[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
GETTING ACELA BACK ON TRACK
=======================================================================
(109-17)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
RAILROADS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 11, 2005
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
____
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice- JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Chair NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan CORRINE BROWN, Florida
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama BOB FILNER, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
SUE W. KELLY, New York GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JERRY MORAN, Kansas EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
GARY G. MILLER, California ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
SAM GRAVES, Missouri JIM MATHESON, Utah
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania RICK LARSEN, Washington
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida JULIA CARSON, Indiana
JON C. PORTER, Nevada TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
TED POE, Texas RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., Louisiana
VACANCY
(ii)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RAILROADS
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, OhioChairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin CORRINE BROWN, Florida
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
JERRY MORAN, Kansas BOB FILNER, California
GARY G. MILLER, California ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
SAM GRAVES, Missouri JULIA CARSON, Indiana
JON PORTER, Nevada, Vice-Chair PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
LYNN A. WESTMORELND, Georgia, Vice- JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Chair (ex officio)
DON YOUNG, Alaska
(ex officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
TESTIMONY
Page
Crosbie, William, Senior Vice President of Operations, Amtrak.... 46
Hecker, JayEtta Z., Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues,
Government Accountability Office............................... 13
Jamison, Robert D., Acting Administrator, Federal Railroad
Administration................................................. 13
Jelensperger, Francis, President, Alstom Transportation Inc. of
America........................................................ 46
Spurr, William A., President, Bombardier Transport of North
America........................................................ 46
Weiderhold, Fred E., Jr., Inspector General, Amtrak............. 13
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Brown, Hon. Corrine, of Florida.................................. 61
Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois............................. 63
Oberstar, James L. of Minnesota.................................. 96
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Crosbie, William................................................. 65
Hecker, JayEtta Z............................................... 71
Jamison, Robert D............................................... 89
Jelensperger, Francis........................................... 93
Spurr, William A................................................. 103
Weiderhold, Fred E., Jr......................................... 111
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Jelensperger, Francis, President, Alstom Transportation Inc. of
America, responses to questions................................ 94
Mica, Hon. John L., a Representative in Congress from Florida:
Letter to the Inspector Generals for the U.S. Department of
Transportation and Amtrak, May 11, 2005...................... 6
California Rail News, "Amtrak's Gunn Displays a Disarming
Honesty", August 2002........................................ 30
Spurr, William A., President, Bombardier Transport of North
America, responses to questions, and chart..................... 108
ADDITION TO THE RECORD
Federal Transit Administration, Transit Threat Level Response
Recommendation, report......................................... 117
GETTING ACELA BACK ON TRACK
----------
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
House of Representatives, Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee
on Railroads, Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m. in room
2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Steve LaTourette
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Mr. LaTourette. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Railroads
will come to order.
I want to welcome all of our members and witnesses here
today for the hearing entitled Getting Acela Back on Track.
This will be one in a series that this Subcommittee will hold
relative to Amtrak. Today's hearing will focus on the Acela
train sets and the great difficulty. There will be additional
hearings, we believe, in the months of May and June focusing on
other aspects of Amtrak's operations. Then hopefully with the
bipartisan work of all members of this Subcommittee, we hope to
look at a number of reform proposals that are being circulated
relative to the operation of Amtrak.
As all of you are probably aware, Amtrak's Acela train,
which runs in the northeast corridor, was removed from service
last month due to cracked brakes. As of today, all 20 Acelas
remain parked while Amtrak, Bombardier and Alstom and various
subcontractors work out the necessary repairs. Back in the
1990s, the Acela train was billed as America's answer to the
French TGV and the Japanese bullet train. But the Acela has
been faced with challenges from the beginning, even before the
train went into service in the year 2000.
In 1999, the manufacturers had to deal with design issues
which reduced the train's speed on curves and increased trip
times. Then problems arose with excessive wheel wear,
undercarriage vibration and broken bolts. The introduction of
the Acela was delayed for many months while engineers developed
a fix.
In 2002, after about 18 months of service, cracks began to
develop in the brackets for the Acela's yaw dampers, a
suspension component that look like a giant shock absorber.
Engineers eventually worked out a solution to that problem as
well.
Last month, Amtrak and the FRA were running an Acela speed
test in the northeast corridor with the intention of raising
the train's operating speed over a certain stretch of track.
After the test, an FRA official asked to have a look at the
train's undercarriage. That official was Rich Thomas, the FRA's
motive, power and equipment specialist for region II. I think I
would like to express on behalf of the Subcommittee a debt of
gratitude to Rich. His sharp eyes caught an important defect
that everyone else to that moment in time had missed, serious
cracks in the Acela's disc brakes. I don't know if the FRA
gives out commendations and medals, but I think Rich certainly
deserves one for his eagle eyes.
After further inspection, inspectors found cracked brakes
on virtually ever axle of every Acela train and the entire
fleet was grounded. The decision to remove Acela train sets
from service, though dramatic, was the right thing to do. In my
opinion, Amtrak put the safety of its passengers and commuter
operators in the northeast corridor and the traveling public at
large ahead of revenue. They put safety first, and for that I
think they should be commended.
I would also like to bring attention to another fact that
seems to have been lost in all of this. Amtrak, due in large
part to the size of its fleet and flexibility of its dedicated
work force, was able to recall equipment from around the
country to build complete Metroliner sets and place them in the
Acela express time slots between New York and Washington with
very little disruption to its customer base. This was a
herculean task that was planned with little notice and executed
with discipline and precision. If this had been almost any
other operator, I question whether the results would have been
the same.
We need to get to the root cause of the current
difficulties with Acela, but more than that, we need to know
how the lessons learned can help us improve rail safety in the
future. For example, there is a serious question of information
flow. I understand that the Acela technicians on the shop floor
had not been fully informed as to what type of cracks to look
for and where to look on the discs for cracks. There were no
testing procedures in place to find these cracks, and the shop
technicians apparently did not have access to the appropriate
manufacturer's service bulletins.
In closing, I want to say that today's hearing is not about
assessing blame, but rather about finding the best way to
ensure the safety and efficiency of high speed rail service on
the northeast corridor.
Before I yield to our distinguished Ranking Member, Ms.
Brown, I want to issue an apology to the witnesses and members
of the Subcommittee today. Even though the Chair believes that
testimony to appear at this and any other hearing is embargoed
until the time of the hearing, for some reason I woke up this
morning and was able to read the testimony in the newspaper. I
hope in the future the staff and members or whoever who has
access to the testimony that helps us prepare for these
hearings in the future will respect that embargo.
One reason that that is important is at least one of the
witnesses today has brought additional testimony and an
addendum that may in fact alter the nature and character and
substance of the testimony that he or she intends to give. It
is very important to the integrity of the hearing process that
that information remains with us.
Also, I would like to ask unanimous consent for 30 days for
members to revise and extend their remarks and permit the
submission of additional statements and materials by the
witnesses. Without objection, so ordered.
Now it is my pleasure to yield to our distinguished Ranking
Member, Ms. Brown of Florida.
Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, and I am
glad you got a chance to read the paper.
I want to first of all thank you for holding this hearing.
I think this is a very important hearing.
On April 15th, during a routine inspection of the Acela
express train, the Federal Railroad Administration discovered
cracks in the train's brake discs. This led to an investigation
of brake discs on the entire system. Among the 1,400 brake
discs, about half of the rotors had failed. As a result, Amtrak
has been forced to suspend express service.
Let me first of all congratulate Amtrak for being cautious
and erring on the safety side. I understand while the FRA
recommended that Amtrak ground the fleet, it was Amtrak's
decision to do so. Too often, this Subcommittee has
investigated mechanical failures after the accident has
occurred.
A few weeks ago, I attended a press conference on the
crisis, and I just want to once again state how much I
appreciate Amtrak and Amtrak workers for stepping up to the
plate, working hard to minimize service disruptions and
addressing the needs of Amtrak passengers. Amtrak has a lot to
deal with. Since its inception in 2000, Amtrak has been plagued
with a host of problems. First, there were problems with
construction. There were delays, and of course the overruns in
cost in delivering this train.
But let me say that I do not think the entire problem was
Amtrak's. The Northeast Corridor Maintenance Company, under the
auspices of the consortium, is responsible for maintaining
these trains, not Amtrak. The consortium, however, never
discovered the cracks. I understand that there is evidence that
the consortium should have been inspecting and replacing brake
discs with cracked spokes and hubs, but this never happened. In
fact, a technical manual and a separate service bulletin that
was sent to the consortium both recommended routine inspections
and replacement of cracks, but these recommendations were
ignored.
I feel that if FRA inspections had not found the cracks in
these spokes, the consortium would not have identified these
problems until it was too late, until a major accident had
occurred. I believe, however, that this tragedy was a blessing
in disguise. But I wish that the Administration, who has
proposed separate operations from infrastructure in a so-called
Amtrak Reform plan, this crisis is the perfect example of why
this is a bad idea.
About a month ago, this Committee visited Europe, the
British system. We found out that the separation of maintenance
and operations was a major reason why they had several
disastrous accidents, and now the whole system is going forward
with trying to pull it back together. We do not have to make
that mistake here in the United States. We need to work
together to ensure that we have quality transportation rail
service in the United States.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentlelady very much.
Mr. Mica?
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. Both
of you I think quoted the story that is in the Washington Post
today. Let me just correct the story. It starts out: ``The
brake problem that sidelined Acela high speed trains last month
appears to be the result of fatigue in the metal components.''
First of all, that is a gross misstatement, because what has
happened here is not the failure of a brake system, it is the
failure of Amtrak to be able to properly run a high speed
system or high speed corridor. It is difficult when you have a
dysfunctional organization trying to operate.
Then it says--let me read the next part. ``Amtrak is losing
a million dollars every week that the Acela express train is
out of service and faces a serious cash crunch to continue
operations to the end of the fiscal year.'' Even if Acela were
running, it would still face similar losses.
Then let me read, ``Meantime, the April 15th shutdown of
the high speed service continues to inconvenience thousands of
commuters on Amtrak's northeast corridor, which runs from
Washington to New York.'' Now listen to this, this is the best
part. ``Amtrak has substituted more regular speed Metroliner
service between the three cities.'' Acela only ran between one
and two miles an hour difference than the Metroliner.
So there are a number of errors and misconceptions that the
press is reporting today. In fact, ladies and gentlemen of the
Subcommittee, this is probably the most costly and mismanaged
rail project in the history of passenger rail service, not only
in the country but probably the world. Three point two billion
dollars spent to date. In fact, if you look at the costs over
the period of time, it is subsidized to the tune of about
$14,000 per passenger that we are running on this. We probably
could have bought limousines and brought them back and forth
from Washington to New York and Boston cheaper.
This is frightening, because it was not Amtrak that
discovered the flaw in this braking system. It was not the
vendor, who has been paid millions of dollars and is also
responsible. But what it was in fact was FRA that accidentally,
as I understand it, found this flaw. What you have here, ladies
and gentlemen, is again, a problem from the very start in the
structure and Amtrak trying to run a high speed corridor.
Even if we fix this, they won't get it right. First of all,
the bungled the acquisition, they bought the wrong equipment.
They changed the specs. Read the history of it. They have
bungled management. I could go on and detail that, but it is
almost farcical. They have bungled oversight. Again, FRA found
this, neither the vendor nor Amtrak found this error that could
have resulted in a great tragedy.
I am a strong supporter of high speed rail system and
service, not only for the northeast corridor but across the
United States. It will take billions and billions of dollars to
build these. I have no problem with supporting that corridor,
the northeast corridor or additional corridors which we
desperately need in at least a dozen approved corridors across
the United States. But I'll be darned if I will give it to
people with a record like this. We need to take Amtrak out of
the high speed service, turn it over to a consortium of the
States and the private sector. We can run a service that will
relieve our congested airports and highways.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask, I have looked at
this whole problem, the whole bungled acquisition. One thing
that frightens me is the hosing that the taxpayers have taken
in this entire matter of again, a bungled management oversight
and acquisition program. I have found that tens of millions of
dollars have been spent in legal fees, some for in-house and
some for contracted consulting service. I have a letter today,
and I will ask for that to be part of the record, I am going to
ask the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation
to investigate and review all the expenses, not just on this
braking system, but on this entire failed enterprise, report
back to me and also to the Subcommittee.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, again, I am a strong supporter
of high speed service alternatives for passengers on rail, and
look forward to working with you and hopefully changing this
whole structure, not just the brakes. Thank you.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentleman for his observations.
Without objection, your letter will be made part of the record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2496.092
Mr. LaTourette. Mr. Blumenauer.
Mr. Blumenauer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I deeply
appreciate the Committee having the hearing today to focus on
these issues. I hear my good friend from Florida talk about
turning something over to Amtrak and talking about their
record. Well, the people, in my judgment, with the record that
is not something that I am proud of is the record that Congress
has of unrealistic expectations and failure to fund an adequate
capital program.
The people that I am concerned about and one of the
questions I would like to explore in the course of this hearing
deals with, what is it that forces Amtrak to have to, as Ms.
Hecker has in the first page of her testimony, talk about the
fact that they can't buy something off the shelf. There are
products that work all over the world with proven records of
safety. Why is it that Amtrak is forced to have to assemble
something that has serial number 0000001 in the backdrop of
Congress and others' steady drumbeat to force Amtrak to move
quickly over tracks where there is not adequate capital
investment and where Congress refuses to give them the
opportunity to be flexible in terms of the management. And they
are still liable, in some cases, for costs that date back far
before Amtrak was even formed.
So Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the hearing. I appreciate the
fact that we are going to be getting at some short term
concerns about these safety issues. I too am pleased that we
got ahead of the curve and I am looking forward to answers
about maintenance and expectation.
But I am hopeful that before this Subcommittee finishes its
job that it stops having Amtrak service as some sort of
punching bag and that we look at the forces that require us to
have these train sets established in the first place and the
unrealistic expectations and the pressures that are brought to
bear with the regulatory agencies. I have had experience in my
hometown when we are trying to get rail initiatives that we
can't buy off the shelf equipment from Europe for smaller scale
projects that add cost and complexity, and as near as I can
tell, don't add safety.
So I think we ought to get at the regulatory regime and the
context in which this goes. I will submit a more extensive
statement, even thought it is hard to believe. But I want to at
least put this on the record as we move forward.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentleman very much.
It is the Chair's intention to permit every member to make
an opening statement, particularly those in the northeast
corridor who have great concerns with Acela. But staff has
advised me that Mr. Jamison and his wife are expecting a child
any minute. So if we could sort of move through it
expeditiously, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Westmoreland? No statement. Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing today
regarding Amtrak's Acela. This is an issue of particular
concern to me, given that my district contains Penn Station in
New York City, by far the largest Amtrak station in the
country. I am personally a frequent rider of Amtrak from New
York to Washington, practically every week that Congress is in
session. So I have a great person interest in seeing Amtrak's
Acela back in operation and running in reliable service.
We know that Amtrak has problems. While I am interested to
hear from the witnesses today as to the particular causes of
this particular problem, we know the larger answer to the
larger problem is quite clear. I hope that the Acela issue is
not used as an excuse to further dismantle the railroad.
The Administration has long seen problems with Amtrak and
decided to chuck the whole thing. The Administration wants to
derail the system by breaking Amtrak up into small pieces,
gutting protections for railroad workers and trying to split
the northeast corridor, the jewel of the Amtrak system, in a
way that has failed spectacularly elsewhere, most notably in
Great Britain.
And in a spectacular display of contempt for the northeast
part of the country, the Administration has proposed spending
no money on Amtrak this year in order deliberately,
intentionally to drive it into bankruptcy. This Administration
looks at Amtrak and says, if only we had better management, or
if only we busted the unions. Or if only we let private
companies come in and run the trains. If only we had
competition, then we would have a profitable passenger rail
network and everything would work itself out.
Apparently the Administration forgets, as do some members
of this panel, that the reason Amtrak was created in the first
place was because the private railroads begged the Government
to stop making them carry passengers. We took these money-
losing routes off the hands of the private railroads with their
inadequate infrastructure and attempted to create a new
railroad. Not surprisingly, things have not gone entirely
smoothly.
I believe the answer is actually quite simple. First,
people need to stop making the false assumption, the absurd
assumption that transportation systems are profitable. The
airlines and the highways are both heavily subsidized by
taxpayers, and they should be. Because they provide a vital
public service and they are critical to our economy. But
neither of them is profitable, at least not without significant
public investment. At the very least, they are not self-
sufficient. We should not try to require Amtrak to be self-
sufficient, either. It is impossible, it is illusory. It does
not make good sense as transportation public policy and the
requirements that this Congress has imposed on Amtrak, to
promise to be self-sufficient, are requirements to be
hypocritical and self-defeating.
Second, we need to finally start investing adequate
resources in Amtrak to allow the railroad to provide stable,
reliable service. One of the reasons, I believe, perhaps the
chief reason for the problems we are having with the Acela now
is that the prototype testing was rushed and skimped on to a
large extent to save money, because they did not have the
funds. We spend approximately $50 billion a year on highways
and aviation, but only about $1 billion on Amtrak, even though
rail is a more energy efficient mode of transportation.
