submerged and destroyed by Sandy will
take months to replace. There are no off-the-shelf replacements
for such units. New substations have to be designed and built
from scratch, a process that will take 6 to 9 months. Until one
of these stations is restored, we can only run diesel service
into Hoboken, diminishing our ability to serve the more than
30,000 people who go into Hoboken every day and use the Port
Authority's PATH system, when it returns, as a gateway to the
financial district in Lower Manhattan.
Another substation provides power to our Meadows
Maintenance Complex in Kearny, New Jersey, and for our Rail
Operations Center which is nearby. The maintenance complex is
our main site for inspection and repair of our rail cars and
locomotives, and we are now using generators to provide limited
electric power. But this constrains our work there. It limits
our ability to recover fully. The rail operations center is the
central nervous system of the entire network and controls
dispatching, track switches, signals, and the like, and if it
is not functioning, our railroad is not functioning.
On these and other repairs, we are working diligently with
our suppliers and outside contractors to get new equipment. As
I mentioned, in some cases such as the electrical substations,
this requires actually designing and manufacturing new units
from scratch.
But it is important, Mr. Chairman, to understand that to
simply repair these substations, the maintenance facilities,
and other infrastructure to their previous state just is not
enough. Money invested in preventing future storm damage will
limit the bill for future storm relief, as well as ensuring
that our transit system has a better chance of avoiding service
interruptions in the future.
For example, the electrical substations New Jersey Transit
is looking at rather than just restoring is lifting them up,
elevating them so they cannot be penetrated by flood waters in
the future.
Repairs and resiliency both require investment, Mr.
Chairman. We appreciate the Committee's interest and any
assistance the Committee, Congress, and the administration can
provide in helping us renew New Jersey's transit system and
improve it for the future. New Jersey relies on public
transportation to work.
We look forward to working with you to help restore our
system and to protect its future.
I thank you again for your willingness to hold these
hearings, Mr. Chairman, and would be happy to answer any
questions you might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weinstein follows:]
Prepared Statement of James Weinstein, Executive Director,
NJ TRANSIT Corporation
Good morning Mr. Chairman and Senators.
Thank you for giving NJ TRANSIT an opportunity to appear before you
today to outline the unprecedented damage Superstorm Sandy inflicted on
NJ TRANSIT, the largest statewide transit agency in America. We share
your interest in the need to further strengthen the resilience of our
transportation system for future storms.
Sandy was a massive and merciless storm that spanned hundreds of
miles, and that increased in speed and strength as it made landfall a
few miles south of Atlantic City. It was a storm whose wind-driven
surge decimated the coast line and severely affected inland areas,
taking dozens of lives in New Jersey, and destroying thousands of homes
and businesses. Sandy knocked out power to millions for days and even
weeks, and dealt crushing blows to New Jersey's transit and
transportation network.
Sandy's effects on New Jersey's transit system will be felt for
months to come.
With that said, let me begin by providing a brief overview of NJ
TRANSIT.
As the Nation's largest statewide transit agency, we provide more
than 900,000 rides to our customers each day, across more than 5,300
square miles of territory, from the southern tip of New Jersey to the
Hudson River, and across the Hudson to Manhattan. NJ TRANSIT's more
than 11,000 employees operate fleets of more than 2,100 buses, more
than 1,200 rail cars and locomotives, and nearly 100 light rail
vehicles. These fleets enable us to run more than 700 trains and some
260 bus routes per day.
Mr. Chairman, Sandy demonstrated all-too graphically that transit
keeps New Jersey moving, and keeps our economy moving. When transit
stops, large portions of our state and our region, and the economy,
stop, too.
Superstorm Sandy brought our transit system to a halt, not just in
New Jersey but in the entire region. The intensity of Sandy's wrath was
far beyond anything in the history of NJ TRANSIT. Indeed, Sandy's fury
was beyond anything New Jersey had experienced from a storm in
generations.
NJ TRANSIT, like its sister agencies, began monitoring and planning
for Sandy days before she came ashore. Personnel were put on alert,
buildings battened down, equipment marshaled based on the best
available weather forecasts, historical experience and other
information.
