Prepared By FRA Administrator Allan Rutter
Norfolk, VA
3/3/04

It certainly is an honor to be addressing you this morning. I was here two years ago and shook the hands of most of the people in attendance as you got your awards.

Coming back this year is a treat, as it’s gratifying to spend time with people who are passionate about the reason for our agency’s existence—railroad safety.

You can tell a lot about a community by watching what it celebrates and how it does so. Today’s ceremony is important not only because of how you commemorate a core value of your organizational culture, but it is more meaningful because of how you throw yourselves into the event. I am really energized by your enthusiasm, and I appreciate the honor of participating in your ceremony.

I bring you greetings from Secretary Mineta. We’ve been traveling quite a bit recently, talking about the importance of investing in transportation to help keep our economy moving and create jobs.

Putting people to work is a top priority for President Bush. The Administration’s policies are working, and most experts say that the economy is taking off.

The way we move the American economy forward is with a transportation network that efficiently links the smallest towns to the biggest cities…. a system that grows the economy…and creates jobs.

That’s why we have proposed the largest highway, transit, and safety investment in U.S. history. At 256 billion dollars, SAFETEA, also known as the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act, ensures the creation of thousands of jobs as well as the continued growth of our Nation’s economy, without imposing costly new taxes, impacting the deficit, or taking money from other important priorities.

Each day that we don’t have a full, six-year reauthorization is another day of inaction on crucial investments in our future. That’s why we’re keeping the pressure on the Congress to pass a fiscally responsible surface transportation bill as soon as possible……….No more extensions…No more delays.

Today, instead of talking about the recent past or near-term as measured by railroad safety statistics, I want to ask you to think about the promising future of railroading.

Please listen, as I tell some stories of people who could be working in and around your railroad ten years from now.

Jocelyn Foster is a young African American engineer working in the Buckeye Yard in Columbus, OH. She watches the monitor on her RCL unit, which shows her location on the yard and that of all the cars in the cut of cars she is switching. She notices the location of her crew partner on the screen and can see an indicator symbol that the next switch has been properly thrown, which she affirms on her headset radio.

The yardmaster has the same real-time, GPS-specific information of each car, locomotive, crewmember, and track and switch indicator. The computer system digitally stores records of each train movement for a few days at a time.

At her yard crew team’s safety meeting yesterday, they watched these recordings of movements from the last week, showing examples of successes and failures to observe SOFA principles and NS operating rules. Jocelyn is grateful for the positive feedback she got in the meeting with her crew members, as it gives her confidence to complete her tasks today.

She can be more effective in her dual roles as mom and employee because she and her team have a predictable work schedule. The yardmaster knows in advance what kinds of work they will be doing a day in advance, and adjusts the schedule accordingly.

Meanwhile, outside Spartanburg, SC, Gaby Rodriquez, a 5-year veteran engineer for NS, controls the turbine-electric locomotive at the head of a passenger train traveling at 110 mph between Charlotte and Atlanta. Her locomotive is governed by a PTC overlay system that sends real-time engine information to NS’ shops via wayside data radio, and controls the electronic braking systems on the passenger cars.

NS is paid by the states of North Carolina and Georgia to pull the state-owned passenger cars, where on-board services are operated by yet another set of contractors to the states. The federal government provided capital funding assistance for the PTC system, high-speed turnouts and for the rolling stock. NS is not only in this business, but also provides dispatching and train crews for commuter services in the Research Triangle, Charlotte and Atlanta.

Nothing has changed about the fundamentals of passenger trains—they still aren’t profitable—but NS makes a profit providing services subsidized by state and local governments.

At the same time in Pennsylvania, Glenda Edwards is a mechanical specialist who works in front of a computer in a small building in the Harrisburg yard. She controls an automated car inspection operation that scans the car body, checking for mechanical problems with the wheels, trucks, brakes, safety appliances and everything.

From her desk, she watches real-time pictures of train cars coming into her yard. The computer is programmed to recognize out of tolerance readings, which causes an alarm to sound. At the alarm, she calls up the pictures and zooms in on problem areas, verifying whether there are potential violations of FRA regulations, railroad rules, or car owner standards.

When there is an issue, she clicks on the car owner profile for the car, and emails a file highlighting problems for the car owner. The owner responds by agreeing with the diagnosis and approves a work order for repairs to the car. Glenda then switches to the yard view, identifies the car and marks it with a repair order. Automatically, the yard crews get instructions in real-time to move the car to the rip tracks for repair.

Later that morning, in an office building in suburban Atlanta, a private 3PL firm is routing four containers of childrens’ sandals from Brazil for Payless Shoe Stores. The containers are offloaded in Savannah, GA and are put on trailer chassis once they finally get through customs.

As the container-trailer leaves the shipyard, it passes through a u-shaped structure that reads information inside the container not by the pallet, or by the carton, but by the shoebox, reading the radio frequency tags inside each box of shoes. The 3PL’s computer checks inventory levels, sales projections and climate projections and sends routing instructions to the driver of each trailer accordingly.

Andy Ngo, a logistics specialist in the 3PL’s Atlanta office, notes that two of the containers are needed in the Payless warehouse in Chicago. Andy routes those trucks to NS’s Atlanta intermodal yard, where they can be loaded on the afternoon container train to Chicago.

He makes a reservation, and when the trucks show up at the gate of the Atlanta facility, the gate agent scans the container seal, downloading the lading information.

The gate agent then downloads instructions into the truck from his handheld computer, which routes the cab to the right location on the yard for the containers to be lifted directly onto the NS train.

That day in Chicago, Charles Warren works as a rail security specialist in the Central Transportation Control Office, his salary paid by a consortium of the Class 1 railroads operating in Chicago.

Shipments of hazardous materials are moving much more quickly through the metro area, thanks to new grade separations and rail to rail flyovers recently completed under the CREATE program. CTCO has also received a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to enhance security monitoring on one of the primary CREATE routes now used for through hazmat traffic.

Charles monitors a series of high-resolution digital video cameras mounted on towers located every mile along the corridor. These cameras pan the corridor, and a computer pattern-recognition program compares current pictures to stored images of empty rights of way, to automatically alert him to the presence of trespassers or intruders.

Charles can monitor train speeds and listen to radio transmissions on trains moving toxic-by-inhalation hazmat shipments along the corridor. He monitors transmissions sent from on-board sensors on each TIH tank cars via wayside data radio, as these solar powered units send an alert in the event of loss of tank pressure for any reason.

These stories are not science fiction. They represent technologies that are being implemented today. They point to a rail industry that will be using technology to increase return on equity investments, improve rail freight market share, improve quality of life for rail workers and make further progress in railroad safety and security.

I am proud that our agency is working cooperatively with the nation’s railroads to demonstrate the viability of these technological improvements. Together, we can make the industry safer for rail workers and the communities they serve.

We can also ensure that rail will not only serve our national economy, but advance it by carrying even more freight over the next 20 years.

Many of you working for NS are following in the footsteps of your ancestors and relatives who have worked on the railroad. In the years to come, your children and descendants will have a bright future if they choose a career in railroading.

I am grateful that providence has brought me to this place in this time to have a brief, small part in the railroad industry’s bold movement into the future.

Thank you again for the invitation to join you this morning, and thank you for the gift of your attention. Let’s get on with this morning’s program!