Potential Terrorist Uses of Highway-Borne Hazardous Materials, MTI Report 09-03

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has requested that the Mineta Transportation Institutes National Transportation Security Center of Excellence (MTI NTSCOE) provide any research it has or insights it can provide on the security risks created by the highway transportation of hazardous materials. This request was submitted to MTI/NSTC as a National Transportation Security Center of Excellence. In response, MTI/NTSC reviewed and revised research performed in 2007 and 2008 and assembled a small team of terrorism and emergency-response experts, led by Center Director Brian Michael Jenkins, to report on the risks of terrorists using highway shipments of flammable liquids (e.g., gasoline tankers) to cause casualties anywhere, and ways to reduce those risks. This report has been provided to DHS. The teams first focus was on surface transportation targets, including highway infrastructure, and also public transportation stations. As a full understanding of these materials, and their use against various targets became revealed, the team shifted with urgency to the far more plentiful targets outside of surface transportation where people gather and can be killed or injured. However, the team is concerned to return to the top of the use of these materials against public transit stations and recommends it as a separate subject for urgent research

Applications of Engineering and Financial Analysis to the Valuation of Investments in Railroad Infrastructure

This record of study presents the findings of industry research projects performed during a one-year doctoral internship with the Austin Rail Group of HNTB Corporation. Four main internship objectives were established that address infrastructure problems related to the railroad industry and required the integration of engineering and financial analysis to develop effective project evaluation tools. Completion of the objectives resulted in: 1. Transformation of the Federal Railroad Administration methodology currently used to perform highway-railroad grade crossing analyses to a system of equations that can easily be used to evaluate regional rail infrastructure investments. Transportation engineering equations based on queuing theory were extended to new but equivalent formulations that accommodate unlimited, discrete train performance data from computer simulations of rail networks. 2. Application of risk assessment methods and railroad accident statistics to recommend a cost-effective alternative to legislative proposals to relocate hazardous materials transported by rail around metropolitan areas. A risk analysis model was developed to predict the risk of exposure from the release of a hazardous material following a train derailment so that changes in exposure achieved by alternative risk mitigation strategies could be observed. 3. A new method of measuring the susceptibility of railroads to financial distress following the catastrophic loss of a timber railroad bridge. Economic and finance principles were used to predict financial distress by determining of the number of revenue periods required to offset economic loss. 4. Demonstration of the use of financial market data in calculating the discount rate of public railroad companies for engineering analyses that involve negotiations with the public agencies. Surface Transportation Board rulings on the determination of a railroad?s cost of equity were applied to a comparative assessment of costs of capital for Class I railroads. A hypothetical example was used to demonstrate the interrelationship between engineering design strategies and their effects on the pricing of compensation to a railroad for right-of-way acquisition. These results, in fulfillment of the doctoral internship objectives, have provided HNTB with economic decision analysis tools and a series of conclusions used to provide recommendations to the Illinois, Missouri, and Texas Departments of Transportation, the Texas Legislature, and the railroad industry