Shutting down and securing a vast transit system is a complex and
time-consuming task. It takes a minimum of more than 12 hours and must
be done in a way that keeps our customer safe, our employees safe, and
our equipment safe. The process has to begin--and be finished--long
before a storm's arrival.
Despite the successful shutdown of the NJ TRANSIT system, the
damage Sandy inflicted on our transit network was unprecedented.
Sandy damaged every one of NJ TRANSIT'S 12 rail lines. System-wide,
more than 630 trees fell on rights-of-way, along with 23-plus miles of
catenary power and other wire. Ninety-foot catenary poles 40 miles
inland from the coast were snapped in half. Nine bridges, including two
major draw bridges, suffered severe damage, including one that was
knocked askew from its supports when it was hit by boats set adrift in
the storm. Nearly eight miles of track and roadbed were washed out,
much of it along our hardest-hit North Jersey Coast Line. The Coast
Line was where you may have seen pictures of the large fishing boats
and a metal shipping container left perched atop the tracks on railroad
bridges over coastal rivers.
In addition, key electrical substations were destroyed, while
signal and other critical systems were affected. The historic Hoboken
Terminal and other facilities, including NJ TRANSIT's main maintenance
and repair facility, were flooded. The damage to a number of rail cars
and locomotives is a particular focus of our ongoing post-storm
analysis.
NJ TRANSIT also suffered damage to the rights of way of our three
light rail lines around the state, and some effects at our 17 bus
garages. But there is no denying the rail system took the brunt of
Sandy's wrath.
Altogether, we estimate the cost of curing Sandy's damage at nearly
$400 million. That breaks down roughly into a little more than $100
million for rail equipment, including rolling stock, and some $300
million to fix and replace track, wires, signaling, electrical
substations and equipment, as well as to cover the costs of emergency
supplemental bus and ferry service, and lost revenue.
This $400 million does not include the $800 million we believe is
necessary to mitigate and harden the transit system to make it more
resilient in the face of future storms like Sandy.
I would be remiss if I did not also stress to the Committee that
the work done by the men and women of NJ TRANSIT after the storm, and
their colleagues at the MTA and the Port Authority, have been nothing
short of Herculean.
Mr. Chairman, the workers of NJ TRANSIT put our systems back on the
streets and the rails beginning within hours of the storm's passing. NJ
TRANSIT staff worked with Governor Christie and his Administration,
with the Federal Transit Administration, FEMA, Amtrak, private industry
and our insurance adjusters on all aspects of storm recovery. Notably,
we worked together to quickly create new bus and ferry service that
carried thousands and thousands of commuters to and from New York each
day, while emergency repairs were made to the rail system. Rail workers
fixed washouts, restrung power lines, removed trees, utility poles and
even boats from rights-of-way, and did so in record time.
Thanks to their dedication, I am proud to report that NJ TRANSIT's
12 rail lines are again running more than 90 percent of full service,
and that we are back to full, pre-hurricane service levels on our bus,
light rail and Access Link Para transit modes.
I also want to express my thanks to our hundreds of thousands of
daily customers, for their patience and understanding while NJ TRANSIT,
and, indeed, the entire state of New Jersey, continues to rebuild after
this terrible storm.
Although the system has returned to near normal for our daily
customers, repairs are continuing and will go on for a number of
months. Transit infrastructure and equipment is often large and almost
always complex.
For example, two of the electrical substations that were submerged
and destroyed by Sandy's flood waters will take months to replace. This
is because these are large, custom-ordered pieces of equipment. There
are no ``off-the-shelf'' replacements. New substations have to be
designed and built from scratch, a process that will take six to nine
months at least.
The consequences of the loss of just these two substations are
significant. One is necessary to provide overhead catenary power for
our Hoboken Terminal and yard. Until it is restored, we can only run
diesel service in and out of Hoboken. This greatly diminishes our
ability to serve the more than 30,000 thousand customers who go to and
from Hoboken each day.
Another substation provides the power for our Meadows Maintenance
Complex in Kearny, New Jersey, and for our Rail Operations Center
nearby. The maintenance complex is our main site for inspection and
repair of rail cars and locomotives. We are now using generators to
provide electric power, but they cannot provide enough electricity to
operate the maintenance facility at 100 percent, thus hampering our
work there. The rail operations center is the central nervous system of
the entire rail network, controlling dispatching, track switches,
signals and the like. And it, too, is now operating on generator power.