Mr. Menendez and I are working on legislation called TRAIN-
21 that would provide Amtrak the funding it needs to improve
service in its current system, as well as provide a funding
mechanism to upgrade high speed corridors around the country. I
believe that positive measures that invest in rail, such as
TRAIN-21, are what is needed to keep Amtrak stable, or rather
to restore it to stability, and to give it the resources it
needs to get the Acela back on track and to get better systems
in place.
I hope this hearing can be useful in determining exactly
what steps need to be taken to fix this problem in the most
efficient manner possible. I look forward to working with my
colleagues to make sure that Amtrak has the resources it needs
to do the job and does not fall prey to the kind of delusions
that the Administration and some members of this panel that we
heard a few minutes ago are subject to.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentleman.
Ms. Brown tells me that Mr. Cummings, you are next in
seniority. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I want to associate myself with everything that has been
said by my Democratic colleagues. I want to thank you, Mr.
Chairman, for calling this hearing today to enable us to assess
what must be done to ensure that Acela does not continue to be
plagued by service interruptions.
Acela is critical to Amtrak's revitalization and to
transportation on the northeast corridor. We must ensure that
Acela is a reliable service. Unfortunately, the history of
Acela has been one of disappointment almost from its inception.
The scheduled start date of Acela service was delayed by more
than one year, and when the service finally did begin, the
first Acela train arrived at its destination more than 10
minutes late. The current problems with Acela's brake system
are just one in a series of equipment failures that have
resulted in service interruptions since 2001.
A brief review of the history of the creation of Acela
reveals essential lessons that must be considered by the
Subcommittee as we examine what should be done now to improve
Acela. After committing to develop high speed service, Amtrak
examined high speed trains already in use in Europe. However,
according to statements by Amtrak board members reported in the
papers at the time, Amtrak ultimately chose a new and
completely untried system because it came with an attractive
financing package provided by the Canadian government. Amtrak
ordered the first Acela trains even before the Federal Railroad
Administration had promulgated safety regulations for such Tier
II trains.
When these regulations were announced, they required
Acela's engines to be heavier than any other high speed train
in the world. Compliance with these regulations also required
Amtrak to make extensive design changes. Despite the fact that
Acela design was new, Amtrak apparently felt pressure to put it
into service quickly, and therefore decided not to build and
test a prototype. As a result, design flaws, such as the impact
of its weight that might have been resolved before Acela was in
revenue service, are now being addressed through these repeated
service suspensions.
What happened between the time the promise of
groundbreaking high speed rail service was made and the delay a
year later than planned that this troubled train was put into
revenue service? To begin with, Amtrak was pressured to develop
its high speed service as quickly as possible, but the effort
was underfunded. Unfortunately, these pressures shaped Amtrak's
choices, starting with the choice of the Acela design itself,
which could be described as a choice of funding over function.
Further, the Administration and Congress committed to
develop high speed rail service without committing to spend the
full amount necessary to create the track infrastructure needed
to support truly high speed service. As a result, Acela is
designed to travel at 150 miles per hour but it is able to
achieve that speed on less than 35 miles of track along the
entire northeast corridor. Consequently, the introduction of
Acela has not reduced the trip time between New York and Boston
to less than three hours, as required by the 1992 Amtrak
Reauthorization and Development Act.
Finally, unfortunately it seems that Amtrak failed to
manage properly the limited funding it was given to upgrade
track along the northeast corridor. A report issued by the
well-respected GAO in February 2004 found that ``Neither Amtrak
nor the FRA exercised effective management or oversight of the
northeast high speed rail improvement project.'' The GAO report
also found that Amtrak failed to develop a comprehensive
management plan for its infrastructure project.
In other words, the story of Acela train is the story of
Amtrak itself. Amtrak has been given competing goals over the
years, sometimes being told to focus on providing the broadest
possible service and at other times being told to obtain
financial self-sufficiency. Throughout its existence, however,
it has been underfunded and the capital infrastructure on which
it operates is still in need of extensive upgrades and repairs.
So, Mr. Chairman, we must set clear goals for Acela. We
must fund it adequately and we must be vigilant in demanding
that Amtrak respond to our investment by improving its own
management and service efficiency. We cannot continue to repeat
our past mistakes regarding our Nation's inter-city passenger
rail service.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Oberstar?
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think it is important to have this hearing. I hope it
does not evolve into a hearing on whether Acela or whether
Amtrak, but stay focused on the issue of what went wrong here
in this very important aspect of the Acela technology. I am for
Amtrak, said it many times, I don't need to repeat all that. I
think the Acela was a great innovation in American rail
technology. It still leaves us a third world country in terms
of high speed passenger rail transportation.
But this technology of Acela, Mr. Chairman, has had
repeated problems. What we are confronted with today as the
subject of our hearing is the disc brakes, or brake discs. This
is not a new issue of technology. Fifteen years ago, a DC-10
crashed in Iowa, crash landed in Sioux City after losing a disc
in the tail engine. Titanium, not just any piece of metal,
highest quality metal cast anywhere in the industrialized
world. It failed.
We can take lessons from the DC-10 experience and apply
them to Acela as we do throughout aviation. Redundancy in the
manufacturing process and redundancy in the oversight and
conduct and oversight of maintenance.
There are two issues here. One is the casting of the brake
discs themselves, and the maintenance conducted on those
brakes. Let me deal with the first issue. The bible of steel,
which I keep in my office, Making, Shaping and Treating of
Steel, the U.S. Steel Company, has an entire chapter on
castings of steel and iron. What is critically important are,
or factors that are critically important are the temperature at
which the steel is cast, the rate at which the cast is cooled,
the gating through which the steel is poured from the ingot
into the mold, and the purity of the product itself.
As far as I can tell from the testing done so far, neither
Bombardier-Alstom nor Amtrak has gone far enough into the
technology of the casting of this steel. That is why I have
asked for further inquiry into this matter of the original
equipment manufacturer's technical manual. I have asked the
Amtrak inspector general to deliver the technical manual on
brake disc rotors. I think we will, I will probe, of course, in
this hearing, the extent to which oversight has been conducted
by the Federal Railroad Administration, Amtrak itself and its
contractor, Bombardier.
The failure in the DC-10 was a failure both of casting and
of oversight. There have been no accidents yet on Acela, been
no injuries or fatalities, thank God. But there were 110 lives
lost in that failure of the United Airlines DC-10 in Sioux
City, Iowa. Fine, fine submicroscopic hairline crack,
propagated over a period of time to cause catastrophic failure.
The discs separated, the engine went through the hydraulic
lines, landed in a cornfield, was recovered by NTSB. And the
metallurgical analysis done in meticulous detail, notably
absent in the inquiries so far, and in that respect this
hearing may be somewhat premature, but nonetheless, it is
important for us to stay on top of this matter.
The same principle applies here. You have a fine crack, and
it propagates. Then you are in the presence of a real or
potential catastrophic failure. The design life of the brake
disc rotors, from all the documents I have read, and I have
read a good many of them, 1 million miles. But the cracks
appeared much earlier, 300,000, 400,000, 650,000 miles. Now, if
this vehicle had been traveling at true high speeds of 175, 185
miles an hour, it very likely could have had catastrophic
failure.
So we have to review in considerable detail not only the
casting, the manufacture and the specifications for this part,
but also the conduct of maintenance. That is critical to
safety. That is where I think there has been a lapse.
Back to the casting, you have to look at the shape, the
metal specifications, chemical composition of the molten metal,
whether there is a possibility that sulfur wax from the molds
could have propagated into the molten metal, creating gating,
risering and whether in fact the metal was heated to its
required specification, 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Until we
understand all of those issues, we are not going to fully
understand what has gone wrong here. Those are the issues,
should be the primary factors.
Then I think we have to look very carefully at the
qualifications of the maintenance personnel, their skill in
detecting submicroscopic cracks in the hubs, the connections of
the spokes. And I think we need to oversee Amtrak's and
Bombardier's inquiry into this process. I think we need some
outside metallurgical consultants to take a close look at this
issue, Mr. Chairman.
I thank you very much for the time.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentleman very much for his
observations. One of the reasons that members on both sides of
the aisle benefit so greatly from the distinguished Ranking
Member's institutional knowledge and other knowledge, I would
venture to say you are probably one of the few members that has
the steel bible here on his bookshelf in Washington, D.C.
[Laughter.]
Mr. LaTourette. Mr. Menendez.
Mr. Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing and for this opportunity.
Mr. Chairman, if we can accomplish one thing at today's
hearing, I hope that we can correct the misperception, at least
my belief a misperception, that this whole problem was Amtrak's
fault. Let's be clear. Amtrak did not design the brake discs,
they did not produce them, and everything that I have seen at
least to date indicates that they had no knowledge of any of
the potential problems until the cracks were discovered. Amtrak
has in fact, in my view, performed admirably by moving quickly
in taking the Acela out of service, even though they knew it
would cost millions of dollars in lost revenue.
I believe the real problem is the combination of
unrealistic expectations and insufficient support that Amtrak
has struggled with since its creation. Thirty-four years of
funding Amtrak does not even equal one year of highway funding.
We should not be surprised that Acela has suffered a number of
embarrassing setbacks since they were encouraged to rush a high
speed train into service in the name of becoming profitable.
Instead of being able to select a train purely on its merits,
they were forced to take a largely untested design because it
had the most attractive financing deal.
To solve Amtrak's problems, we do not need to sell off the
northeast corridor, force the States to pay the whole cost so
that their State transit systems that largely run, as in my
State of New Jersey, on Amtrak's lines and would leave tens of
thousands of travelers either stranded or with increasingly
high fares, or break it into a number of smaller companies, I
don't think those are our solutions. Those solutions, in a
similar set of circumstances, were utter failures in Great
Britain.
What we need to do is make the serious financial commitment
that should have been there from the beginning. We need to
provide Amtrak with a stable and robust funding source so that
it can fix its backlog of deferred maintenance, run more
trains, run them faster and run them on time. To that end, I
will soon be introducing my TRAIN-21 legislation, along with
Congressman Nadler and others, that provides Amtrak the money
it needs, establishes a new State matching program designed to
improve the quality of train service in rail corridors
throughout the country.
Amtrak is a national transportation asset that provides a
vital service for the 25 million people who ride it each year.
It is time we treated it as such.
As someone who sits right across from New York City in the
context of my congressional district, and who lost many
citizens on September 11th, it is astounding to me that we do
not view Amtrak as a vital component of national security in
the need for multiple modes of transportation in the
eventuality of a terrorist attack. On that fateful day, when
September 11th took place, the only way out of downtown
Manhattan was ultimately through a ferry system into New
Jersey. Days later, when the airlines were still grounded, it
was rail that connected cities one to each other. Multiple
modes of transportation are critical in the post-September 11th
world. Amtrak is part of that.
We started the process, I hope, of understanding the value
of Amtrak two weeks ago when the Committee reported out the
Amtrak Reauthorization and RIDE-21, and we continue today by
trying to figure out how Amtrak can get its most lucrative
train back on track. I hope we can get some answers about what
caused these brake problems, and I look forward to figuring out
exactly who knew what and when.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentleman very much.
It is now time for our first panel. I want to thank all of
the witnesses and remind you all that we have received your
testimony, so has the Washington Post, apparently. But we have
received your testimony and reviewed it. Because of the
importance of this, we are not going to be real sticklers on
the five minute clock. But if you could confine your comments
to as close to that as possible, we would appreciate it.
On the first panel is Robert Jamison, the Acting
Administrator and expectant father from the Federal Railroad
Administration; Fred Weiderhold, Jr., who is the Inspector
General for Amtrak; and JayEtta Hecker, who is the Director of
the Physical Infrastructure Issues section of the GAO. Welcome
to you all, thank you for coming today, and thank you for
providing us with your testimony ahead of time.
Mr. Jamison, when you are ready.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT D. JAMISON, ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL
RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION; FRED E. WEIDERHOLD, JR., INSPECTOR
GENERAL, AMTRAK; JAYETTA Z. HECKER, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Jamison. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you
today, on behalf of Secretary Mineta, to discuss the recent
developments concerning Amtrak's Acela service. As you have
already mentioned, Mr. Chairman, an FRA Safety Specialist, Mr.
Rich Thomas, first detected cracks on the spokes of an Acela
train disc brake rotor on the evening of April 14th. The
detection occurred while FRA personnel were closely inspecting
a trainset that had been involved in test runs. The test runs,
unrelated to the brake issue, were being conducted to ensure
safe operating performance of the Acela at higher speeds in
curves than are currently permitted.
While conducting a very thorough post-test inspection of
the brakes on the trainset, Mr. Thomas noticed what appeared to
be rust from a small mark on one of the rotor's spokes. On
closer examination, the mark proved to be a crack. After the
initial discovery of the cracks, the FRA inspectors, along with
personnel from Amtrak and the Acela maintenance contractor,
then inspected the other trainsets. As the inspections
concluded that evening, it became clear that a significant
percentage of the disc brakes had similar cracks. After
discussions with FRA personnel that night, Amtrak suspended
Acela service immediately on April 15th and ordered a detailed
inspection of the entire Acela fleet for the presence of such
brake rotor cracks.
The good news is, as has already pointed out by members of
this Subcommittee, these cracks were detected before they led
to a catastrophic failure of the rotor with potentially very
serious consequences. My staff and I met with Amtrak President
David Gunn and his staff on April 15th, and again on April 20th
to discuss the problem and potential solutions. Amtrak formed a
working group consisting of its staff, its contractors who are
responsible for Acela maintenance, the suppliers of the
equipment and several technical experts to determine the cause
of the problem and to explore solutions to the problem. FRA
experts are fully cooperating with that effort. Amtrak has no
intention of running the Acela equipment with cracks in the
disc brakes, and all concerned understand that FRA will not
permit that to happen.
FRA has a broad safety program. Our efforts to ensure the
safety of the Acela service are but one component of a
comprehensive railroad safety program. Although the railroad
industry's overall safety record is very positive and most
safety trends are moving in the right direction, very serious
train accidents still occur, and the train accident rate has
remained stubborn. To meet these challenges, FRA is targeting
its regulatory program on the most frequent causes of train
accidents. We are focusing our inspection resources on the
areas of highest risk, and we are accelerating our R&D efforts
that have the largest potential to mitigate those risks.
More than 70 percent of all train accidents are caused by
either human factors or track defects. FRA is taking aggressive
action to address these leading causes of accidents.
One component of our program is a focused national
inspection plan. FRA recently began phasing in this national
inspection plan to improve the agency's allocation of
inspection resources. The NIP will use sophisticated trend
analysis of inspection and accident data to produce an optimal
distribution of resources to minimize fatality, injury and
accident rates. We began implementing the NIP last month in the
first two disciplines of operating practices and track, which
correspond to the leading causes of accidents.
FRA closely monitors all aspects of Amtrak safety, as it
does for all freight and passenger railroads. Amtrak's safety
record is comparably quite good. In 2004, Amtrak's rate of
accidents, 2.8 per million train-miles, was well below the
industry average of 4 accidents per million train-miles.
Contrary to the industry trend over the last two years,
Amtrak's human-factor-caused accidents have fallen
substantially, comprising 20 percent of Amtrak's accidents in
2004. Employee injury rates, particularly in the transportation
department, also improved in 2004.
FRA will continue to monitor Amtrak very closely and assure
that its generally positive safety record is maintained and
does not deteriorate.
As mentioned previously, we are working very closely with
Amtrak as the railroad tries to determine a long-term solution
to Acela's disc brake problem. Public safety is of utmost
importance, and we will continue to ensure that the solution
that Amtrak adopts fully protects Acela's passengers and crews.
We will also ensure that Amtrak's implementation of its
equipment inspection program for the Acela trainsets is
improved so as to ensure that any such safety-critical problems
are found and corrected well before they reach the dimension
that this problem had reached by the time that we detected it.
I believe that the extra effort that has already been
pointed out, that was displayed by FRA Safety Specialist Thomas
and the other FRA personnel involved in the Acela brake issue,
quite possibly averted a very serious accident. Those efforts
are emblematic of the dedication of the FRA employees to their
safety mission. We will continue to exercise that level of
effort in working with Amtrak to ensure that the resumption of
Acela service is safely done.
I look forward to answering any of your questions.
Mr. LaTourette. Thank you very much, Mr. Jamison.
Mr. Weiderhold, thank you for coming, and we are ready to
listen to you.
Mr. Weiderhold. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of
the Committee.
Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I have two requests.
One request, I have a written statement that I would like to be
submitted for the record.
Mr. LaTourette. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Weiderhold. The second request is to allow Mr. Oberstar
to be hired on my staff, given his knowledge of steel. I think
he is exactly on point when it comes to some of the issues that
my office is very concerned with. I have an engineering degree,
but it is about 30 years old. I know enough to be dangerous on
that, sir, but I would be pleased to work with you on that
issue.
I want to kind of echo the comments of some of the members
in recognizing the FRA. I have worked with Mr. Thomas for a
couple of years. I think that when we interviewed him, I asked
him, I called him the following morning and I said, Rich, how
did you find the crack. He said, Fred, we ended the run, I go
under the train, and it was just out of the corner of my eye I
saw a rust spot, and it didn't look like a surface crack. I
think he pushed at it a little bit, and it had some
indentation, there was rust, indications of rust. So he quickly
called down Steve Play, who joined him under the train and they
proceeded to check out and through visual inspections they
found a number of cracks in spokes.