Tier 1 Highway Security Sensitive Material Dynamic Risk Management

Each year, over 2 billion tons of hazardous materials are shipped in the United States, with over half of that being moved on commercial vehicles. Given their relatively poor or nonexistent defenses and inconspicuousness, commercial vehicles transporting hazardous materials are an easy target for terrorists. Before carriers or security agencies recognize that something is amiss, their contents could be detonated or released. From 2006 to 2015, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) recorded 144,643 incidents involving a release of hazardous materials. Although there were no known instances of terrorism being the cause, accidental releases involving trucks carrying hazardous materials are not an uncommon occurrence. At this time, no systems have been developed and operationalized to monitor the movement of vehicles transporting hazardous materials. The purpose of this dissertation is to propose a comprehensive risk management system for monitoring Tier 1 Highway Security Sensitive Materials (HSSMs) which are shipped aboard commercial vehicles in the U.S. Chapter 2 examines the history and current state of hazardous materials transportation. Since the late 19th century, the federal government often introduced new regulations in response to hazardous materials incidents. However, over the past 15 years few binding policies or legislation have been enacted. This demonstrates that government agencies and the U.S. Congress are not inclined to introduce new laws and rules that could hamper business. In 2003, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and other agencies led efforts to develop a prototype hazardous materials tracking system (PHTS) that mapped the location of hazardous materials shipments and quantified the level of risk associated with each one. The second half of this chapter uses an in-­‐depth gap analysis to identify deficiencies and demonstrate in what areas the prototype system does not comply with government specifications. Chapter 3 addresses the lack of customized risk equations for Tier 1 HSSMs and develops a new set of risk equations that can be used to dynamically evaluate the level of risk associated with individual hazardous materials shipments. This chapter also discusses the results of a survey that was administered to public and private industry stakeholders. Its purpose was to understand the current state of hazardous materials regulations, the likelihood of hazardous materials release scenarios, what precautionary measures can be used, and what influence social variables may have on the aggregate consequences of a hazardous materials release. The risk equation developed in this paper takes into account the survey responses as well as those risk structures already in place. The overriding goal is to preserve analytical tractability, implement a form that is usable by federal agencies, and provide stakeholders with accurate information about the risk profiles of different vehicles. Due to congressional inaction on hazardous 3 materials transportation issues, securing support from carriers and other industry stakeholders is the most viable solution to bolstering hazardous materials security. Chapter 4 presents the system architecture for The Dynamic Hazardous Materials Risk Assessment Framework (DHMRA), a GIS-­‐based environment in which hazardous materials shipments can be monitored in real time. A case study is used to demonstrate the proposed risk equation; it simulates a hazardous materials shipment traveling from Ashland, Kentucky to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The DHMRA maps risk data, affording security personnel and other stakeholders the opportunity to evaluate how and why risk profiles vary across time and space. DHRMA’s geo-­‐fencing capabilities also trigger automatic warnings. This framework, once fully implemented, can inform more targeted policies to enhance the security of hazardous materials. It will contribute to maintaining secure and efficient supply chains while protecting the communities that live nearest to the most heavily trafficked routes. Continuously monitoring hazardous materials provides a viable way to understand the risks presented by a shipment at a given moment and enables better, more coordinated responses in the event of a release. Implementation of DHRMA will be challenging because it requires material and procedural changes that could disrupt agency operations or business practices — at least temporarily. Nevertheless, DHRMA stands ready for implementation, and to make the shipment of hazardous materials a more secure, safe, and certain process. Although DHMRA was designed primarily with terrorism in mind, it is also useful for examining the impacts of accidental hazardous materials releases. Future iterations of DHMRA could expand on its capabilities by incorporating modeling data on the release and dispersion of toxic gases, liquids, and other substances

Positive Train Control: Additional Authorities Could Benefit Implementation

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To install positive train control (PTC)--a communications-based system designed to prevent certain types of train accidents caused by human factors-- almost all railroads are overlaying their existing infrastructure with PTC components; nonetheless, most railroads report they will miss the December 31, 2015, implementation deadline. Both the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) have reported that most railroads will not have PTC fully implemented by the deadline. Of the four major freight railroads included in GAO's review, only one expects to meet the 2015 deadline. The other three freight railroads report that they expect to have PTC implemented by 2017 or later. Commuter railroads generally must wait until freight railroads and Amtrak equip the rail lines they operate on, and most of the seven commuter railroads included in this review reported that they do not expect to meet the 2015 deadline. To implement PTC systems that meet the requirements of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (RSIA), railroads are developing more than 20 major components that are currently in various stages of development, integrating them, and installing them across the rail network. AAR recently reported that by the end of 2012, railroads had spent $2.8 billion on PTC implementation. To implement PTC, AAR estimates that freight railroads will spend approximately$8 billion in total while the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) estimates that commuter railroads will spend a minimum of $2 billion. Much of the work to implement PTC remains to be done. For example, AAR reported that as of the end of 2012, about a third of wayside interface units, which are needed to communicate data, had been installed and that less than 1 percent of locomotives needing upgrades had been fully equipped.

Implementation and Development of Vehicle Tracking and Immobilization Technologies

Since the mid-1980s, limited use has been made of vehicle tracking using satellite communications to mitigate the security and safety risks created by the highway transportation of certain types of hazardous materials. However, vehicle-tracking technology applied to safety and security is increasingly being researched and piloted, and it has been the subject of several government reports and legislative mandates. At the same time, the motor carrier industry has been investing in and implementing vehicle tracking, for a number of reasons, particularly the increase in efficiency achieved through better management of both personnel (drivers) and assets (trucks or, as they are known, tractors; cargo loads; and trailers). While vehicle tracking and immobilization technologies can play a significant role in preventing truck-borne hazardous materials from being used as weapons against key targets, they are not a & ”silver bullet.” However, the experience of DTTS and the FMCSA and TSA pilot projects indicates that when these technologies are combined with other security measures, and when the information they provide is used in conjunction with information supplied outside of the tracking system, they can provide defensive value to any effort to protect assets from attacks using hazmat as a weapon. This report is a sister publication to MTI Report 09-03, Potential Terrorist Uses of Highway-Borne Hazardous Materials. That publication was created in response to the Department of Homeland Security´s request that the Mineta Transportation Institute´s National Transportation Security Center of Excellence provide research and insights regarding the security risks created by the highway transportation of hazardous materials

U.S. Rail Transportation of Crude Oil: Background and Issues for Congress

This report discusses the challenges in the transportation of oil, as refineries that once received crude oil principally from oceangoing tankers are now seeing increasing deliveries by domestic transport. It also outlines possible issues for Congress including rail transport of oil versus pipelines, and the possible increase of oil spills from rail transport