On these and other repairs, we are working diligently with our
suppliers and outside contractors to get new equipment. As I mentioned,
in some cases, such as the electrical substations, this requires
actually designing and manufacturing new units from scratch.
Mr. Chairman, as you and this Committee have noted, it is vital
that as NJ TRANSIT makes the repairs necessary to return our transit
system to its pre-Sandy state of good repair, we also make our system
more resilient to such super storms.
To simply repair substations, maintenance facilities and other
infrastructure to their previous state would be an abrogation of our
duty to our customers and the citizens and taxpayers of our states and
of our Nation. The old saying is that an ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure. In this case, money invested in preventing future storm
damage can reduce the financial cost of future emergency storm relief--
as well as ensuring that our transit systems have a better chance of
avoiding service interruptions that disrupt the lives of our residents
and undercut the resiliency our economy.
To return to the example of the key electrical substations, NJ
TRANSIT is looking at steps such as moving them out of harm's way, or
elevating those that cannot be moved to be above the level of not just
100-year storms, but super storms.
Repairs and resilience both take funding. We appreciate the
Committee's interest and any help the Committee and the Congress and
Administration can provide in helping us renew New Jersey's transit
system, and improve it for the future.
Thank you and I will be happy to answer any questions you might
have.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks very much.
We are under fairly severe time pressure, but the testimony
from each one of you was so important I did not want to cut
short your testimony despite the fact that we went a little bit
over time. So we will try to get the questions out there and
get them answered fairly quickly.
And I make a note, Mr. Foye, that when the three airports
that you talked about in your testimony, among the busiest in
the country, do not equal today's passenger traffic that Penn
Station, New York has in the same day. Try it. It is really a
delight to walk through the space.
Mr. Foye. Chairman Lautenberg, I travel through Penn
Station every day, along with 500,000 other people--600,000. I
am corrected.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Foye. And I realize it is a critical piece of
transportation infrastructure.
Senator Lautenberg. Absolutely.
I want to ask Mr. Weinstein. This is a question that has
been in the news and they questioned about whether restoring
the passenger rail cars at these two low-lying rail yards was
made. Both the sites experienced severe damage. What prompted
the decision to store the rail cars at those sites, please?
Mr. Weinstein. Yes, Mr. Chairman. The decision to put the
equipment in those spots--first of all, the Meadowlands
Maintenance Complex, which is the one in Kearney, at any given
time probably has a couple of hundred cars there lined up for
inspection, for maintenance, repair, and all of that. But I
think that in making the decisions where we put equipment--and
we put it in about 20 locations around the state, in rail yards
in three states, in New York and Pennsylvania and in our own
state. But based on the information that we had in terms of
what the likelihood of flooding occurring at the Meadowlands
Maintenance Complex or at the part of Hoboken terminal where
the equipment was parked, they indicated that there was a
likelihood in the 80 to 90 percent range that no flooding would
happen there. And that, combined with the history that the
Meadowlands maintenance facility has never flooded in the
history of our railroad, led us to conclude that that was the
appropriate place to put the equipment.
Now, obviously, we are informed by this storm and we will
make adjustments in the future. But based on the information we
had at the time we had to make the decision--and I point out
that it takes a long time to shut down our system, as it does
all of these systems, 12 hours. When we had to make the
decision to shut it down at around noontime and we started to
shut down around 2 o'clock on Sunday, which was well before the
storm hit land, this was the best decision especially in view
of the fact of what happened last year with Hurricane Irene
when we stored an awful lot of equipment at our Morrisville
yard in the Northeast Corridor in Morrisville, Pennsylvania
just south of Trenton, and the Northeast Corridor flooded. And
it stranded that equipment and prevented us from restoring the
kind of service that you need, that our customers needed, that
the region needed, that the economy needed. That is one of the
responsibilities is in returning to normalcy, getting service
back as quickly as possible, and that is another factor that
informed our decisions.