Really what we want to do is to figure out kind of why it
took so long for the FRA or anyone to notice those cracks
before some type of corrective action was taken.
I also want to commend the FRA, because as soon as this
occurred, they ordered, and Amtrak fully cooperated with, a
fleet-wide inspection of all the brake discs across the system
on the non-Acela fleet. There are many, many more cars out
there that needed to be inspected. The FRA executed that within
a couple of days over the fleet. I have reviewed their reports
and their reports make clear that there is no systemic problem
with Amtrak cars, the non-Acela Amtrak cars. But I think the
FRA should be recognized for that quick effort.
I do want to commend Amtrak. Within hours after being
alerted with the FRA and speaking with the consortium, Mr.
Crosbie, who is their senior VP of operations, I think about
12:30 in the morning made the decision to ground the fleet.
That was certainly the right decision in hindsight. I think
Amtrak did a very commendable job and acted in the best
interests of everyone in making that timely decision.
Also, Amtrak did institute very quickly a recovery stage
with respect to bringing the Metroliners back. I think that is
good news, because what has happened is, there has not been any
serious degradation of riders in the northeast corridor. I
think regardless, in listening to the members, regardless of
the positions on Acela as to how we got here, I think Amtrak is
a common carrier, it does have common carrier obligations, it
does need to keep its trains running, and it was able to
accomplish that.
You will hear later on a lot of discussion about the fix. I
think everybody is very interested in getting to the fix. We
are concerned about that. We watched the various vendors in the
supply chain, the Knorr Corporation, Fadely Transport, SAB
WABCO and others working very hard daily, seven days a week,
trying to figure out what went wrong. Likewise, the
manufacturers' consortium of Bombardier and Alstom have been
working very hard and have dedicated staff and a lot of time to
getting to the fix.
But I want to elaborate a little bit more, and I think the
members have all touched on this, about what more you need to
do. And this gets to the OIG's role.
While the fix is a priority, I think it is our
responsibility to examine the entirety of the root causes of
the failure. The root cause does not stop at just finding the
reason for the failure. There are, as this Committee is very
familiar with, what I would call human factor issues that the
NTSB is very familiar with, and that is, why did certain people
make some decisions and why did some people make other
decisions with respect to the brake discs.
Like you, we want to know why it took so long for the
cracks to be discovered. There were many people involved in the
inspection and servicing of the wheel sets onto which the brake
discs are affixed. Why did so many brake discs with cracks
passed unnoticed?
We also want to know who was aware of the cracking problem.
Did the responsible person or persons act differently because
an action or non-action would result in financial harm? Are
there organizational impediments to information sharing?
Sometimes people make bad decisions with good intentions.
We need to know if that happened here.
Very briefly, because I know we do not have a lot of time
in the opening statements, I would like with your permission,
Chairman LaTourette, at least talk about what we have found so
far to kind of get the ball rolling. First, with respect to why
the cracks went unnoticed by the maintainers and the
inspectors. We have two possible explanations for that, if you
will bear with me.
First, the cracks are very hard to see. We had some of the
Committee staff out at Ivy City looking at the Acela trains. I
took them under the trains, they viewed the wheel sets off from
under the cars. I think even with their, in some cases, younger
eyes they would have had a hard time finding those cracks.
We do not have an actual disc for you today. They are
fairly large, and as Mr. Oberstar points out, this is poured
cast steel, they are pretty heavy. What I do have is a diagram
over here, and there is a diagram attached to the back of the
testimony that kind of gives you an orientation of the disc.
Essentially you've got, if I can reach it over here, you've got
the disc itself, you have the hub in the center, you've got six
spokes that kind of radiate from the hub and you have this
space here which is the friction ring for the brake pad to
reply. That's how the wheels are stopped.
You should also understand, I think Mr. Oberstar will
appreciate this, that there are a number of forces acting on
the disc. There are lateral forces due to shocks and due to
centrifugal force. This is normally measured in g-forces, as g-
forces is the pull of gravity. I think people who serve on the
Aviation Subcommittee are intimately familiar with what a g-
force is. There are vertical forces that act on that disc as a
result of the train moving up and down on the tracks, different
amplitudes of forces that are applied. There are radial forces
that are applied onto the disc. This disc is designed to heat
up.
As you can well imagine, you have a lot of weight, going at
speed, and the brakes are applied, this is carbon on steel,
there is a heat buildup. So the discs have a design,
essentially, to expand when they are hot and contract, go back
into compression, when they are cold.
There are also brake torque forces around this in a
circumferential direction of the brake disc. The possible
reasons for the spoke cracking, the loads are higher than
expected, or the discs simply don't meet the specification.
I think Mr. Jamison touched on how Rich found the crack in
the disc. I won't expand on that too much.
I do have, and I think I put it up on the dais, Mr.
Chairman, I do have some pictures of the cracks in the disc.
Some of those were passed around, some of those are in color.
You can see from some of these, I think it should be up there
that some of these cracks are hairline and some of these cracks
are a lot more visible to visual inspection.
The second reason the cracks passed unnoticed is a little
bit more disconcerting. If I can refer you to another exhibit,
another chart, I want to walk you through the brake disc supply
chain and the organizational relationships involved in the
acquisition, installation and maintenance and servicing of the
disc. You can refer to, there should be a handout for you on
the chart that looks like an organization chart over there. I
am sorry, Mr. Chairman, next time I'll have this in Power Point
so we can get it up on the screen.
But what you see in that chart is essentially the supply
chain going from SAB WABCO, who is the OEM Of the original
manufacturer of the brake disc part, as a sub to Knorr
Corporation, that is the owner of the brake disc assembly. They
have a contractual relationship with the consortium that is
made up of Bombardier and Alstom. They in turn create a wholly-
owned subsidiary, that's the NEC-MSC, the Northeast Corridor
Maintenance Service Corporation, who in turn issues a
preventive management work order, which we would call a
checklist, which is used, which goes to the shop floor.
The only other box on that chart, which is a very important
box, is a company called ORX, very reputable company just
outside of Altoona, Pennsylvania. ORX was the original
assembler of the wheel sets. They have what we call a
horizontal press. This is where the wheels are pressed onto the
axle, the brake discs themselves are pressed onto the axle. So
they were there when the wheel sets were originally assembled
and when there is wear on the wheels or on the brake discs, the
wheel sets are removed, they are sent to ORX. ORX inspects
them, refurbishes them and then returns them back to NEC-MSC.
Within one day of the brake disc spoke cracks being
reported, Amtrak management and the OIG were also provided with
an excerpt from an inspection procedure manual prepared by the
disc manufacturer, SAB WABCO, in November 2004. This procedure
included steps for crack inspection in the hub and spoke areas
of the disc at least every 20,000 kilometers.
There is another chart, if I could get it up, this chart
becomes very important very quickly. This is an excerpt from
the manual that Mr. Oberstar requested. These are instructions
that are developed by the manufacturer at the get-go when the
part is made. What they include in their detailed inspection,
in the first step, is to look for cracks in the hubs, cracks in
the connection spokes hubs and the friction ring. So there is a
contemplation on the part of the OEM that there will be
periodic inspections. Accompanying this procedure, there is
also an inspection schedule requirement for this 20,000
kilometers, or about 12,400 miles cycle for the brake discs to
be inspected, and specifically to be inspected for cracks.
What happens, when you go back to the organization chart,
what happens is you have this large technical manual that is
out there, 66-page technical manual, that has this step to
inspect for cracks. The technical manual goes up and it is
boiled down into something a little bit smaller. It is a
service bulletin. In the service bulletin, the procedures
shift. That detailed information, to inspect for the cracks,
basically is kind of lost in translation. What happens when you
get to the service bulletin, which is a shorter document, is
there is only a one-line reference to go to the specific
procedures for looking at the cracks.
That service bulletin in turns makes its way back over to
the maintainers at the NEC-MSC. It makes its way into the
training documents, into the training curricula for the
maintainers. But in this case, it does not make it to the shop
floor. So there was an expectation on the part of the OEM that
there would be periodic inspections. But because of a breakdown
in the way the procedures were promulgated and worked their way
through the system, they never make it to the person that is
actually doing the inspection. That is a major finding, that is
a lesson learned, that is something that has to be corrected,
especially for a safety-critical part.
Mr. Oberstar. Mr. Chairman, could I ask Mr. Weiderhold just
to repeat that comment about only one line in the manual that
deals with that?
Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, sir. What we found was, when we
started looking at these detailed procedures, you want to start
at the beginning. We had found these procedures in the SAB
WABCO manual. When we traced that specific recommendation to
look for cracks and spokes up the supply chain and over to the
maintainer, what we found was it was only referenced in the
service bulletin. So when you get to, this is not 66 pages, but
this is probably 30 pages worth of instructions that are issued
by Knorr, when you get to a very critical stage on the axle-
mounted disc, the part that I have highlighted here, which is
just one line, refers you to this procedure.
Now, what happens as you get further into the service
bulletin, which is what the maintainers use, within the service
bulletin there are pictures of the disc and they tell you what
to check for. They tell you what to check for what are called
the normal wear and tear on the friction surfaces, which is
what peoples' eyes are drawn to. When you get under the train
and you look at all the gear down there, you kind of look for
the shiny surface, because that gets the most wear and tear.
If you don't know to look at the hub or to look at the
spokes, and if you're not trained to look at that, then you are
not going to look at it. There is carbon dust flying around,
there is a lot of things on the running gear, and that is one
of the reasons why those cracks went unnoticed for as long as
they did. So we have a breakdown in a critical inspection
process, and we have a breakdown in the safety critical part.
Next, I think one of the big questions, and the questions
that you asked me, Mr. Chairman, was who is responsible or who
knew what when. Let me kind of tell you where we are to date.
From all of our interviews and document reviews thus far, we
have no evidence that Amtrak was ever made aware of the brake
disc spoke and hub cracks prior to April 14th, or was even
aware of the manufacturer's detailed procedures for brake disc
inspections. We have spoken with Amtrak employees from the shop
floor through first line management to senior managers, and
thus far no one has stated that they had any knowledge of brake
spokes cracking prior to April 14th.
As is our practice, we basically took this chart, we looked
at this organizational layout, we looked at the relationship
among the supply chain and our maintainer, and then we began
our interviews. Our first interview was a visit to ORX, that
organization on the bottom right hand, who basically seize the
wheel sets off the train and should have, should have the best
eyes to put onto the brake disc.
When we visited ORX, we were very impressed with their
facility and the forthcomingness of the ORX employee. We were
informed by ORX on at least two occasions they recalled finding
and reporting cracks in the Acela brake disc spokes. However,
at the time of our interviews, ORX staff could not recall the
exact dates of finding and reporting the problem. They believed
this occurred some 12 to 24 months ago.
We asked ORX to research their records, and they have
supplied us with additional information that we are now
reviewing. We are zeroing in on the time line, ORX is
cooperating and we are seeking out current and former employees
to pinpoint better when and to whom these reports would have
been made. I cannot overemphasize that we have a number of open
questions that need to be resolved, and we are only midstream
in our investigation. I would not normally release information
such as this at this stage of the investigation, but I think it
is important to share it with the Committee, because we are
investigating failures of a safety critical part.
We got, all of us collectively, got very lucky that this
was found when it was. When the examination of the brake discs
was made, the first slight through the train was a visual
inspection. I think that's where the Committee was informed
that there were failures on a rate of 20 to 30 percent. When
you do a more definitive test, when you do a magnetic particle
inspection test, you find that you miss half of the cracks. So
a visual inspection alone is not going to do it. You are going
to have to adopt some procedures, probably taken from airline
experiences, to look for those cracks, to understand when they
began, how long they stayed before they propagate.
Because the danger is, here is what we think we know so
far, the danger is the crack propagates very early, and it
starts out small, maybe invisible. Over time, that crack will
reside and stay there for a while and then it will slowly makes
it round around the first spoke. Once it goes through the
entire first spoke, the disc itself, it is hard to see because
the spoke pulls both in tension and compression. So when the
disc is hot, you can't observe it, but it's pulled farther
apart. When it cools, it closes the crack back down. That's the
mechanism. So that's why those little cracks were kind of hard
to see, because there was compression to return the crack to
its normal position.
But once you get through that first spoke, it will start
propagating to the adjacent spokes. Eventually it will make its
way through all six spokes. If that happens, we could have a
catastrophe on our hands. When the inspections were made, the
first report that came out found 317 spoke cracks over 300
discs. That means that there were some discs that had more than
one crack in the disc. Some discs had two cracks, cracks in two
spokes, some had cracks in three spokes. We are finding after
the mag particle inspection there were probably discs out there
with cracks in as many as four or five spokes. There were only
a handful of these, but it shows you that you were getting
dangerously close to a very, very serious problem.
We have, I have issued subpoenas to everybody on that
chart. I have done that both in a friendly way and I have also
done that to make sure that we get all of the information that
relates to this problem to try to answer the questions of who
knew what when. As soon as we have that information, we will
certainly provide it to the Committee.
Thank you for the extra time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank you very much, Mr. Weiderhold.
Ms. Hecker, thank you for coming, and we look forward to
hearing from you.
Ms. Hecker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am very pleased to be here today to provide some
contributions based on completed GAO work. We don't have
anything on the brakes and none of the details that you have
heard. But we have a comprehensive report that we completed on
the overall Northeast Corridor Improvement Project, of which
the Acela was a portion. Then another report on the settlement
and the dispute between the consortium and Amtrak and a special
issue about maintenance as a key part of that settlement.
The issues that I will cover today will be, four issues
that I will cover. First, quickly, some of the issues that have
affected the Acela development since its inception. I think
some of the members already alluded to that, the issues that
led to the suits and counter-suits and then the settlement.
Then how our report basically identified that while the
settlement was probably a good thing in many ways, certainly it
kept the parties working together, it really wasn't self-
executing. There were lots of risks and challenges that
remained, and they remain today and I think provide a very
relevant context for the discussion today about the Acela
performance.
Then a second product that we did on the overall management
of the project and how the issues here relate to challenges in
managing large scale projects. On the first issue, basically as
has been alluded, there have been significant issues affecting
the Acela program since its inception. The first four points
really were all about the production of the train sets. As
several of you alluded, there was new technology, it was not
over the shelf, which presented considerable risks. It was
finalized, the procurement, before the new safety standards
were promulgated. Those safety standards had a very substantial
impact on the weight and cost of the train set.
Third, there were obviously many production and
manufacturing delays. And finally, because of those delays and
the pressures that all of you have alluded to, there was
extremely abbreviated testing on this train set. FRA told us
that there was an electric locomotive that they told us was an
appropriate model. The testing on that was 165,000 miles. The
testing on the Amtrak Acela model was 35,000 miles. So you
basically had an extremely abbreviated testing, which was an
environment where you really would have been able to identify
and presumably resolve some of the issues that have continued
to plague the program.
The second issue is basically setting up that one of the
unique things about this contractual relationship is that the
consortium that built the train set actually agreed to build
the facilities, maintain the train sets and supervise Amtrak
employees until 2013. Amtrak would just provide the employees
to conduct the maintenance.
The next page basically gets to the issues that led to the
suit. There were major performance issues that led Amtrak to
withhold payments. Bombardier then first sued. The allegations
they had are very important to the discussion today, because
they allege that they had been provided inaccurate information
on the infrastructure conditions, as well as concerns about
changed designed specifications.
The infrastructure conditions, I think several of you
alluded, are important because the curves that affect the speed
and the curves and the poor condition potentially have some
relationship to the whole fatigue on the brake issue being
discussed today.
Finally, then, Amtrak counter-sued. They maintain that the
consortium had not met the performance requirements, had
deficient engineering and poor management. The terms of the
settlement, though, in March 2004, basically had the consortium
agreeing to complete many outstanding modifications. Some are
still outstanding, and that remains.
The most critical one perhaps is to achieve the performance
requirements of the original contract. The main performance
requirement is 17,500 miles of the mean distance between
failures. So that's basically a core measure. The train set
still hasn't reached it. And it needs a six month rolling
average before that requirement will have been deemed to have
been met. So the consortium is still liable for that.
Under the new terms of the relationship, they would provide
training to Amtrak staff, provide technical information and
honor the existing warranties and actually extended a bumper to
bumper warranty. Amtrak then was responsible for assuming the
facility management and the maintenance as of October 2006.
This could be in jeopardy. This whole issue of these evolving
roles could be affected by what we are talking about today.
The other major responsibility actually written in the
agreement, that Amtrak was responsible for creating a
transition plan to hire, designate particular staff, maintain
the train sets and the facilities and make a choice about a
procurement plan and how they would proceed.
As I said in my opening, we believe that the Acela program
still faces considerable risk under the terms of the settlement
and the terms of the original contract. As I mentioned, the
first one is getting these modifications and performance
requirements met. As I said, many are still open and the
performance requirements for reliability, speed and comfort
have yet to be achieved. Obtaining technical expertise for the
maintenance and training, I think this relates to some of the
details of the communication about the actual technical issues
of maintenance. These are not unimportant issues, and they
certainly pervade way beyond the brake issue.
