Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. And thank you to Matt Rose for showing me your Network Operations Center.

America’s economy is strong and getting stronger every day. This incredible economic growth is leading to greater demands for every type of transportation, including railroads.

The United States rail network moves 42 percent of America’s freight, carrying over 2 billion tons of goods just last year. And today, demand for rail service is surging, with freight railroads in the United States handling more traffic in 2005 than they ever have before.

But in an environment of expansion, where business is booming and demand is rising sharply, we must remain focused on our number one transportation priority: safety.
Without this focus, the human and economic costs can be considerable. And while everyone in the railroad industry is committed to safety, we must redouble our efforts.

America’s railroads have a positive safety record. Even though train traffic is up, the accident rate is down…dropping more than an estimated 11 percent over the past year. And while that’s good news, accidents still occur.

That’s why in May 2005, I unveiled the Department of Transportation’s National Rail Safety Action Plan. The goal of this new strategy is to improve safety by targeting the most frequent and highest-risk causes of train accidents in America.

We have made solid progress on the Plan in just nine months. Today I’d like to share a progress report with you…and outline the steps that we will take in 2006 to ensure continued improvement.

To strengthen the safety efforts of our railroad workers, we launched pilot projects in 2005 to test technology that will help identify small cracks in rail joints…provide timely hazardous materials information to emergency responders…and monitor switch positions in non-signaled or dark territory.

In fact, the dark territory switch project is being conducted right here at the BNSF Railway headquarters.

Today dispatchers here are using wireless technology for remote monitoring of switches outside of Tulsa,Oklahoma.

These dispatchers have the ability to order trains to stop before they are unexpectedly directed onto the wrong track or siding…helping to prevent accidents that could lead to injury or death.

It’s exciting to consider the promise of this new safety technology. It’s also an example of the role that we all must play in strengthening rail safety.

While federal involvement in rail safety is necessary, state and local participation is essential…especially when it comes to hazardous materials safety and emergency response.

So last year, we launched a pilot project to provide emergency responders with real-time information about hazardous materials involved in a train accident.

And we’ve also strengthened our partnership with state and local communities to better prevent collisions at highway-rail grade crossings, the second leading cause of rail-related fatalities.

We’re on track to build on this solid safety progress in 2006. Let me share some of the items on our “Railroad Safety To-Do List” this year.

In order to address safety problems, you must be able to identify them. By March, we will have fully implemented the first-ever National Inspection Plan (NIP), which uses available data to focus inspection activities.

This plan offers us a new way to deploy federal inspectors and other resources to help identify safety problems on the tracks. This means we’ll be able to target safety hotspots before accidents occur.

This year we’ll also deploy two state-of-the-art track inspection vehicles that automatically inspect tracks as they roll along the rails.

These cars are designed to reduce the number of derailments...by allowing us to triple the number of miles of rail inspected each year.

This will help reduce one of the risks of human error, which is the largest single factor in train accidents, accounting for roughly 38 percent of all such events in recent years. The tragic accident in Graniteville, South Carolina, just one year ago highlights the gravity of this issue.

Prior to the National Rail Safety Action Plan, few types of human errors were addressed by the Department. But in 2006, we plan to propose a federal rule to address additional common human factors, including leaving rail cars on the operational track and improperly-lined switches.

Research is the cornerstone of safety innovation. And it is a central focus of the National Rail Safety Action Plan. In 2006, we will start or complete research into several critical safety issues including crew fatigue and the course of close calls or near misses.

We will also focus on the structural integrity of tank cars that carry hazardous materials…with research getting under way at a test facility in San Antonio just a few weeks from today.

The National Rail Safety Action Plan is helping to improve the business of safety in America, at just the right time.

With more than 233,000 miles of track and billions of dollars worth of business, the railroad industry is vital to America’s future. This Plan helps ensure that our rail network and our economic growth can continue to move forward at a robust and record-breaking pace.

And now I’d like to ask Joseph Boardman who leads the Federal Railroad Administration to come forward and say a few words. Joe…

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