Senator Lautenberg. Some of that equipment was relatively
new, up-to-date equipment that was stored there?
Mr. Weinstein. Yes, sir. I mean, we had some new dual-mode
locomotives there, some of which, frankly, had not even been
accepted yet that were damaged. Water penetrated up to the
axles. It requires both common sense and good maintenance, as
well as FRA rules, that when the bearings are penetrated, they
have to be replaced. So all of that equipment has to be
replaced. We had about 80 multi-level passenger cars that
flooded, and because they are lower than our other equipment,
it penetrated the actual cabin.
Senator Lautenberg. It is easy to second guess, but based
on the options, Mr. Weinstein, it did not sound like there were
other choices to be made.
Mr. Weinstein. I think that we are constrained with the
choices that we have, Senator. We will, obviously, develop,
based on the information we had, other possible alternatives.
But if you lay a flood plain map over our railroad in New
Jersey, there are very few places that are not at some point
under some circumstance prone to flooding. And those areas that
are not are subject to downed trees, downed wires. Mr. Boardman
talked about 11 trees coming down in the Northeast Corridor. I
had 630 trees come down. And if that starts coming down on
equipment, it damages the equipment every bit as badly as
flooding would.
Senator Lautenberg. Across the panel, Sandy taught us
something, a harsh lesson, about the inability of our aging
infrastructure to handle such severe weather events. There is
no indication that this could not be replicated in the future.
The magnitude, the devastation, the winds, the whole thing were
impossible to guess in advance of the occurrence. But we now
are, unfortunately, wiser as a result.
So what do we do about rebuilding? In a way I do not even
like the word ``rebuild'' because there are changes in
technology, there are changes in planning.
I spoke to the Governor, and let it be known in this public
arena that I commended the Governor for his leadership in this
thing. And we put aside the pitchforks and picked up the
shovels together. So it was better.
So how do we go about this? And unfortunately, again the
time is so limited. What are the choices that we make about the
way things were or what we have to do to improve our
infrastructure?
Mr. Boardman. Senator, I would make one point, and I
promise it will be one and I will pass it on because I know we
are short on time.
We need now to make sure we guarantee access from New
Jersey into New York with a new tunnel box under Hudson Yards,
which is the West Side yards, before real estate development
overtakes us. That is going to cost us 120 million bucks. We
need to do that right now, sir.
Mr. Lhota. Senator, I think it is really important, as you
and the Congress and the administration are looking to put
together a package that the states of New York, New Jersey, and
Connecticut will be able to get what they are requesting, as
well as all of the flexibility that they need to get what needs
to be done.
For example, we need to completely rebuild the South Ferry
station, and in the process of doing that, we also need to
think about how much we need to do to prevent this from
happening again. And I know all three states are coming
together. Governor Cuomo has put together a Commission as to
what we can do to prevent these surges and bring the best minds
together to determine what we need to do to get that done.
But we need to do it comprehensively. It needs to be the
three States. It needs to be all the local governments, and it
needs to be the private sector. The private sector needs to be
involved because one of the things that we have not talked
about today is billions and billions of dollars of private
property was also destroyed by this storm. And so I think it is
really important, as the legislation is being talked about, as
the supplemental resolution, understanding how broad this
problem was.
We will find a way to fix this. We will find a way to get
back to where we were the day before the storm. But what is
really important is we all come together and try to figure out
when this happens again, that we do not have this damage and we
allow our economies to continue to operate immediately after
the storm.
Mr. Foye. Senator, I would offer three suggestions.
First, it is critical to remember that the New York-New
Jersey region, including Connecticut, accounts for well over 10
percent of the gross domestic product of the country, well in
excess of $1 trillion. Protecting that and the tax revenues to
the Federal, State, and local governments that that economy
generates is critical. That tax-generating and wealth-creating
sector was basically shut down for days and in some cases weeks
by the storm.
Second, building to the standards in effect the day before
the storm is not only impossible, Chairman, but would be cost-
ineffective. Take the case of PATH. Rebuilding an 80-year-old
signal system at the Hoboken caissons--not only can it not be
done, it would be impossible to do it.