Finally, there was the issue of sufficiently funding the
maintenance and integrating the responsibility. All of these
three concerns, we felt, ought to be dealt with in a
comprehensive implementation plan. Our report recommended that
Amtrak deal with these risks and have a comprehensive plan. To
our knowledge, it is still not done. There are critical
elements that are missing. We think it exacerbates the risks
which now are so complicated by the brake problem.
Finally, I would say that not only would I put these issues
in the context of the Acela, but in the context of the
management of the Northeast Corridor Improvement Program. The
challenge is clearly larger than the brakes, and reaches issues
of broader challenges that Amtrak has had in managing large
scale projects.
Our report on the Northeast Rail Improvement Project, and
again, this has three elements. There was an electrification,
there was the train set to achieve the three hour time limit
and then there were infrastructure improvements. Our review of
how Amtrak managed this program is that it was very short-term
and it was very segmented. It was focused on the
electrification and of course there were suits and problems
with that.
Then there was a focus on acquisition of the train sets,
which I have just described, had many problems. There wasn't
really adequate focus on the major infrastructure improvements
and we actually have a number of the critical components
identified that we couldn't even identify the status of. The
project was not managed like a project and there was no
financial plan. While it is probably true that they never got
all the money they needed, they never presented it in the
comprehensive form of a plan to identify, this is the plan we
need. Rather, they worked the plan around the annual budget and
what they received each year.
So an overall observation we have there, and it is one that
actually required some action by both Amtrak and FRA, the
oversight of this major modernization, I think Mr. Mica
referred to it, it was the most costly Federal investment in
inter-city passenger rail in the last century, and this one
too. The oversight of it was grossly incomplete by both Amtrak
and FRA. FRA told us they didn't even think they had the
authority. We were surprised, we scoped it out and looked and
agreed that they actually hadn't been given the authority.
So you had a $3.2 billion acquisition including the costs
of other parties, who are very important: the State of New
Jersey and the transit agencies that were party to this. It was
not a comprehensively managed project.
As you alluded, we have some ongoing work on other aspects
of Amtrak management. We hope when we are ready to report that
those will provide further light on the systemic challenges and
moving toward comprehensive solutions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would be glad to take any questions.
Mr. LaTourette. Thank you very much. Again, I want to thank
you all. I tell the members of the Subcommittee, it looks like
our first series of votes is going to be about 11:30. It will
be my hope, because of Mr. Jamison's situation and others, we
could vote as quickly as possible and get back.
Mr. Jamison, I understand from talking to Amtrak that they
have made a request to operate an instrumented Acela train on
the northeast corridor in an attempt to begin the process of
getting the train back into service. Has the FRA reviewed and
approved that request?
Mr. Jamison. We have. We expect that test to take place
sometime later this week.
Mr. LaTourette. Has the FRA made a determination as to what
additionally is necessary on the part of Amtrak to put the
Acela back into operation, aside from this test?
Mr. Jamison. In a nutshell, it really depends on the
solution. As Mr. Weiderhold referred to, there are still
several alternatives on the table. There is still a lot of
analysis yet to be done. So depending on whether or not there
is a move to try to put the existing design rotor back into
place or if there is a move to go to a new, redesigned rotor,
there will be a lot of analysis required.
But, in a nutshell, we are going to require qualification
of the new components or the existing replacement component; a
new inspection, testing and maintenance plan that addresses
some of the inspection issues that have been pointed out, to
make sure that, if these cracks are so hard to detect through
visual inspection, to state what other types of inspection
techniques are necessary to return it to service, and finally,
a review of the training program to make sure that items, such
as were pointed out by Mr. Weiderhold, when manufacturers'
specifications update current inspection techniques and
correspondence which routinely happens, to make sure that that
information is actually getting to the people doing the
inspections.
Mr. LaTourette. During her testimony, Ms. Hecker mentioned,
I think it's GAO's opinion that the settlement agreement
between Amtrak and the consortium has risks and challenges yet
remaining. The Secretary of Transportation sits on the Amtrak
board of directors. Are you aware of what role the DOT played
in approving the settlement agreement and also ensuring its
successful implementation to this point in time?
Mr. Jamison. Actually, I am not 100-percent sure of the
vote at that time, since it preceded me. I believe that our
member voted "yes" to the settlement agreement.
Mr. LaTourette. Aside from voting on the settlement
agreement, maybe you could get back to us, if you would,
someone at FRA or DOT, specifically what role DOT or the
representative of DOT had in not just passing on the settlement
but participating in the discussions on the settlement. When
other witnesses come, I have some questions on the settlement
as well.
And lastly, I am going to ask Amtrak this, it does not have
anything to do with this hearing, but there was a report on one
of the local television stations last night relative to the
tunnel under the Cannon Building. It is my understanding that
the tunnel is patrolled by the Amtrak police, and as a matter
of fact, the camera crew was met by the police when they
arrived. That only passenger trains travel through that tunnel,
and that rail access is controlled by a switch operated by CSX,
and that both CSX, in cooperation with FRA and also DHS, has
developed extensive security plans for that tunnel, which
obviously we are not going to discuss in public. Am I incorrect
in any of those observations?
Mr. Jamison. That is my belief as well. I would also add
that in my other duties, I am currently also Deputy
Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration. FTA
provided technical assistance, including a vulnerability
assessment, to Virginia Railway Express (VRE) that addressed
some concerns about that tunnel. I would be happy to discuss
some of the findings and some of the actions that have taken
place. But I agree with your statement.
[The information received follows:]
The settlement was negotiated between Amtrak and the
Consortium, and the related discussions were undertaken without
the involvement of the U.S. Department of Transportation,
including FRA. Amtrak's Board, including the Secretary's
representative on the Board, were briefed on the progress of
negotiations and participated in general discussions about
strategy and the acceptability of alternative outcomes.
Mr. LaTourette. Thank you.
Mr. Weiderhold, I am going to ask unanimous consent,
because I did not see it attached to your testimony or the 8 1/
2 by 11 sheets of your charts, so without objection, those will
be made part of the record.
I just wanted to be clear on two of them, one, the
schematic flow chart and then also the SAB WABCO scheduled
maintenance observation. As I understood your testimony, the
WABCO service notification indicates that aside from inspecting
the brake surface that also it was their recommendation that
the spokes be inspected for cracks as well.
Mr. Weiderhold. That is correct, sir.
Mr. LaTourette. But somehow, as you look at this flow chart
that you provided from WABCO to Knorr to the consortium back
down to where it eventually winds up, either at ORX or on the
shop floor, it is your understanding that that information,
other than a slight reference to please refer to a larger,
another document, is it your finding to this point in time that
that information did not make it to the men and women, I
suppose, that were actually performing the inspection services?
Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, sir. We spoke to the NEC-MSC senior
managers, we talked to supervision, we talked to the guys with
the lights that go under the train, and they were unaware of
that requirement.
Mr. LaTourette. I mentioned in my opening remarks the
newspaper article this morning. The last box, well, it's not
even a box, I don't know what kind of shape that is that you
put down here at the bottom, it has ORX, which is the company
that I think you mentioned is located in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Weiderhold. That's correct, sir.
Mr. LaTourette. According to the newspaper this morning,
and I think also from your observations, you have collected
information that 12 to 24 months ago, someone at ORX recalls
seeing the cracks in the spokes that are the subjects of our
concerns today?
Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, sir. We have conducted two site
visits, several interviews, both in person and in telephone
interviews with current and former ORX employees. They do
recall finding cracks in the spokes. We asked them to pull
their quality assurance, quality control, QA/QC records. We do
have some documentation that validates their recollection. We
are in the process of kind of tracking that down. The time line
is very important. And the time line may be, I learned last
night the time line may be 12 to 36 months.
Mr. LaTourette. Okay. And specifically, I think I heard you
say, but I would just ask you to repeat it, and if you didn't,
I apologize, but was it your finding to this moment in time
that that information, if that in fact is what ORX was
discovering 12 to 36 months ago, to your investigation to this
moment in time, was never communicated to Amtrak?
Mr. Weiderhold. No, sir, we have no information at all that
Amtrak ever received that information.
Mr. LaTourette. Do you have information that that finding
of 12 to 36 months ago was reported to anyone on your flow
chart?
Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, we do. We had been given information
that the cracks were reported to Knorr.
Mr. LaTourette. Anybody else besides Knorr?
Mr. Weiderhold. We have an allegation that we need to run
down, I am not comfortable yet until we do some more
interviews.
Mr. LaTourette. Okay. But that, I assume, as you continue
your investigation, if in fact the ORX information proves to be
reliable based upon not only memory but documentation, is it
your intention to work through this maze to determine where
that information went and where it stopped?
Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, sir, and I think the use of the term
maze is a good, descriptive adjective.
Mr. LaTourette. Is it also your intention or have you
completed the discussion as to why the WABCO service bulletin
that indicated that we should, not we, but inspectors should
not only look at the surface of the brake but also the spokes,
why that did not make it from WABCO to the shop floor?
Mr. Weiderhold. We have not conducted interviews of the
WABCO and Knorr individuals yet. We would hope to do that soon
in order to answer that question. All we can do is track the
document flow. And based upon the document flow, it seems
strange that a critical inspection step was truncated with a
one-sentence reference. I think that's really what I would call
a lost in translation problem.
Mr. LaTourette. And my last question is, you mentioned you
have issued some friendly subpoenas. Has everyone on this flow
chart been cooperative as you proceed with your investigation?
Mr. Weiderhold. You have to understand, Mr. Chairman, I
want to correct one thing, just like Mr. Mica was correcting
some of the mistakes in the Post, there was in the Post, I
believe, reports that we have had some recalcitrance. That
recalcitrance was not with Bombardier and Alstom or NEC-MSC.
They have been cooperating fully. We sometimes have to issue
what we call friendly subpoenas because the contractual
relationships and confidentiality agreements that exist between
and among these parties require that they keep that information
close. The only way that information would be released is
through the subpoena process. We oftentimes have to issue what
are called friendly subpoenas.
The answer to the rest of your question is, no, we have not
had, we have had some people either get lawyered up or
basically tell us that they don't have time to meet with us. We
ask not just once but twice and three times, because we thought
it was in their better interest to kind of come and talk to us,
just an hour of their time to come and let us know kind of what
happened here.
Mr. LaTourette. And just so I'm clear, you have subpoena
duces tecum authority, but if you were lobbying on behalf of
the IGs of the world, you would like to have a little more
authority to get at people that may not want to discuss things
with you?
Mr. Weiderhold. That's correct, Mr. Chairman. In the IG
world, with the exception of maybe Justice and I think DOD, all
of the cabinet level IGs, as well as the smaller IG office,
were referred to as the designated Federal entity IGs. There
are about 30 of us. We only have duces tecum subpoena
authority, we do not have testimonial subpoena authority. I
think that the Committee, Congress ought to consider granting
the IG community that in all matters relating to safety and
security. That would be extremely beneficial in moving these
types of investigations along.
Mr. LaTourette. Thank you.
Mr. Mica. Mr. Chairman, if you would yield just a second,
would it be possible to request that FRA report to the
Committee on those who have not been cooperative or any who in
their estimation are not cooperating with their investigation?
Mr. LaTourette. Sure. I would make that request of both
you, Mr. Weiderhold, and also the FRA. I think that's an
excellent suggestion.
Obviously not only your suggestion on subpoena power, but
we're dealing with a safety issue. I think Mr. Oberstar was
right in indicating this could have been catastrophic had it
not been for the good work of the FRA inspector. So I would ask
you to get back to the Committee staff if you find somebody
being recalcitrant.
I appreciate your correcting the record, and again, not to
harp on it, but that's why we don't really like to read about
the hearing before the hearing has occurred, because sometimes
there can be misstatements.
Ms. Brown.
Ms. Brown. Thank you.
I guess what I am most concerned about was that a disaster
could have occurred, but we were very lucky. That dog just
doesn't hunt. We need to know who was responsible for the
inspections, whose responsibility it was, and is it not a part
of the procedures to check for maintenance, and whose
responsibly was it to check over a period of time? That's the
part that I'm kind of confused about.
Mr. Weiderhold. I have an adage that safety is everybody's
responsibility. Safety trumps everything. I think everybody on
that organization chart has a responsibility for safety. Where
liability lies, I will leave that to the lawyers. But safety is
everybody's concern.
One of the things we had worked with NEC-MSC on a few years
ago was to actually get to that checklist on the floor so we
could kind of cull out and highlight any inspection on a
safety-critical part. Because normally you have more detail,
different tools, you have a higher certified supervisor, all
those things take place on other safety critical parts. But for
some reason, and it is a why, both of those are the right
questions to ask, for some reason that did not work in that
case.
The why, I think we have a pretty good indicator, based
upon the documents. The who is tougher. Because if someone knew
about this and for whatever reason put their head in the sand,
that is a bad decision. We want to make sure that it was not an
unintentional kind of oversight. We need to get that
information.
Ms. Brown. Ms. Hecker, you have done at least eight
investigations of Amtrak since 2000 and you are working on one
now. You have interviewed Amtrak employees and requested
materials, we have this report. You have done an extensive
investigation. I am wondering, how much has it cost Amtrak, and
is this just another report that we are going to put on the
shelf?
Ms. Hecker. How much do our studies cost in Amtrak
employees' time?
Ms. Brown. And money.
Ms. Hecker. Well, we only do work that's requested by
Congress. We are set up to provide investigative support for
issues that are of interest to the Congress. One of the few
areas of Government accountability that Amtrak is covered by is
that they both have an IG and that they are subject to GAO
audits. I suppose the Congress could undo that, if you didn't
think that we add value.
Ms. Brown. No, I guess my question is, so Congress has
requested these nine investigations?
Ms. Hecker. That's correct.
Ms. Brown. Okay. How much has it cost Amtrak?
Ms. Hecker. We don't do studies of the amount of time that
it takes people to respond to our requests. I don't have that
information. I could say that on both of these investigations,
we experienced substantial delays in getting the information
required from Amtrak. In the case of one report, when we sent
the report to them for comments, they disagreed vehemently with
the report and said the problem was that they hadn't given us
all the information that we should have had, and that delayed
the report three months.
So yes, it takes time, but if you are comprehensive in the
response the first time, it will take a lot less time.
Ms. Brown. Well, I guess it's something that Congress needs
to take a look at. Because like I said, we have had nine
reports since 2000.
Ms. Hecker. I think some of those are testimonies that are
based on the reports.
Ms. Brown. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. LaTourette. Mr. Mica.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I appreciate the data flow chart on Acela
brakes. I am more interested in a flow chart of who is
responsible. Obviously if Amtrak signed a contract, and I
understand with this consortium, to provide maintenance,
someone was responsible. Who was responsible for overseeing
that contract? Mr. Jamison?
Mr. Jamison. I would refer the contractual questions to Mr.
Weiderhold about exactly how the contract works inside Amtrak's
guidelines. My overall concern is the requirement that Class I
brake inspections be done daily and that the other overriding
regulation, which is--
Mr. Mica. Well, I want to get into that in a minute. But
who was responsible? I mean, here is a multi-million dollar
contract, billion dollar contract probably, $700 million just
for the equipment. Now, who is responsible for the contract
management? Is it Amtrak or maybe this panel?
Mr. Weiderhold. I think you could--
Mr. Mica. Do we have a flawed system in Amtrak in managing
the contract?
Mr. Weiderhold. I think what you've got is you've got less
than an optimal model here. If--
Mr. Mica. I asked the staff for, can you get me a flow
chart for Amtrak and who oversees what. We don't have one.
That's scary.
Mr. Weiderhold. I think there are a couple of ways to use
this chart, if I could explain a little bit.
Mr. Mica. This again, I am going beyond the chart in who's
responsible. Now, we also have the original equipment
manufacturer bulletin that has recommended inspections be done
every 20,000 kilometers, approximately 10,000 miles. That
wasn't done. Was that done, Mr. Jamison?
Mr. Jamison. It was done, in our opinion. The issue is
whether or not the--
Mr. Mica. It was done, in your opinion?
Mr. Jamison. Yes. There is a requirement--
Mr. Mica. So we have a service record where the consortium,
those that were responsible for the maintenance did perform
this. I just want to know, is that true?
Mr. Jamison. There is a daily requirement to do an in-the-
pit, undercarriage inspection of all major components. I don't
have the document in front of me that you are referring to.
Mr. Mica. Again, the original equipment manufacturer
bulletin recommended an inspection of the spokes be done every
20,000 kilometers.
Mr. Jamison. I'm not aware of that inspection, no.
Mr. Mica. The information I have, it was, the inspection
was surface only, not the brake rotor spokes as required under
the service manual. So someone was not doing the maintenance.
Now, Amtrak didn't discover the flaw and the consortium
that was charged with maintenance didn't discover the flaw.
FRA, how did you discover this, or was this?
Mr. Weiderhold. How did I get notice of it?
Mr. Mica. I'm sorry?
Mr. Weiderhold. How did I personally get notice of it?
Mr. Mica. No, how did FRA--
Mr. Weiderhold. FRA discovered it during a post-test
inspection of a speed test to improve curve speeds. They
detected rust and actually--
Mr. Mica. We are very fortunate that someone did find it.
Thank God this thing, you know, the Post talked about the high
speed service. The average speed, I am told, of the Acela is
between 83 and 84 miles per hour in the northeast corridor, in
that range, which is one to two miles faster than the
Metroliner, I'm also told, at least from New York to
Washington, D.C. Thank God this thing was not going 150 miles
per hour as it was designed continuously. Because we would have
an incredible disaster, by any technical evaluation.
Part of the problem stems back, though, to a flawed
acquisition, first, buying the most expensive equipment. I just
want to put in the record, so we have this, because I like
these records to go back and refer to. This is Mr. Gunn's
statement saying, and this is back in 2002 when he was
questioned about the system, we could have bought off the shelf
technology at $2.5 million for the locomotive, about $2 million
each for the deck and he says it himself here, instead we
bought a $700 million, $34 million for the Acela locomotive and
very expensive equipment, and probably could have made money.
But I'd like this to be made part of the record if we could,
Mr. Chairman, showing that from the beginning, the acquisition
was flawed.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2496.093
Mr. Mica. Then we had numerous, we have 15 different models
of 20 train sets, is that right, Mr. Jamison, do you know?
Mr. Jamison. There are 20 trainsets.
Mr. Mica. But there are 15 different models.
Mr. Jamison. They all have unique characteristics, from my
understanding.
Mr. Mica. And yes, in all the change orders, we changed the
weight, the size, all of these things. So we have a train that
really doesn't run on the tracks or the catenary that it was to
be accommodated by. Are we going to have more lawsuits as a
result of this, Mr. Jamison? Do you know? Is there a potential
for lawsuits?
Mr. Jamison. Well, since the contractual agreement that
will be the basis of the lawsuits is between Amtrak and the
Consortium, probably Mr. Weiderhold is better prepared to
answer that.
Mr. Mica. One of the reasons I asked for the legal costs
for Amtrak, we spend about $60 million a year on legal costs
for Amtrak. We spend $4 million a month on maintenance for this
system. If this had not been so entangled, we probably could
have spent some of this money on maintenance or at least
oversight instead of the mangled acquisition and lawsuits that
have resulted.
Finally, again, we have to fix the problem with management,
we have to fix the problem with oversight. Maybe each of you
can tell us what you would recommend and how we proceed from
here to fix this so that this does not happen again. Mr.
Jamison, we will start with you.
Mr. Jamison. As I testified earlier, I mean, before the
Acela is brought back to service, our utmost concern is the
safety of the crew and the passengers. There are basically
going to be three requirements for returning Acela to service:
doing qualification testing on the replacement component to
make sure that it is designed to meet the loads and that we
have tested to determine what the loads are in the corridor; to
make sure that they do a revised inspection, testing, and
maintenance plan that will get at the inspection procedures
that are necessary and the different inspection techniques that
are necessary--
Mr. Mica. Can you provide us with a recommended flow chart
for Amtrak and how to follow and pursue, again, adequate
contract management, so this will not happen again and your
recommendation, just for the record?
Mr. Jamison. We can provide some recommendations.
[The information follows:]
As discussed in the hearing by the witness from the Government
Accountability Office, the Acela trainsets did not go through a
rigorous testing regimen at the prototype phase. Thus, it is
unclear how the equipment will age and whether additional
defects and design shortcomings will be identified during the
aging process. It makes the most sense from FRA's perspective
that Amtrak select one or two Acela trainsets as cohort
leaders. A conscious effort should be made (1) to maximize the
mileage and service time accumulated by these trainsets and (2)
that on a periodic basis they be subjected to a rigourous
examination to identify these components of the equipment that
are most subject to deterioration due to age and use. In the
way, an ongoing, updated preventive maintenance program,
including assuring the availability of adequate inventories of
critical replacement components, can be developed and
implemented for the other 18 trainsets. This could help assure
that a total loss of Acela serice due to mechanical failure is
avoided in the future.
Mr. Weiderhold. Sir, two thoughts. First, with respect to
the brake discs very narrowly, there are some things that can
be done on these processes that can be improved. There are a
number of parts on the train. There are some that are more
safety-critical than others. What you are talking about with
respect to cleaner, more robust project management, definitely
that is one of the biggest lessons learned thus far in our
investigation.
I happen to agree with you to some extent on the project
management issues facing Amtrak. I think there have been
examples of large projects that could have been better managed
over the years. I think David Gunn inherited some of those, he
is having to manage through those. He is a railroader's
railroader. He reminds me a lot of Graham Claytor, for whom I
used to work. But he's got something that he needs to manage,
and he and I work very closely, work very closely with senior
managers.
There are some signs of hope. There is a fire-life safety
project up in New York that is being used as a pilot program to
put in world class project management techniques. That is a
close to a billion dollar program for fire-life safety
mitigation, security concerns in New York Penn Station. We are
about 18 months into that. I think there are some
organizational lessons learned and some process lessons learned
that I hope to cede to other parts of the corporation, because
that has been a problem in the past. So there is some hope, Mr.
Mica, that the corner has been turned in a few areas.
Mr. Mica. Ms. Hecker?
Ms. Hecker. We have outstanding recommendations that Amtrak
ought to adopt and follow best practices for managing large
scale projects in the railroad industry. Our review found that
they clearly had not done that.
We also have an outstanding recommendation that they ought
to have a comprehensive transition plan to deal with
implementation of the settlement and assumption and integration
of the maintenance responsibilities. We have not had a positive
response to that recommendation in terms of the
comprehensiveness of the plan we are looking for. And we have
recommendations in both of those reports for improved FRA
oversight of both of those matters.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank you very much. It would be the
Chair's predisposition to recess. There are 8 minutes and 30
seconds left in this vote. When we come back, we will go to Mr.
Oberstar, so he has plenty of time to proceed.
I would advise everybody that the Highway Subcommittee has
a hearing set here at 2:00 o'clock, so if we could hustle back
here and move expeditiously so we could get to the next panel,
I would appreciate it. We stand in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. LaTourette. The Subcommittee will come to order. Other
members will join us as they are able to, then we will go to
Mr. Oberstar, as promised, when he gets back. But at this time,
since our witnesses are back, it is my pleasure to yield to Mr.
Menendez of New Jersey.
Mr. Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the witnesses for their testimony, and I
want to go over a few things here that have been said as part
of your testimony.
Mr. Weiderhold, you are not at the point at which obviously
you have concluded your review, you are somewhat away from
that, right?
Mr. Weiderhold. No, sir, I would say I am probably
midstream through the process.
Mr. Menendez. Midstream, all right. But to the extent that
you have reviewed up to this point and based upon your
testimony here today, there is a statement in, there is a
paragraph in your statement on page four that says, ``From all
of our interviews and documents reviewed thus far, we have no
evidence that Amtrak was ever made aware of brake disc spoke
web cracks prior to April 14th, 2005, the date on which this
was found, or was even aware of the manufacturer's detailed
procedures for brake disc inspections.''
Mr. Weiderhold. That is entirely correct.
Mr. Menendez. So that is the reality up to this point.
Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, sir.
Mr. Menendez. We might find something different tomorrow,
but right now, that is the reality.
Mr. Weiderhold. Yes, sir.
Mr. Menendez. And in that respect, is it fair to say Amtrak
didn't design these brakes?
Mr. Weiderhold. Amtrak did not design the brakes.
Mr. Menendez. They didn't manufacture it?
Mr. Weiderhold. They did not manufacture it.
Mr. Menendez. So to suggest that this is Amtrak's fault
seems to me to be an enormous leap of responsibility from an
entity that did not design it, didn't manufacture it, didn't
produce it, and didn't know, at least up to this point from
your testimony, that they had any prior evidence that they were
ever aware of any of these cracks prior to the date on which
the inspector found it is just a huge leap.
Mr. Weiderhold. I think I can every clarify that one step
more.
Mr. Menendez. Sure.
Mr. Weiderhold. If you look at the diagram that we have,
this organization chart, one way to view this is if you took
everything below Amtrak, it's almost like kind of a black box.
What Amtrak contracted for is essentially a variation of
consists at the block. In other words, bring the trains to me,
put it in my terminus, let me run the trains, bring it back
down the railroad, send it back to you and you maintain it.
What has changed a little bit since the settlement is
Amtrak has certain responsibilities that it has to assume in
taking over that maintenance operation. That is going to take
place over a period of many months. It is scheduled to complete
in October of 2006. I do not know if that time line is going to
be affected by this problem.
But probably one way to look at this is Amtrak as a
customer of receiving a product.
Mr. Menendez. I appreciate that. So to the extent that
based on this diagram you have given the Committee, it seems to
me, and tell me if this is a fair statement, that to the extent
there is a problem of who knows what and what they did, it
starts from here downwards, or from somewhere here upwards. Up
to the consortium.
Mr. Weiderhold. I think that's true, but at the same time,
the experience we have with the train sets and several members
have commented on the train's too heavy, the train's too wide
and all the things that we kind of read in the press, I think
that's a lot of history. The product is the product, at the end
of the day.
I think as I mentioned, I think Amtrak has a responsibility
here, but it has not and could not assume that responsibility
to date.
Mr. Menendez. Thank you. Let me ask you this. You also
stated on page five of your testimony, we requested interviews
with the supplier-manufacturer, but so far we have been told
that they are too busy to meet with us. Who are those suppliers
and manufacturers?
Mr. Weiderhold. Well, the supply chain here is WABCO is the
OEM and Knorr is the owner of the brake assembly. We had
approached both companies. We had some preliminary
conversations with WABCO. They have since been shut down. And
Knorr is taking the lead on working on the fix, and they said
they are too busy to meet with us right now.
Mr. Menendez. So WABCO, when you say they shut down, they
shut down in terms of communications with you?
Mr. Weiderhold. They got lawyered up.
Mr. Menendez. They got lawyered up, i.e., their lawyers
told them, don't talk to you.
Mr. Weiderhold. I would imagine that was the case.
Mr. Menendez. And Knorr is basically saying, well, we're in
the midst of trying to fix this, so we don't have time now to
talk to you?
Mr. Weiderhold. They are working very hard on the fix.
Mr. Menendez. I hope they understand, though, that at the
crux of this will be the necessity for them to talk to you or
Mr. Chairman, if necessary, at some point, to this Committee.
And I would be one who would be willing to be supportive of the
Chair's use of whatever subpoena powers may be necessary to get
them to come. We have to get at the root of what it is that
caused this and what people knew and when they knew it and the
consequences here.
Can I ask you one other question before I turn to Ms.
Hecker? That is, your review really starts, to some degree,
with the whole, or is focused with the issue of the brakes and
whatever defects may have been found in those brakes and the
process under which they were found to be, the cracks were
found and maybe as to who knew what in the context of getting
to that point.
But it doesn't go back to what I consider a foundation
question, unless I am wrong, and I'd be happy for you to
correct me, it doesn't go back to the foundation question as to
how did we get Amtrak to make these decisions in the first
place about choosing this particular set of transportation
options in the Acela?
Mr. Weiderhold. That in a way is probably a subject of a
whole separate hearing, because there are a lot of opinions on
that. We have been focused strictly on the brake disc problem.
But I can say, I was around when these decisions were made.
I was around when Amtrak brought over the X-2000 train from
Sweden and the German ICE train to test in 1992. There were two
great trains that we had, we ran I believe for about six months
each up and down the northeast. They performed pretty well.
The Acela train was a train on paper. But the Acela train
brought with it at the time a financing package, because Amtrak
did not have the money to devote to purchasing the train sets.
In hindsight, if you ask the consortium or if you ask Amtrak
right now would you have done it this way knowing what you know
today, you would probably get a very different answer.
Mr. Menendez. That point that you just said, Amtrak did not
have the money, to me is so telling about the genesis of where
we are today. I appreciate your answers up to this point.
Ms. Hecker, you said in your testimony, and I have read
through some of the report, that Amtrak worked their plan
around their annual budget and what they received each year.
Ms. Hecker. Yes, sir.
Mr. Menendez. Now, that isn't a good business model, is it?
Ms. Hecker. No, it's not.
Mr. Menendez. But then again, if you can't count on having
a multiple year of revenue streams that are guaranteed to you,
or that you can fairly project because you hobble along by
Congressional appropriations that leave you far less off than
you should be to operate successfully, how do you achieve
success under that set of circumstances? Is it a fair criticism
to say, well, they worked this year by year, and of course, any
business plan you would like to work five, maybe ten years, but
ultimately if you can't depend upon the resources, how do you
plan ahead?
Ms. Hecker. Well, many Federal agencies, of course, face
the problem of the dependency on Federal resources. For a
number of years, I did work on the Coast Guard with their
Deepwater acquisition. That clearly was dependent on annual
funding. But there was a comprehensive plan, a financial
management plan, and a scenario structured in their whole
project that really made it, I think, clearer to the Congress
what the consequences of a certain level of funding not being
met in any year would be.
So it was the absence of a financial plan. It's true, they
were dependent on the resources. And it's very hard to plan
when you don't know how much you are going to get. But I don't
think it undermines the value of having a comprehensive
financial plan of what ideally the project would be.
In fact, I think it was you who said in response to a 1992
Act, the FRA prepared a whole blueprint that did have
milestones, that did have cost estimates for the Northeast
Corridor Improvement Project, including the new train set. But
Amtrak didn't adopt that, they didn't use the set of milestones
and didn't adopt the financial plan that--
Mr. Menendez. But let me ask you a question. Even if they
had adopted that financial plan, just answer this maybe for me
yes or no, haven't we wholly underfunded Amtrak from what that
financial plan would have been had they adopted it?
Ms. Hecker. Yes.
Mr. Menendez. Okay. And lastly, your study also, from what
I gather, and correct me if I'm wrong, does not start off as
well with the foundation issues as to why these choices were
made in the first place, in terms of the Acela, what I just
discussed with the Inspector General. You don't go that far
back, you move forward from a different point in time, is that
correct?
Ms. Hecker. I don't think we explicitly mention the
financing package, but we are aware that that was in fact a
significant factor.
Mr. Menendez. Mr. Chairman, just as a final note, I would
note that as in anything in life, when I was a trial attorney,
we could take a picture in time. And if we take a picture in
time, it will depict a certain set of circumstances. The
question is, having the totality of the circumstances to
understand in part where we are today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank you very much.
Mr. Simmons, we will get to you in a second. I think I went
out of order when we broke for our emergency or whatever it
was, I promised Mr. Oberstar we would get to him. So I will go
to Mr. Oberstar then you.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate your courtesy. I would like to ask unanimous consent
that the record remain open for written questions to be
submitted to the panel, in light of our truncated hearing, due
to this evacuation of the building.
Mr. LaTourette. Without objection.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you.
I am concerned about two systemic issues here. One is the
specifications for the casting of the steel brake disc unit.
And the inspection and maintenance process. What we have
learned in aviation is first of all, to have redundancy.
Because in contrast to surface transportation, there is no curb
at seven miles in the air to pull over and look under the hood
or look at structures or engines. The backbone of aviation
safety is redundancy.
A second principle is excruciatingly painstaking inspection
and replacement of parts that are time-sensitive. There are
several levels of maintenance required for air frames and power
plant. And there are time limits which certain things have to
be done, even if there was a check a week ago, if this is your
time limit that the part has to be taken out and replaced with
new.
There is a paper trail for everything. Every maintenance
over the lifetime of that aircraft. There is also coordination
among manufacturer, airlines with same type and model aircraft,
within the records of the NTSB and the FAA.
I do not see this same level of attention to detail and
maintenance and specificity for safety in the rail sector,
which is why seven, eight years ago, I introduced very
comprehensive legislation to substantially elevate the level of
quality of maintenance and oversight of maintenance in the rail
sector.
Now, I reviewed some of the work orders and nowhere on the
forms do I see a requirement to inspect hubs or spokes. There
is a requirement for inspection of friction rings for cracks,
but not the spokes. There was a service bulletin issued in
2003, it says failure of the brake discs could ``result in
considerable damage to equipment and extensive and possible
fatal injury to passengers and onboard personnel.'' The service
bulletin referenced the technical manual requiring inspection
and replacement of the cracked spokes. But when you go to the
next step along the line, there was not the same requirement to
inspect hubs and spokes. Now, in aviation, that would be a
colossal failure, a problem.
A second collateral issue is the personnel doing the
inspection work themselves and certified maintenance. In
aviation, airline mechanics are certified by the FAA. They get
an A&P license, air frame and power plant. Then they go through
the training, they get their qualification status so that when
this mechanic says this part is the wrong part, this part is
defective or this aircraft will not go back into service, it
doesn't go back into service. The same standard does not apply
in railroad maintenance. That elevates the quality and the
integrity of personnel performing maintenance to have this
status.
Now, what we find here is lack of training, lack of
communication and lack of clarity and instructions on
maintenance. So where was the disconnect? Why did the workers
not know they were supposed to be inspecting spokes for cracks?
Mr. Weiderhold. I probably could not have phrased it any
better than you just did in outlining exactly what the problems
are, Mr. Oberstar. I think the analogies with the aviation
industry are right on point. Because part of what we are going
to be looking for is that redundancy.
Right now, all I have is paper. That's all I can compel
right now. So I start with those procedures. And having a
little bit of engineering background, you look for certain
things. The other things I would look for in the chain you just
described is I would expect the OEM would have done some type
of testing beyond just a finite and limited analysis or the
like. So I would like to see what those tests are.