Last, research by the American Society of Civil Engineers
suggests that the return from mitigation spending, especially
with respect to flooding, is a national return of 5 to 1, a 14
percent return if you are assuming a 50-year time period. Given
that these are long-lived transportation infrastructure assets,
the return to the local, State, and Federal Governments of
mitigation spending is going to be substantial but would also
protect this huge part of the Nation's economy.
Mr. Weinstein. Senator, at the risk of repeating what has
been said, I think clearly that mitigation is critical. We
cannot just rebuild what was there not only because it may not
be physically possible, but it would be, frankly, foolish to do
so in my opinion. We need to build a system that is going to
serve us well into the future and not something that is just
going to get us back to where we were yesterday.
Second, we work together as a region. Mr. Boardman's system
connects to my system, connects to the Port Authority's system,
connects to the MTA system, and if we are not working together,
then the system is not working. And if the system and the
network are not working, the region is not working.
And finally, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest to you that on
the issue of an additional tunnel, as you know, New Jersey
Transit and New Jersey have recognized right from the start
that we are going to need additional capacity going under the
Hudson River. We are working with Amtrak talking about this. I
know we have had discussions with you. And we need to be
looking to the future and making sure that we are making the
right investments not only for our State but for the region and
for the country.
Senator Lautenberg. Thanks very much.
Time forces us to conclude. So we are going to keep the
record open for any questions that are submitted to you and
would ask for a prompt response within, let us say, a week
after you get them.
Thanks very much to each one of you. You have got important
jobs. I admire what you have done. And I hope that when we next
have this kind of review that we will talk about the old days.
This is not a personal thing with me. But the old days, when we
had that terrible storm, and look how wonderfully everything
operates now. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Prepared Statement of Commissioner James P. Redeker, Connecticut
Department of Transportation
The Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) is pleased
to share with the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, and Merchant
Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security the impact of the Hurricane
Sandy on Connecticut's transportation system.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation is truly a multi-modal
state agency responsible for all aspects of the planning, development,
maintenance and improvement of transportation in the state.
Connecticut's transportation system includes approximately, 21,295
miles of improved roads (of which approximately 3,716 miles are
maintained by the Department); 5,471 state and local bridges; Bradley
International Airport, which is New England's second largest airport,
and five other State-owned airports together with numerous municipally
and privately owned airports; New Haven Line rail commuter service
between New Haven and New York City and related points, operated by MTA
Metro-North Railroad which provides 289 weekday trains; Shore Line East
rail service between New London and New Haven and on to Stamford,
operated by Amtrak which provides 26 weekday trains; and publicly and
privately owned bus systems which operate 1,102 vehicles. The
Department also operates a state pier complex in New London, two
ferries, and numerous facilities such as transit stations, highway
garages, and highway rest stops.
In 2011, the State of Connecticut was hit with both Tropical Storm
Irene in August and a Nor'easter at the end of October. Shortly after
the 2011 storms, Governor Dannel P. Malloy created a working group
known as the ``Two Storm Panel'' to review the preparedness, response
and recovery efforts of those storms. The Panel was also charged with
producing a set of recommendations on how the state and its partners
can improve the preparedness and response to natural disasters. The
Panel, which was comprised of eight members with backgrounds in the
military, disaster relief, municipal government, non-profit and labor
sectors, held nine public meetings, during which they received
extensive testimony from a number of experts on a range of issues
impacted by emergency situations.
In an eerie repeat of the 2011 storms, Connecticut was hit by back-
to-back storms in 2012--Hurricane Sandy, which started on Monday,
October 29, 2012 and then a major snowstorm just a week later that
dumped more than a foot of snow in some parts of the state on November
7, 2012. Once again, Connecticut residents were coping with extended
power outages, downed trees, suspended rail operations, and flooded and
treacherous roads.
Pre-Storm Sandy Preparations
Advance planning and preparation facilitated a quick response/
recovery by the agency and prevented damage to major assets of the
transportation system in Connecticut.
After the two storms in 2011, the Department began in earnest a
comprehensive tree trimming program throughout the state, as did the
major utilities in Connecticut.
Prior to Storm Sandy, ConnDOT coordinated with the Department of
Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to determine what temporary
and emergency authorizations have been issued to cover potential storm
damage.