One of the very interesting things right now is, working on
the fix, is that all of, there is a new Knorr brake disc design
and a manufactured product that goes to German, to Munich for
testing, to Knorr Brimms, Knorr Brimms has a hydraulic pulsator
to actuate and imitate the amplitude and the forces that are
applied on the disc. The Knorr disc, the new disc is performing
very well. It took lateral forces up to 150 gs, at one point 4
million cycles.
The WABCO product, the current product that was out there
started exhibiting cracks somewhere between 0 and 50,000 cycles
at 46 gs. That does not say it's failing, but it says that
there is a problem. That's why we need to get those results
back.
What I am really interested in is, was there a failure
analysis done at any point prior to the time that the crack was
discovered? Were there tests that were done by the OEM at the
time of manufacturing? I have asked for the mil certs, I have
asked for a casting analysis. This is a poured cast, it's not
force fed. You know what happens in casting, when you put it in
the sand, the way that it is cured. All those things kind of
come into play.
The Amtrak metallurgist has informed me that he does not
believe this is a casting problem. However, I would like to see
the test results. I would like to see the metallurgy, I would
like to see the yield and strength tests, all those things that
go into steel. Steel is a great product. It is elastic. You
generally design a safety factor of about 1.5 over the
specification in anticipation of load, because it does have
elasticity. There are ceratin things that you look at.
The new Knorr products, when you look at that diagram of
the spokes, the biggest difference between that existing brake
part and the new Knorr disc is you take the spoke and you turn
it 90 degrees, so you have increased the section modulus and
you have by definition strengthened it against the bending
moment. That's what we would expect on a bench test that it
would perform superiorly.
I would like to know when that was designed, why it was
designed, get answers to all those questions. Because this time
line is very important.
With respect to the procedures, I think there are some very
good lessons to be brought over from aviation into the rail
industry, and especially, especially with safety critical
parts. If you don't have it anywhere else, at least have
redundancy when you know you have a safety critical part.
Mr. Oberstar. I appreciate your answer and the depth to
which you went in responding. All the issues about metallurgy
are matters that I think we have to await the outcome of
further investigation. The fact that, what I consider to be a
fact, from reading the documents, the FRA inspector cut the
spoke out of the rotor and then it fell apart in his hand.
Mr. Weiderhold. At first, there was some concern about how
deep the crack was, did the crack go through the entirety of
the width of the spoke. The first one that looked like the
worst one, there was a plasma cut that was done above and below
the identified crack. When that piece was taken out, the two
pieces fell apart, which confirmed that the crack was clean
through the spoke.
Mr. Oberstar. Which raises questions about the standards,
Mr. Chairman, set for the metallurgy itself. What are the
standards and who crafted them? Those are questions that we
should not pursue here, because I think we have to await the
outcome of metallurgical testing. I hope there will also be
some independent metallurgical lab testing of these parts, so
we get a balanced kind of a consensus view and not just one
viewpoint of this matter, which is, it is extremely important.
Again, in aviation, there are standards that are set, have
to be followed. The parts that are cast, parts that are
machined and parts that are composites have to be subjected to
extraordinary testing and assure the continuity of quality.
Mr. Weiderhold. If I could, you also made a point about the
AMT and the certification that is required. There is, in this
model, a certification that is required for a sign-off by a
supervisor that includes slightly greater training than that of
the person actually performing the work. But I think that it
does not have the same panache that an AMT card has in the
aviation industry.
The other thing I believe in the aviation industry is that
if you miss things, there are penalties if you miss them. I am
unsure as to what rules could be applied, barring a
catastrophic event, which we I think we were lucky here. There
can be incentives for people to do the right thing.
Mr. Oberstar. Mr. Chairman, you have been very generous
with the time. I just have one more. At the end of all this
process, we may be making the case for hearings on safety
procedures generally in railroading and the qualifications and
status of rail maintenance providers. But Mr. Jamison, the IG's
office staff seems to feel these cracked spokes and webs would
not have been found on a typical FRA routine maintenance check.
What is a routine maintenance check? How does that differ from
the inspection that led to finding the cracks in the disc
rotors? What is the difference there?
And again, I know in this specification sheet there are
certain comments, at this level, such and such is inadmissible.
Well, we know the catastrophic failure on the Aloha Airlines
737 when 18 feet of the roof of that aircraft bound for
Honolulu ripped off, it was because of the propagation of a
hairline crack that could be discovered only by eddy current
technology inspection. That's the level of inspection that we
need in aviation and on a safety critical part, it seems to me
that that's also the level of attention to detail that is
necessary.
Mr. Jamison. Congressman, first let me respond to the
"routine inspection" question. It is my belief that the
inspection requirements that are in place now would have picked
this up if the proper training was done and the proper
inspection techniques were conducted. So, for instance, we
require a daily inspection of the undercarriage of the Amtrak
trains for Tier I Class or Tier II Class I brake inspections.
But to your point, I by no means have your expertise on the
aviation industry. But I also believe that they have learned
greatly from where they have had equipment failures. That is
what we are focused on, to try to make sure that we learn from
this. The failure in the spoke has not been a common problem
from FRA's experience in the railroad industry, even though
there have been isolated instances. Now that there is a common
problem specifically with this high-speed equipment, we need to
go back, reevaluate the inspection, testing and maintenance
plan that we approved, make sure it is appropriate, given the
design, the loading and the possible cracks that may occur in
this equipment.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, may I ask unanimous consent
for Ms. Norton to ask questions at the appropriate time in the
proceedings?
Mr. LaTourette. Absolutely.
Mr. Simmons.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this
hearing, and I have listened with great interest to my
colleagues, Mr. Oberstar, Mr. Menendez in their discussions of
this problem.
Mr. Chairman, we have more than a broken brake system here.
We have a broken train system here. I think the whole system is
broken and I think perhaps this problem with Acela is
fortuitous, because it focuses our attention and the attention
of everybody like me who is interested in providing good train
service, passenger rail service in America on the fact that we
need some major surgery and major overhauls here.
Let me just back up to some of the things Mr. Menendez was
saying. The history of this project and decisions that have
been made over the last 10 years, Amtrak has known about the
problems of putting a high speed train on low speed tracks for
years and years. I served on the Connecticut transportation
committee, was ranking member back in the days when these
decisions were being made. I remember when the ICE was running
these lines and when the X-2000 was running these lines.
I also remember that Amtrak made a decision following a
study, I believe, in 1988, that they could never run high speed
along the shoreline of Connecticut. There were nine full turns
of circles between Westerly and New Haven. It was impossible.
So this study recommended an inland route where they could
design a high speed track that would be straight. The decision
was made not to pursue that because condemning land was
considered to be so difficult.
So from the very, very inception of this project, it has
been known that the shoreline between Westerly, Rhode Island,
and New Haven, with nine full circles, was not congenial to
true high speed.
Secondly, the train set that was decided upon was
unanimously rejected by the Connecticut General Assembly
Transportation Committee. They recommended test trials for a
number of years using the turbo jets which would have avoided
the tremendous cost of the catenaries and could have
demonstrated whether there was a market for high speed. That
recommendation, that unanimous recommendation of the State of
Connecticut was rejected outright by Amtrak. They went ahead to
develop their own tilt train.
Again, the fact that they were going with a tilt train
shows that the knew there was a problem with winding tracks.
They knew that winding tracks or more than three degrees of
turn on a high speed track stresses the system. The systems are
generally not designed for that. They designed the train to be
crash-proof with freight trains, because freight trains run
along the line, but that made it twice as heavy. So you are
putting a substantial amount of more weight on these train
sets.
Then if you look at the deployment schedule, where the
wheels, since September of 1999, the wheels were wearing out
too fast, they were hunting or oscillating, in 2000, bolts were
broken and in December of 2000 the trains ran for a day then
broke down, then there were cracked yaw dampers, etc., etc. My
wife rode the Acela a month ago. When she got off in Boston and
asked the train master what was the smell, and he said, it's
the brakes, nothing wrong with that, they do that all the time.
Mr. Chairman, this project has been fraught with
difficulties for a long period of time. And the problems of
this project go way beyond the problems of a single piece of
equipment failing. I think that we have systemic failures here
that in fact led Mr. Gunn to say in 2002, or to question in
2002 whether Acela was worth its cost for Amtrak to operate, or
whether they should go back to conventional trains and the
Metroliner in fact can operate within 10 or 15, maybe 20
minutes of the time of the Acela.
We have a serious, serious set of problems here. And I am
very concerned about it. I am concerned about the fact that the
summer season for train passengers in Connecticut and New
England generally is the season of tourism, you have high
ridership and we're not going to have these trains on the
tracks. I am concerned that workers are transferred from one
train set to another.
I just can't express to you my distress over what I have
heard here this morning, over what I have observed over the
last 10 years. I would hope, Mr. Chairman, that we could use
this hearing and this situation as a springboard for a
substantial and comprehensive review of every aspect of this
system with some serious reorganizational recommendations to
follow.
I don't know whether any of the panelists want to respond
to my comments. I do have questions for the record, but I know
we are short of time. But that is where this Amtrak supporter
seems himself at this point in time, and it's not a happy
situation that I see for myself.
I yield back.
[The information received follows:]
The Department agrees that part of the problem is
organizational. Amtrak does not recognize its limitations and
tries to do too many things and thus does not have the focus or
resources to do many things well. The Acela procurement is an
excellent example of how these shortcomings now hamstring the
corporation's ability to meet its transportation mission in a
cost effective and reliable manner. The Administration proposes
to turn Amtrak into a pure operating company and thus remove
from management the obligation to oversee maintenance of the
most complex rail infrastructure in the Western Hemisphere.
This in turn will permit the company to focus on serving
customers and maintaining the necessary equipment for its
service. Just meeting the complex challenges associated with
that truncated mission would stretch the capabilities of most
well run transportation companies.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentleman very much.
I have been advised that when the House goes back into
session, they are going to reopen the vote on the previous
question. But if you have already cast your vote on the
previous question, there is no need to return. So it is my
intention, unless someone has a big problem with it, to just
plow ahead.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
the opportunity to ask a question or two.
First, on this hearing, I know that the witnesses feel as I
do that the loss of the Acela could not have occurred at a
worse time, when many of us are here on both sides of the aisle
trying to save Amtrak, and have you only real money-maker go
out on you this way. We will go a little further into how to
keep that from happening in the future. I don't understand how
the folks who built it, and I do understand, I do understand
that we've got a custom built Acela here. Nevertheless,
particularly sitting here where I am, where the Acela is not
only good for you, it is good for the entire east coast, I can
only say, what next.
I sat in on, because of the good graces of the Committee, I
sat in on a hearing on rail safety that was held last year. At
that time, I was very, very concerned, post-Madrid, sitting
here with Union Station in our face, the Senate very close to
Union Station, trains running under Union Station, my own
Amtrak safety people had come to see me months before about
their concerns, just to alert me.
I asked, I believe it was Chairman Quinn who was chairman
at the time, that you have a plan, a cohesive plan by the end
of the year. The chairman was adamant he wanted that plan by
the end of the year. So far as I have been able to tell, no
plan was forthcoming for securing passenger rail. That's very
concerning, considering that where the people are is really not
in aviation, it's really on rail and subways and light rail.
Huge numbers of people every day get on.
In my own questioning to the Administrator at the time, it
was clear that a lot of work had been done with operators all
across the country, a lot of work. Of course, there was nothing
coherent for any of us to look at. And it looked like it was
each man for himself, although people sat around and talked to
each other and apparently something close to best practices was
being developed, so it didn't seem like a big thing to get to
Congress what it asked for, which was a plan for securing rail
travel.
The Homeland Security Committee, on which I also serve, I
am on this full committee as well, had a reauthorization markup
just last week, ten days ago. I got an amendment in that bill,
and I got some report language in the bill. The amendment
should help you do what I think you can easily do, you haven't
been just sitting there not talking to operators all around the
country. It simply would have, it says the Department of
Homeland Security, actually, the Homeland Security Committee is
already talking with the staff of this Committee, because
obviously the two are intertwined here.
But essentially it would have the Administration develop
passenger security best practices to be used by operators on
rail, light rail, etc., and a national plan for public
outreach, an awareness, so that employees and the public alike
can have a sense of what they ought to do on rail travel the
way many of us understand what to do on air travel. That
wouldn't cost anything, probably already going on, but again,
there is nothing coherent that a member of Congress could look
at and do oversight on. That's the first thing.
The second thing is the embarrassment of the CSX
litigation. Here we have a local jurisdiction trying to reroute
trains that are in your jurisdiction, sir. The reason is,
nobody could get your agency or the Department of Homeland
Security to come up with a plan of any kind that they are
willing to talk with the District about for making sure that
trains which travel carrying toxic materials within four blocks
of the Capitol were in fact properly secured.
There was unrebutted testimony at the hearing that if one
of these trains, one car on this train was successfully
attacked, you could have an explosion with gases emitted for as
many as 14 miles in either direction, and if it was the right
car at the right time with the wind blowing at the right time,
as many as 100,000 people could die within a half hour. After
South Carolina, I don't think anybody can doubt what a well-
planned attack of that kind would do.
I was able to get report language in that really begins at
the basics on the CSX type matter. All of the concern has gone
off on rerouting. Everybody knows that you are not going to be
able to reroute trains in the United States very much. Perhaps
some rerouting can be done around the Capitol, I don't know.
The National Capital Planning Commission is looking at whether
or not the Federal Government could do something with some
tracks in that regard.
But clearly, rerouting is probably an impractical way to
deal with the situation nationwide. So what you need is a
Federal agency to step up to the plate, so that we don't have
what cities are now beginning to do all over the country. They
are all saying, okay, let us do something like the District of
Columbia did. And to show you just how compelling what the
District of Columbia did was, it won at the trial court level
on commerce grounds, it was overturned, at least at the
preliminary injunction stage, at the court of appeals level.
But the court looked at what your agency said it had done.
It must have said the equivalent of, is this it? Because it
said, a local jurisdiction has the right to protect itself from
such a deadly risk.
I give you that predicate to say first, do you have any
objection to this language that I hope will remain in the bill.
It was passed by the Committee concerning the development of a
coherent set of written best practices to be used by operators
of appropriate facilities and a plan for public outreach and
awareness for employees on the one hand and passengers on the
other. Is that something you think could be appropriately done
by the agency so that for example, I was pressed to make it an
amendment because no plan, so far as I could tell, had been
received.
I would like first to have an answer on that, and then I
would like to ask you a question on what to do about the CSX
type problem.
Mr. Jamison. Ms. Norton, I am not familiar with your
amendment. But I can tell you this. I feel like what you are
asking for, in the way you described it, has already been done.
Ms. Norton. So where is it, sir?
Mr. Jamison. Well, you can go to the--
Ms. Norton. Why wasn't it submitted to this Committee as
the Chairman asked last year?
Mr. Jamison. I wasn't at the Committee hearing, first of
all, and quite honestly, I don't even know if the agency that
prepared it, which I am getting ready to tell you about, was at
that hearing.
Ms. Norton. The agency was at that hearing. The Railway
Administration was at the hearing.
Mr. Jamison. The Federal Transit Administration, of which I
happen to be the Deputy Administrator, shortly after 9/11,
established a comprehensive action plan for passenger rail
security. As you mentioned, public awareness is a key issue. It
is an issue that was brought up in Madrid, and one of the
fundamental, basic things that you have to do to make sure that
you protect passenger rail. The comprehensive national public
awareness campaign was rolled out by the Federal Transit
Administration, approved materials were disseminated to every
public transit agency in the country. Technical assistance was
provided to all those transit agencies to not only conduct
vulnerability assessments, but to make sure that they had
proper training in place to educate their employees on how to
spot suspicious behavior and that they have public awareness
messages across the country.
So a lot of that stuff has been done. I will reiterate,
though, that DHS has the lead in security. Those "best
practices", as you call it, were developed and comprehensively
laid out in a top 20 action item list that is still posted on
the Federal Transit Administration Web site. I contend that
every transit agency in the country is aware of that list.
Ms. Norton. Could you submit to this Committee a copy of
all the documents you have just described?
Mr. Jamison. Absolutely.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much.
Ms. Hecker. Ms. Norton, I just wanted to add to actually
after that hearing, Mr. Quinn, as well as several members of
the Senate, asked GAO to do a global analysis of best practices
in rail and transit security. That work is ongoing. As a
successor, we briefed Mr. LaTourette's staff. That study is due
out that summer. We basically covered eight European capitals
and all of the rail manufacturers and operators and three Asian
countries. We visited every transit organization in this
country, as well as Amtrak. We will likely have comprehensive
recommendations at that time. I know it is not speaking to your
legislation that would direct that kind of leadership, but we
will have some conclusions, and with the clearance of the other
members, we would be happy to brief you on that.
Ms. Norton. That does speak directly to it, and I am glad
that you are looking at it, as other countries have also
engaged in it. Finally, on the report language, the first
responders, the fire chief, for example, in D.C. said he had no
idea when these substances were coming through. At the very
least, apparently the League of Cities the mayors said they
wanted that kind of notification. So this language goes to
prenotification of shipments to local law enforcement agencies,
protocols on effective communication between shippers and local
authorities, training of employees in handling hazardous
materials. Really the basics.