Our highway operations bureau began preparing for Storm Sandy four
days before it was to hit. All facilities were prepared and equipment--
from loaders and bucket trucks to chippers and chain saws--were all
fueled and readied when needed. Two Safety Advisors were deployed to
the shoreline area for the duration of the storm.
The Department closed two District Maintenance garages closest to
the shore and evacuated equipment and operations to alternative
locations deemed safer but still in the vicinity of anticipated
impacted areas.
In anticipation of flooding from storm surges, ConnDOT directed
Metro-North to move rail cars from New Haven to three different
locations to ride out the storm--Bridgeport and Stamford, Connecticut
and Grand Central Station in New York. Low floor buses were also
evacuated from the Stamford bus facility.
ConnDOT coordinated evacuation activities for cities along the
coast.
Storm Actions
Metro-North and Amtrak suspended service at approximately 9:00 p.m.
on Sunday, October 28, 2012 and both railroads pre-positioned track,
power and signal crews to expedite the storm recovery process.
Statewide bus service was suspended at midnight on Sunday October 28,
2012.
All moveable bridges were closed for the storm and construction
projects were secured to minimize damage.
The ConnDOT website was modified to provide real-time road closure
information on a statewide highway map, and regular updates on road and
transit conditions were provided.
Post Storm Sandy
There were a total of 286 full road closures during the storm.
Within 12 hours, all but three roads were reopened to the public, and
those were due to extensive impacts from downed power lines.
The day after the first storm, ConnDOT began assessing, fixing and
clearing damage and continued throughout the week. Every municipality
in the State was contacted by the Department and offered assistance if
needed. Labor and equipment was also made available for mutual aide to
New York and New Jersey.
Bradley International Airport remained open for the duration of the
storm although most carriers had suspended commercial service on
Monday, October 29, 2012 by about 10:30 a.m. Service resumed on a
staggered basis almost exactly 24 hours later at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday,
October 30, 2012. By Wednesday, air carrier operations were 75 percent
back to normal. Damage at Bradley was limited to a radio antenna
located on the roof that fell through a 4, wide by 20, long skylight.
Preliminary estimate of cost to repair--$6,000.00. The only other
damage suffered at Bradley was some minor roof paneling over a tug
tunnel that came loose during the high winds at the peak of the storm.
Estimated cost to repair--less than $1,000.00.
Three of the five State owned and operated general aviation
airports also closed. Groton-New London sustained major flooding and
the Engineered Material Arresting System (EMAS) safety zones were
completely submerged and compromised. The cost to replace the damaged
EMAS beds is estimated at $10 million.
Metro North. The New Haven Line (main line) sustained significant
damage to catenary and signal systems from downed trees. The Waterbury,
Danbury and New Canaan Branches also sustained damage due to downed
trees.
Service on the New Haven Line gradually resumed on Thursday,
November 1, 2012 with limited service between Stamford and Grand
Central Terminal. Regular weekday service resumed between New Haven and
Grand Central Terminal on Friday, November 2, 2012. Free fares were
offered on both Thursday, November 1 and Friday, November 2 on the New
Haven Line.
The New Canaan Branch Line sustained significant damage. Service
was not resumed until November 9, 2012 necessitating bus replacement
service for commuters. The Danbury and Waterbury Branch Lines resumed
regular weekday service on Monday, November 5, 2012.
Amtrak. Amtrak right-of-way on both the Northeast Corridor and the
Hartford Line sustained damage from downed trees. Shore Line East
Service resumed on Thursday, November 1, 2012. The Northeast Corridor
(Boston to New York) operated limited regional service between Boston
and New Haven on Thursday, November 1, 2012. A special operating
schedule for both Acela and regional service was initiated on Friday,
November 2, 2012. Regular Acela and regional service was resumed on
Saturday, November 3, 2012.
Amtrak operated special schedules between Springfield and New Haven
on Thursday, November 1, 2012 and close to regular schedule between
Springfield and New Haven and New York, Penn Station on Friday,
November 2, 2012.
Freight. Minimal damage occurred on the freight lines within the
state.