Do you have any problem with that, or are you going to tell
me that's already been done? Because the litigation came
precisely because the District of Columbia did not have any
information on what to do. And here you have a local
jurisdiction that moved out on its own and now has a whole
bunch of local jurisdictions moving out on its own, showing
that there is a void, a gap in leadership here.
Mr. Jamison. I just want to clarify. The comments I was
making before were strictly related to passenger rail, and a
lot of the work that I headed personally at the Federal Transit
Administration. So I'm intimately aware of that, would be happy
to share that with the Committee.
As far as prenotification goes, Graniteville taught us a
lesson about not only security but also safety around hazardous
materials and the impact that TIH can have, particularly
chlorine can have, in a situation. However, I have concerns
about prenotification. As a result, we are accelerating the use
of our research resources, with those of the Department of
Homeland Security, the Office of Domestic Preparedness, to come
up with a Railinc demonstration project that actually would
allow us to have consist information available in a push-pull
type of system. So, for instance, if there is an accident in
the vicinity of five emergency responders, automatically they
would be in a database, and the information of what's on that
train would be pushed out to them, as well as giving them the
opportunity via Internet or other opportunity to go in and pull
that information to them.
However, I do have a lot of concerns about prenotification.
There were 1.7 million hazardous material shipments by rail in
the United States in a year, and I don't want to overburden or
take away the importance of key data with a constant stream of
information that would keep coming to emergency responders who
have a lot of other critical work to do. More importantly, I
think it's critical that we give them the access to information
when they need it most.
Ms. Norton. If there are appropriate guidelines or
regulations, do you know what you would get? You would get
responses back from agencies and you would be able to work that
out. In the absence of that, you have a local jurisdiction out
on its own. I must tell you that their notion of rerouting was
not my idea of the only available option. But when people who
are sitting where they are sitting, without any leadership,
think about what to do, they can only think about move the
train away from where it is.
So I would simply ask you, I am very pleased that you
responded as you did on prenotification. What it does is to
show the importance of publishing something, so that local
jurisdictions can speak back to you and we can iron out this
problem before you get this proliferation of concerns already
developing, surely you must know that, already developing in
cities and towns around the United States. I am confident this
language will remain, because it is report language, and I want
to assure you that I am personally going to make it my business
to follow up on both of these issues I have raised at this
hearing.
Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentlelady. We are going to
bring this panel to a close. I want to thank each of you, and
Ms. Hecker, we look forward to your continued work and
appreciate the work you have done already. Mr. Weiderhold, I
speak for members on both sides of the aisle, that your
investigation to this point has been very impressive and we
look forward to your further work.
And Mr. Jamison, I know that your role as Acting
Administrator is about to come to an end with the confirmation
of the Administrator. You go with our thanks and my thanks for
your service to the country to this moment in time in filling
that role on an acting basis, and good luck with the addition
to your family. Thank you for being so patient. Thank you all.
While we wait for the second panel, the House has notified
those who do not have access to the outside communications, it
indicates an apparent air space violation by an unidentified
aircraft over Washington today prompted the evacuations that we
just encountered. F-16 fighter jets scrambled to intercept the
aircraft, it was a small, single-engine plane forced to land in
Frederick, Maryland. There are two subjects now in custody and
being interviewed by the Secret Service. That's what happened
to us a little bit ago.
It is now my pleasure to welcome the second panel today.
The second panel will be comprised of William Crosbie, who is
the Director of Operations at Amtrak; William A. Spurr, who is
the President of Bombardier Transport of North America; and
Francis Jelensperger, who is the President of Alstom
Transportation, Inc., of America. I want to thank all of you
for coming here today. I apologize for the deadline.
I just notified the members of the Subcommittee, there was
a Highway Subcommittee meeting that was supposed to start at
2:00 o'clock. They are now going to wait for us. If we can sort
of shoot for a 3:00 o'clock out time from this, I don't want to
short anybody the opportunity to ask any questions, but if we
can sort of aim towards 3:00 o'clock, I think we can facilitate
our brethren on the Committee.
I would say to the panel, this is a pretty funny place,
Washington, as most of you know. While we were outside in the
parking lot, some of the wags were suggesting after the second
panel was sitting in the audience and saw Mr. Mica's questions
of the first panel, perhaps we should check your fingerprints
on the smoke detectors and fire alarms in the building.
[Laughter.]
Mr. LaTourette. I'm sure that that was not right. But I
again thank you very much for coming. I want to say, as an
editorial comment, that when the Inspector General was here, I
am personally impressed that all three of your organizations
are cooperating fully with the IG and what he is attempting to
do. I think you are to be commended for it. He made the
observation that one entity not represented here today may be
lawyering up, and while I understand business concerns, I think
it is commendable that all three of your organizations have
stepped up to the plate and are helping us try to find a
solution.
So with that, welcome, and Mr. Crosbie, we look forward to
hearing from you.
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM CROSBIE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF
OPERATIONS, AMTRAK; WILLIAM A. SPURR, PRESIDENT, BOMBARDIER
TRANSPORT OF NORTH AMERICA; AND FRANCIS JELENSPERGER,
PRESIDENT, ALSTOM TRANSPORTATION, INC. OF AMERICA
Mr. Crosbie. I am just going to walk through a series of
slides for the record, we would like to submit them for the
record, which has some photographs that you might be interested
in. I will do that quickly and then I would like to move on to
my testimony if that's okay.
The first slide there, photograph, gives you a sense of the
shop environment. It is a modern facility and the train set
over a pit. This area here is the undercarriage of the train,
the wheel axle set, there are three rotors or discs on an axle.
That is something you may not have heard until now.
When we talk about the friction surface, Mr. Weiderhold
mentioned that, there is a good photograph of it there. This is
what is referred to as the web, and you can see the spokes in
here.
This is a good example of the type of crack that you would
see. You can see that one we have submitted, it is barely
visible to the naked eye. Now we know where to look, so your
mind and eye can play some tricks on you as to is it there or
isn't it there. That is the same spoke a little bit closer in.
Then this is a different spoke. You can see that that crack
is clearly visible. So what I wanted to give you today is a
sense of the degree of variation in visibility.
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I appreciate the
opportunity to come before you for an update on the status of
Amtrak's Acela service. This afternoon, I am going to address
what happened last month regarding our decision to pull the
Acelas, what is being done to return the trains to service and
what the financial impact has been to date. I am Williams
Crosbie, Senior Vice President of Operations for Amtrak. I
joined Amtrak in January 2003.
I am a professional electrical engineer with over 20 years'
experience in railroad operations, maintenance and engineering.
Let me begin by saying that this incident has not affected our
resolve to return Acela to service. Acela was introduced nearly
five years ago. The train is popular among our passengers and
ridership has grown from just under a half million in its first
year of operation, 2001, to more than two and a half million in
fiscal year 2004.
Last year, it accounted for nearly $295 million in ticket
revenue, or approximately 25 percent of all Amtrak ticket
revenue. Its popularity among passengers was continuing this
year until the trains were sidelined in April, with revenue up
10 million and ridership up 7 percent through March against the
same period last year.
In the early morning hours of Friday, April 15th, I was
contacted by Amtrak's high speed rail master mechanic and told
that cracks in the spokes of the brake rotor had been found.
The first crack was found following a post-run inspection of
one train set. The initial Amtrak high speed rail mechanical
engineering assessment was that the defect existed on every
train set inspected to that point, and that it likely existed
across the fleet.
Amtrak's high speed rail maintenance and engineering staff
recommended to me that the train sets be taken out of service
because based on their assessment, it could be unsafe to
operate the train sets. After reviewing their findings in
detail, I concurred with their recommendation and ordered the
entire fleet of Acela train sets out of service.
Simultaneously, I also ordered an immediate fleet-wide
inspection of all train sets to detail and document the cracked
spokes by train set, by car number, axle number and rotor
number. Each of the 6 coaches of the 20 train sets has 12
broken brake rotors. That means the full fleet has 1,440
rotors. Of those 1,440 rotors, approximately 300 cracks were
found on 250 of the rotors. These cracked spokes, many of which
were not visible to the naked eye, were found on every train
set. At a meeting on Friday, April 15th, all parties agreed
that taking the Acelas out of service was the right decision.
These train sets were assembled in the United States for
Amtrak by a consortium of Bombardier Transportation of Canada
and Alstom of France. In addition to the 20 train sets, the
consortium provided 15 other high horsepower locomotives, 3 new
maintenance facilities, and through its subsidiary, the
Northeast Corridor Maintenance Service Company, better known as
NEC-MSC, a service contract to maintain the equipment. Under
this service contract, NEC-MSC is obligated to inspect, service
and maintain the equipment with NEC-MSC management supervising
Amtrak employees.
The brake systems used on the Acela were supplied by Knorr,
a subcontractor of the consortium, and the discs or rotors at
issue were supplied by Knorr and SAB WABCO. Under our
management services agreement, NEC-MSC is responsible for
inspecting and maintaining the train sets and managing the
inventory of spare parts. When this incident occurred, we
discovered that there were only 64 spare rotors on hand and
none on order.
Consequently, this required Amtrak to deliver the news on
April 20th that the train sets would in all likelihood not
return to service until some time this summer, and then only
gradually. We then moved on parallel paths to determine the
cause of the problem and the solution, and to quickly begin a
service recovery plan. The absence of Acela initially left a
substantial hole in our northeast corridor service. On weekdays
we had been running 15 round trips between Washington and New
York, 11 between New York and Boston. These trips accounted for
average weekday revenue of $1 million a day.
Moving quickly with replacement Metroliner service, we
reduced the daily revenue loss by more than 50 percent.
Starting the week of April 25th, we were able to offer nearly
hourly service from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. in both directions
between New York and Washington with Metroliners. Starting last
week, we expanded that to 7:00 p.m. in both directions, and
added two Metroliner round trips between New York and Boston.
So we now have 14 Metroliner round trips south of New York and
2 round trips north of New York. We did all this by a
combination of actions, including the redeployment of equipment
from throughout the country, reducing the shop count of our
other service cars and borrowing equipment from third parties.
The Metroliners have performed well. Since starting their
full schedule on April 25th, on-time performance as of May 9th
was 83 percent. A good day for us is typically between 85 and
90 percent with the Metroliners. This is equivalent to the
Acela's on-time performance in March, which was 83 percent. The
trip time also compares favorably with the run time that is
within 10 minutes of the Acela express.
However, despite quick action to redeploy equipment and
construct a Metroliner schedule that meets our passengers
expectations, the loss of revenue has been and will continue to
be substantial until the train sets are returned to service.
Our estimate is that net of expenses, we will lose somewhat
more than a $1 million a week that the Acela express trains are
out of service.
This has the potential to seriously jeopardize our end of
fiscal year 2005 cash balance. Right now the projection stands
at $32 million before considering the impact of Acela service
disruption. This incident may well exhaust our cash by the end
of the fiscal year. We are taking every opportunity to mitigate
the financial consequences of this incident. Also the FRA and
U.S. DOT, who are on our board of directors, are up to date
with daily cash on hand reports as well as monthly cash flow
projections.
The Subcommittee may also be interested in knowing that
under the maintenance agreement, NEC-MSC may be assessed
liquidated damages of $10,000 per missed trip, although
typically liquidated damages are subtracted from the regular
monthly payments that we make to NEC-MSC for its services. As
of April 15th, Amtrak has not made any payments to NEC-MSC.
We do want to know what caused this. And on April 15th, I
asked Fred Weiderhold, Amtrak's Inspector General, to
investigate this matter for us. I believe he is asking all the
right questions. The IG is independent, experienced and
professional. And you have the benefit of his testimony today.
As I said earlier, Amtrak's focus is on seeing that the new
parts are procured, satisfactorily tested and installed, the
appropriate spares are in inventory, and that the trains are
returned to service. Acela express is both popular with our
passengers and is a very important part of our bottom line.
This concludes my testimony and I look forward to your
questions.
Mr. LaTourette. Thank you very much, Mr. Crosbie.
Mr. Spurr, thank you for coming and we would like to hear
from you.
Mr. Spurr. Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee,
good afternoon. My name is William Spurr. I am the President of
Bombardier Transportation for North America.
Bombardier appreciates the opportunity to appear before the
Subcommittee today and discuss issues related to the recent
grounding of the Acela train sets. You have my written
statement, it is part of the record.
The consortium of Bombardier and Alstom fully understands
the importance of the issue and the impact it is having on rail
transport along the northeast corridor. I am here today to
reaffirm our commitment to finding a solution that brings the
Acela equipment back into service as quickly as possible while
at the same time ensuring public safety.
As is clear from the statements of the preceding panelists,
the comprehensive analysis of the situation is underway. We
expect to know more as analysis and testing winds down toward
the end of May. We are pressing Knorr and their sub-suppliers
to identify and correct the root cause of this issue. Knorr is
currently subjecting the disc to a strenuous battery of testing
at their labs in Munich, in Germany. There are some preliminary
results but it would not be appropriate to discuss them until
the conclusions are finalized.
We are also working with the parties to conduct field
testing of the component using one Acela train set in operation
on the NEC soon. Rather than speculate on what the test may
show when completed, I will confine my oral comments to what we
know to be facts and to the process now underway to return
these cars safely to service.
With regard to the facts, I want to address certain
misconceptions that have arisen in recent days. First, this is
a fundamental component performance issue, not a maintenance
issue. The brake disc spokes do not have hairline fissures
because of the lack of maintenance. The problem arose due to
design, manufacture or environmental factors. The root cause
analysis will tell us whether the problem is design,
manufacturing or the operating environment or a combination of
these factors. But it is not a lack of maintenance. No
maintenance as such is required for the disc spokes.
Second, the grounding of the Acela fleet is not due to a
lack of spare parts. Amtrak and the consortium have on hand
ample spares for all regular maintenance requirements. No
railroad or manufacturer can be expected to carry spares to
cover a fundamental problem like this, in which virtually every
component in the fleet has to be replaced all at once. That
would be like requiring an auto manufacturer to equip every car
with four spare tires. The level of inventory available to
Amtrak was based on historical usage and is in line with
standard industry practices.
This was indeed a completely unexpected development.
Bombardier contracted with Knorr Brake Corporation to deliver a
brake system and components in line with Amtrak's
specifications. Knorr was well-known as a reputable supplier in
the industry, used by many rail equipment manufacturers.
Bombardier has worked with Knorr successfully on numerous
projects. We had every reason to believe that the system would
perform properly.
Now that I have spoken to what the issue is and is not, let
me spend a few moments on our approach to resolving it. We are
pursuing three options in parallel. The three options are each
contingent, of course, on Amtrak and FRA approval. First, we
are developing an approach to recertify the discs we have on
hand for continued use. This would be an interim solution to
get as many trains back in service as soon as possible. Trains,
of course, would be closely inspected on a daily basis until a
permanent solution was achieved.
Second, we are pressing Knorr and its sub-suppliers to
secure new discs of the same design as quickly as possible. And
again, this would be also a temporary solution. Finally, we are
looking at the potential for using completely a different brake
disc design produced by Knorr itself. The design has already
been pre-qualified as a replacement part by Amtrak and would
serve as an interim solution. Knorr has committed that it can
produce brake discs of the new design and start delivering them
in June 2005.
The objective behind these parallel approaches is to secure
a solution that ensures public safety, gets as many train sets
into service as soon as possible and ultimately arrives at a
viable permanent solution to the issue.
In closing, let me once again stress Bombardier's
commitment to resolving this issue quickly and safely. Since
the fissures were discovered, Bombardier has been cooperating
fully with the FRA, Amtrak and the Inspector General of Amtrak.
Last week, for example, NEC-MSC, the Northeast Corridor
Maintenance Services Company, held jointly by Bombardier and
Alstom, met with the Inspector General of Amtrak. We supplied
documents and the Inspector General's staff interviewed
privately maintenance employees.
We will continue to cooperate fully with all parties,
including the Inspector General of Amtrak. It is also in our
interest to go to the bottom of this and understand exactly
what happened.
Thank you to the members of this panel for inviting us to
participate today. I will respond to any questions you may
have.
Mr. LaTourette. Mr. Spurr, we thank you very much.
Mr. Jelensperger, thank you for coming and we look forward
to hearing from you.
Mr. Jelensperger. Mr. Chairman, members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before
the Subcommittee to discuss issues related to the Acela train
sets. We are pleased to be here this afternoon with our
colleagues from Amtrak and Bombardier, and together we are
fully committed to ensuring a long-term, expeditious and most
of all safe solution to the issue at hand.
Bombardier-Alstom, acting in a consortium, contracted with
Amtrak in 1996 to provide 20 train sets and 15 high horsepower
locomotives and for providing maintenance services for the
Acela train sets in joint venture. Alstom was approximately 28
percent of the value of the consortium contract. Our scope of
work was focused primarily on supplying the propulsion system.
Alstom, working together with Bombardier, is fully
confident that our team will resolve the current situation by
working with Amtrak, the Federal Railroad Administration and
the consortium suppliers to get the equipment back into service
as quickly as possible. As we do so, passenger safety continues
to be our utmost priority for us all.