Preliminary estimates of the damage sustained to the federal-aid
highways on the State system range from $2 million to $6 million for
repairs to a seawall and to repair a moveable bridge. ConnDOT requested
a ``quick release'' of Emergency Relief Funding through the Federal
Highway Administration on November 1, 2012 in the amount of $2 million,
to assist in the cost of repairing damages and received approval two
days later.
The Department is also seeking FEMA assistance for the reimbursable
portion of the $10 million to assist in the cost of repairing damages
to the EMAS at Groton-New London Airport, as well as substantial
repairs to a gate damaged as a result of the storm.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John Thune to
John Porcari
Question 1. Included in MAP 21, the surface transportation
reauthorization bill that was enacted earlier this year, various
provisions were added to streamline the rebuilding effort following a
natural disaster. These included Sec. 1315, the categorical exclusion
of ``the repair or reconstruction of any road, highway, or bridge that
is in operation or under construction when damaged under certain
declared emergencies or disasters'' from NEPA review. Can you please
update the Committee on the progress of implementing these new
provisions and inform us if there are any ongoing efforts to expedite
this process in light of Sandy?
Answer. As part of the implementation of MAP-21, FHWA and FTA
published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on October 1, 2012,
pursuant to section 1315, for the categorical exclusion for
emergencies. The comment period closed on November 30, and the
Department is currently developing the final rule to be published in
early 2013. Additionally, FTA and FHWA are preparing an NPRM pursuant
to MAP-21 section 1316 to designate any project within an operational
right-of-way as another NEPA categorical exclusion. This rulemaking is
also on an expedited schedule for promulgation. I would note also that
actions to address emergency repairs by the FHWA Emergency Relief
program under 23 U.S.C. 125 are currently covered by a categorical
exclusion, and other FHWA and FTA emergency actions are often covered
by existing categorical exclusions, under 23 CFR 771.117(c) and (d).
Question 2. In your opinion, what other steps can this Committee
take to guarantee that the Department of Transportation has the tools
necessary to ensure a timely and cost efficient response to future
disasters?
Answer. Responding effectively to disasters requires a package of
statutory authorities, adequate funding, and well-prepared Federal
staff. The Federal Highway Administration for many years has had
authority under 23 U.S.C. 125 to provide Emergency Relief funding to
states, and the Federal Transit Administration received similar
authority in MAP-21 (section 20017) earlier this year. Funding for this
program is awaiting appropriation by Congress. FHWA's Emergency Relief
program has a permanent authorization of $100 million per year,
supplemented as needed with additional appropriations. MAP-21 requires
that DOT and FEMA work in concert to make sure that the use of
emergency funds are coordinated. Other modes of transportation have
less clear-cut funding authority. Providing other modes with comparable
funding authority would help to ensure that emergency recovery needs
are addressed in a mode-neutral way. For DOT modal administrations with
regulatory responsibilities, expediting emergency response sometimes
requires authority to waive regulatory requirements when needed. For
example, after Hurricane Sandy DOT issued a Federal Regional Emergency
Declaration to waive hours of service requirements for CMV operations
to facilitate the states' emergency waiver actions, and for the first
time worked with state and local officials to coordinate waivers and
expedited permits. Finally, responding effectively requires that
emergency response staff have the necessary funding to be well-trained.
Providing emergency response funding when the sun is shining is
important to ensure that staff are properly trained to respond when
disaster strikes. Recognizing that risks change, particularly as we
consider sea level rise and other impacts of climate change, providing
the Department with authority to rebuild in such a way that reduces
future risks, even if that means rebuilding to different or higher
standards and specifications, would help ensure that communities are
more resilient in the future and save taxpayer resources in the long
run.
We have found, after both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy,
that activation of MARAD training ships and Ready Reserve Force (RRF)
ships can provide essential support by housing and feeding the hundreds
of emergency workers that are needed to respond to a major disaster.
Having a dedicated Federal maritime response capability could enhance
the ability to respond to coastal disasters in a timely manner. This
capability could be modeled on the RRF program, which provides the
Department of Defense (DOD) with a cost-effective way to maintain
maritime lift capacity to deploy U.S. Forces. A similar capability
could be established to support DHS/FEMA in responding to coastal
disasters. These dedicated vessels could be outfitted beforehand with
equipment to provide power generation, messing and berthing, water-
making capability, and command and control capability. This capability
is somewhat similar to DOD's forward basing of equipment and supplies
onboard ships located around the globe.
Question 3. While natural disasters are varied, we know they are
inevitable and certain regions are predisposed to certain types of
disasters. For instances, in my home state of South Dakota we usually
contend with droughts, flooding, blizzards, and high winds. What steps
are taken within the Department to ensure state and local
transportation agencies are prepared? What more can be done?
Answer. The Department of Transportation has a comprehensive
Emergency Response Program that includes an Emergency Response Team
with representatives from all modes, with an Incident Command System
structure. Besides formal training sessions, this team has been
activated numerous times during my tenure at DOT and can solve complex
transportation challenges that present themselves in many types of
disasters. We are constantly looking for ways to improve, including
participating in additional training and exercises with Federal, State,
Tribal, Territorial, Local, and Private Sector partners. Additionally,
our Emergency Response staff attends ``One DOT'' meetings all over the
United States. These training and information exchange meetings bring
regional DOT response staffs together on a routine basis with other
regional Federal staffs as well as with our State/local partners. DOT's
modal administrations work through various industry associations,
airports, states, and local communities to disseminate information on
best practices for disaster impact mitigation and to discuss emergency
preparedness plans. FHWA works closely with AASHTO's Special Committee
on Security and Emergency Management to ensure that State DOT security
and emergency managers are well aware of lessons learned and best
practices in emergency management. FHWA and FTA have also published a
series of training documents on emergency management for state and
local emergency managers, and have also provided training and
workshops. FTA is also preparing guidance for its new Emergency Public
Transportation Relief Program to assist transit authorities in
protecting equipment and facilities from damage in the event of a
disaster. FAA operates and maintains the National Airspace system,
working with airports, air carriers and other entities to manage the
system under constantly changing weather conditions. Continued
development and implementation of the Next Generation Air
Transportation System will support greater resilience and efficiency
for the National Airspace System under all conditions. DOT has also
actively been working with local authorities to help them identify and
address their vulnerabilities to impacts of climate change such as
severe weather events, sea level rise and extreme temperatures, to
ensure that taxpayer resources are invested wisely and that
transportation infrastructure, services and operations remain effective
in current and future climate conditions. DOT has a number of active
efforts under way to give transportation agencies tools for assessing
vulnerability and plan for resiliency.
Question 4. What are best management practices for disaster
readiness, preparation and recovery currently used by the DOT? Are
current practices in agreement with other industry groups, the state of
engineering science and your professional opinion?
Answer. Extensive planning, training, and coordination with
stakeholders are the key best practices that all Federal agencies
involved in disaster response must practice. In addition to these, DOT
has found that establishment of an intermodal task force was effective
in facilitating the movement of various emergency response teams,
equipment, and supplies into the affected area. These teams were
particularly important in moving oversize and overweight equipment such
as emergency generators. Agencies with regulatory responsibilities need
an effective way to coordinate and expedite regulatory flexibility
during emergencies. FRA's Emergency Relief Docket is a good example of
such a mechanism. DOT is also working to incorporate information on
future risks and conditions in our disaster readiness and response
work, as in the FTA's 2011 report, ``Flooded Bus Barns and Buckled
Rails,'' which highlights how transit agencies can factor climate
change adaptation into emergency responses. In addition to our internal
efforts to address all types of disaster scenarios, DOT is an active
participant in the National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF), an
interagency guide to promote effective recovery, particularly for those
incidents that are large-scale or catastrophic. We contribute to and
track after-action ``best practices'' reports for emergency response
incidents and training through the FEMA Lessons Learned Information
Sharing (LLIS.gov) website which was specifically established for this
purpose. FTA strongly recommends that transit agencies adopt Continuity
of Operations Plans to identify essential functions and establish
alternative personnel structures, operating facilities, and
communications networks when normal structures are disrupted. Finally,
working with emergency response committees of transportation and
research organizations such as AASHTO and the Transportation Research
Board helps to ensure that our emergency response practices reflect the
latest research and experience of practitioners.