Alstom is committed to working closely with Bombardier and
its subcontractor, Knorr Brake, to resolve the issue as
Bombardier presented in its prepared statement. I have had an
opportunity to review the statement of my colleague from
Bombardier and can say that Alstom is in agreement with the
substance of Bombardier's statement.
We understand and appreciate Congress' concern in this
issue. Alstom will continue to work closely with Amtrak and
Bombardier to rectify the situation quickly, effectively and
most importantly, safely.
Attached to our prepared testimony are the responses to the
questions raised by the Committee. I would be pleased to answer
any additional questions the Committee may have.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank you very much, and I thank all of
you for your testimony.
Mr. Crosbie, I think I want to start with you. When the FRA
was here, we were talking about the instrumented tests, I guess
we will call them. They are scheduled to start next week?
Mr. Crosbie. We are working through the inspection, the
test procedures. Once we get the final procedures finalized,
and it is the responsibility of all parties, Amtrak included,
and the FRA, if that goes through as planned, we hope to have a
test through the weekend.
Mr. LaTourette. Okay. And Mr. Spurr was talking about
perhaps, and I think the Inspector General also talked about, a
redesigned or another disc that is being manufactured by Knorr.
Is that currently being tested somewhere in the world as well?
Mr. Crosbie. That is being tested. We are reviewing the
design. There are items such as finite element analysis of the
disc and Amtrak will be certainly engaged in testing it. We
have done some laboratory tests in Munich, Germany, along with
the existing disc.
The tests, I want to be clear, though, in terms of the
tests in the corridor, we are really testing to see what the
lateral forces underneath the train set. It is not a specific
disc that we're testing.
Mr. LaTourette. Right. I asked you this the other day when
you came to visit me, and while the Inspector General will
complete his work and we will have some answers about how we
got from here to there, I think what everybody, at least that
we represent, want to know, aside from the money that it's
costing, which you have already testified to, and not holding
you to any certain date, but if things go swimmingly, when do
you think the Acela trains are going to be back in operation?
Mr. Crosbie. That is a very tough question to answer. I
think the next two weeks are really going to tell us when they
will come back. We need to complete the tests on the northeast
corridor to understand those lateral forces underneath the
train set. That will really tell us which disc we should be
using.
A concern I have is that the existing disc, once we
understand what's going on underneath the train set, may not be
appropriately designed and we may need to move to the
alternative disc that's been suggested. Each one has its own
production rate. From that you would be able to determine when
the train sets will be back in service.
I am sorry I can't give you a specific date. It will be
summer, June, July, with the information I have right now.
Mr. LaTourette. Would you concur, I thought there was some
good news today, and that is that the people that are supposed
to be working together at least seem to be working together at
this moment in time to solve the problem?
Mr. Crosbie. Absolutely. For all the corporations involved,
there has been one focus and that is getting the train sets
back in service.
Mr. LaTourette. I was interested in this data flow
schematic. I have to be honest with you, this does not look
like something that I expected to see, as to how this will
work. Why, if you can tell me, was this set up so that NEC-MSC
is responsible for the maintenance, I understand originally
until 2013? And I will want to talk to you about that in a
minute. But it's Amtrak employees who are on the shop floor.
Who designed this?
Mr. Crosbie. I was not with Amtrak at the time when they
made those decisions. But the people that were in place told me
that they felt that at the time, they did not necessarily have
the work force in place to take on the high speed train set.
There were a number of other reasons, in terms of using the
agreement employees, the unionized employees. That's around
some labor agreements as well.
So it was a combination of things, from what I understand.
Again, I was not there at the time, but it is not the way I
would have put it together.
Mr. LaTourette. Right. That gets to my next question, and
that is, you and Mr. Gunn are considered by many to be railroad
experts. You have earned that, given your experience. Given
that experience, how many times have you been in a position to
contract with outside firms, such as NEC-MSC, to perform
critical maintenance functions on various properties on which
you have been involved?
Mr. Crosbie. I have been in this situation many times. The
one that I have seen that works the best is the operator needs
to be the one that is responsible for the overall system. That
includes the train set and all its subsystems as well as the
infrastructure, everything from track, signals, catenary and
the like. They need to be the one responsible for that. We like
to call that a vertically integrated organization.
What seems to work is picking pieces that you, for various
reason that you wish to outsource and contract out, but you
need to retain the knowledge base and the understanding of
those systems. You may do that because of costs, schedules and
the like.
Mr. LaTourette. And the follow-up to that is, given the
events surrounding the Acela express train sets, do you believe
that Amtrak is not capable of managing such large and
technically complex infrastructure projects, or are they?
Mr. Crosbie. I believe they are capable of managing this.
And Mr. Weiderhold had mentioned, in terms of new projects,
fire-life safety is a good example of one that is being managed
properly. In terms of the Acela train set and taking over the
maintenance, the reason, we are very comfortable taking over
the maintenance of those train sets.
Mr. LaTourette. I think Mr. Spurr indicated that the
alternative disc, the Knorr disc, I guess I can call it, it's
my understanding from you and other testimony that the big
difference is the spokes seem to be turned 90 degrees, which
may give it better strength.
There was a June 2005 potential delivery date. Just for the
purposes of the record, am I correct that the WABCO disc has a
slower production rate than potentially the Knorr?
Mr. Crosbie. That's right.
Mr. LaTourette. Can you just for the record tell us, how
many WABCO discs do you think you could get in a month if you
would ask them to send some stuff over, and how many discs do
you think Knorr can supply ? Have they at least informed you of
that?
Mr. Crosbie. They have informed me of that, and they can
certainly correct me if I get this incorrect, and if there is
new information. The WABCO disc, as I understand it, can have a
production rate of between 18 and 25 per week. You have to
remember there is three per axle. And you can do the math on
that.
Mr. LaTourette. Well, I can't, maybe you can.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Crosbie. The Knorr disc, I think the initial commitment
we had was mid-June of 50, then it ramps up to 100 per week at
mid-July, I believe it is, and then on to 150 discs per week in
early August. So the production rates are substantially better
with the Knorr alternative.
Mr. LaTourette. I think the last question for each of you,
again when the Inspector General was here, he may be developing
information that ORX in Altoona, Pennsylvania has either
documents or witnesses that indicate that the spokes were
developing cracks between 12 and 36 months ago was the
observation. I heard him say that that information was
communicated to perhaps some on this schematic, but it
certainly didn't get to the shop floor. So first to you, Mr.
Crosbie, are you, until you heard that or were advised of that
by the Inspector General, are you aware of Amtrak having any
information about those findings prior to April 14th or 15th?
Mr. Crosbie. No.
Mr. LaTourette. Mr. Spurr and Mr. Jelensperger, the same
for you on behalf of the consortium?
Mr. Jelensperger. We had no idea of the litigation before
last night, in my case.
Mr. LaTourette. And Mr. Spurr?
Mr. Spurr. Well, most of the information we got from the
Wall Street Journal.
Mr. LaTourette. Right. Welcome to Washington.
[Laughter.]
Mr. LaTourette. One thing is bothering me, Mr. Crosbie,
however, and then I will yield to the distinguished Ranking
Member. The settlement agreement, I understand why there was
litigation, I understand why parties would want to settle the
case. But it has been described to me that the maintenance end
of this thing, because of the difficulties, is not a money-
maker. So I would understand while the consortium may want to
get out of the maintenance end of things, my understanding is
that in a settlement reached between the consortium and Amtrak
that you moved up, we will see what happens based upon what's
going on right now, but if everything had gone along fine, that
you moved up the assumption by Amtrak of the maintenance of
this fleet from 2013 to 2000, instead of fall of 2006.
First of all, am I correct that the maintenance does not
appear to be a money-maker?
Mr. Crosbie. I would let my esteemed colleagues answer that
question. But in terms of, for Amtrak, it is part of our
budget. It's built into the 2005 budget. Maintenance, I would
let them answer.
Mr. LaTourette. I'll ask them in a second. But my question
to you is, I assume they are going to tell me it's not. But if
I'm wrong, we'll double back.
Mr. Crosbie. If you are asking in the industry, there are
other examples where they have made money doing this. It is not
a lot, though. It is not something that one would invest
heavily in.
Mr. LaTourette. Mr. Spurr, I have a follow-up question that
I want to ask you, but just to confirm, Mr. Spurr, is it a
money-maker? Have you made money on this contract? My
understanding is NEC-MSC is a subsidiary of the consortium, is
that right?
Mr. Spurr. That's correct.
Mr. LaTourette. Is this a money-maker for you?
Mr. Spurr. This particular contract, no, but we have other
contracts that make money in a similar kind of service
environment.
Mr. LaTourette. But not on this one?
Mr. Spurr. I would say it's just about break-even. You must
realize that following the agreement, the settlement agreement
that we had with Amtrak, that the relationship improved
greatly, so better work could be done. We had a lot of
modifications to be done, as the GAO explained earlier on. And
these modifications were basically 80 percent complete right
now on these modifications. Unfortunately, this new incident
happened.
But that will be completed also, once we are done it will
be a better brake system. But also the reliability of the
trains was increasing. We are already months where we were
hitting above the requirement. So things were getting better on
the operational side.
Mr. LaTourette. But my question goes to the settlement, and
my last question to Mr. Crosbie is, if it was part of the
settlement that Amtrak is going to assume or subsume the
maintenance responsibilities seven years earlier, what did you
get for that? That sounds like that isn't what you were
bargaining for. What did you get for taking over, slicing seven
years off of a losing maintenance contract?
Mr. Crosbie. One of the big things that Mr. Spurr had
mentioned is, first we had extended the warranties with the
train sets. That was part of the things that we got for it.
There is a list of items. Obviously we settled the lawsuit. I
think we did well, all parties did well, I think it was fair.
We also under the parts area, we reserved our rights on the
number of options. We have at least two options we can exercise
under the contract which are very important to us as well. And
a commitment resolving a lot of down in the details, a lot of
technical things that were under discussion or debate as to who
is responsible for them. That is probably the most important
thing for me as the operations person that got resolved, was a
commitment to fix those items. We cleared the decks. I am very
happy to hear that they are going to continue in that spirit.
Mr. LaTourette. Sure. And not to cast blame on somebody
that was there before you got there, but again, the settlement
cleaned up what maybe wasn't the best contract to begin with,
is that fair?
Mr. Crosbie. That is a fair assessment of it. What is not
written in that settlement is, it rebuilt the relationship
between the parties. I think evidence of that is the recent
events and the cooperation. I couldn't imagine doing this in
the middle of a lawsuit.
Mr. LaTourette. I agree with you, and I said at the outset
I am impressed that all three of you are not only at the same
table today but also seem to be working together to solve it. I
thank you, and yield to the distinguished Ranking Member, Ms.
Brown.
Ms. Brown. Thank you. I want to start with Mr. Crosbie,
too. As you know, I came to the press conference where you
announced that you were replacing the Acela service with
Metroliner and regional service to offset revenue losses. How
has the brake problem impacted Amtrak's ridership level on the
northeast corridor and what is the financial impact? Are all
the costs recoverable?
Mr. Crosbie. In terms of the ridership, it is down,
slightly down. It is down by 5 to 10 percent. We are very early
in this, and just for the systems we use internally, we like to
do what's called a ticket lift and understand that better.
We are also seeing, though, that it is improving as people
get used to a regular Metroliner schedule. So we think that at
the end of this, as we move through the month of May and June
that it will stay flat to where it was. The financial impact,
as I mentioned, is roughly a net of expenses. We have taken
action to lower the expenses where we could in the order of, in
terms of positions, because we are not running as many trains.
Total is just over 85 positions have been reduced within the
organization.
We have also taken action on food and beverage in terms of
what we are serving on the trains. That has resulted in 30
positions that are external to Amtrak, but is a savings to us.
So net of expenses, it is $1 million a week in terms of the
net loss.
Ms. Brown. What is the time frame? For example, on the
other trains it took how long to come from Washington to New
York and vice versa. What is the time frame now?
Mr. Crosbie. On paper it is 12 minutes between Washington
and New York, the difference. The Metroliner is off the Acela
schedule by 12 minutes. In all reality, it is typically only
eight minutes.
Ms. Brown. Another question. Would you tell me how Amtrak
and the other organizations involved with the maintenance of
the train set communicate with one another as problems arise? I
am most interested in how this work operationally. I understand
that the maintenance function is the responsibility of the
consortium, but why didn't someone tell Amtrak about the
problems if they knew months ago?
Mr. Crosbie. The last part I obviously can't answer.
Ms. Brown. We are going to ask the other parties there on
the last part. Answer what you can please.
Mr. Crosbie. Obviously we wait, I await the Inspector
General's final report on this. That is the question I am
asking as well, how did this happen, how did we not know, who
knew and why did we get this end result. On an operating basis,
we have under my direction, we have a regular meeting once a
month with all the parties. It is referred to as the Acela
oversight committee meeting. We go through in great detail,
these meetings last typically a half a day or more. We go
through all the open technical items, operational items, we go
through on-time performance.
So we cover both, to put it in some buckets, if you will,
the contractual part of this as well as the operational part.
We have all parties at the table for that meeting. I chair the
meeting. We have minutes. I have what is typically a month's
worth of work that we go through.
It also covers the transition plan. We have submitted this
this week to the GAO for their review in answer to the request
for a comprehensive transition plan. They now have that
document. It details with Gant charts, organization charts, and
in great detail as to how we are going to get from where we are
today to taking over the maintenance of these train sets.
So the communication, what is really frustrating me at this
point is the communication was certainly there since the
settlement agreement. It is very unfortunate that this one pie
e did not find its way into the right hands. I was very happy
to see, though, that my people, my master mechanic, my
engineers that night, the night of April 14th into the 15th,
once they got it, they knew what to do with it.
I want to be clear on that point. I authorized the train
sets being taken out of service. It was the engineers, my
engineers and our maintenance personnel that made a clear
recommendation. They knew what to do.
Ms. Brown. Mr. Spurr, can you answer that question? Let me
just say that just recently, you all run the set from London to
Paris, don't you?
Mr. Spurr. Yes, we do.
Ms. Brown. We just completed it, less than a month ago. It
was very interesting, because I think it usually takes about
four hours, and it took us about six. But it was a
demonstration on the French side, human error, that kept, that
delayed the train. So there are many factors that trains to not
run on time.
But would you tell us a little bit about the consortium,
your responsibility? I understand it is like subcontracted out
to you, your company?
Mr. Spurr. Yes. We maintain the 20 train sets for Amtrak
under contract with Alstom. We have a joint company to do that.
We share in that company 50-50. The work in that, under the
contract, is just in simple terms, we have what we call
preventive maintenance and regular maintenance, inspections
that we do on a daily basis for every train set that goes out
into service. We have 92 day inspections which are regulatory
and that take a week, actually, it is a very thorough checking
of the train, every 92 days, all the safety elements. And we
have annual inspections that take actually around two weeks to
perform.
In response to the other part of your question, if
anything, what's happened is actually extraordinary. So when
problems like that arise, it is our duty to inform our client
immediately of the situation. We would, if we knew exactly what
was happening.
Ms. Brown. Mr. Spurr, I know that you would not
intentionally not inform them. But why do you think the system
broke down? Because from everything that I've heard this
morning, it was lucky, our luck that we found out about it. So
it wasn't, even though you are inspecting the train, evidently
the brakes were not being inspected?
Mr. Spurr. If you look at the report of the Inspector
General, the person who actually found what he thought was a
little rust spot on the disc, on the spoke, actually mentioned
himself in the report that he has been under those trains
hundreds of times to do his routine inspections, and he is
never able to detect anything. Actually, I think these
hairlines fissures were so hard to see that it's, I think we're
very happy that they were detected, like everybody else.
Because it could have been a calamity if we hadn't, that it
hadn't been checked.
Nonetheless, these discs have been operating for four years
actually without one single failure. There are 1,440 of them in
the system. So statistically, it is a good number to work on.
But it doesn't mean, I think we were lucky to have found it and
we are grateful to the inspector for finding the crack.
Ms. Brown. Yes, Mr. Spurr, but I'm not a mechanic, so
believe me, I don't know anything about cars or trains as far
as how they operate. But I have this car. And when something
goes wrong, it just stops. That's a part of the system. It just
will not go over five miles an hour if something is wrong with
the brakes.
So I guess I'm trying to find out, is that safety
mechanism, can it be built into the system? Because even though
you were doing the inspections as you are telling us, it was
just luck that we found the flaw.
Mr. Spurr. No, I think the reason we found it was that
there was an inspector under the car looking at it. So--
Ms. Brown. But you have already told me that he looked
several times.
Mr. Spurr. No, it's just that--
Ms. Brown. It's something that you couldn't find with the
naked eye. But I'm just telling you, the computer in my car, it
just shuts my car down if something is wrong with the brakes.
Mr. Spurr. The inspections that we do are standard
practice. It is the same inspections, not in detail, but in
terms of checking the brakes, the spokes and so on, that we do
in Europe. We are the largest maintainer of railway equipment
in Europe ourselves. And it is the same, we checked it, it is
the same kind of visual inspection that we do for the spokes.
This component should not be failing. It is a problem of
component failure.
It's like if the rims, when you go out and check your tires
for winter driving, you don't check the rims of the tire, you
assume that the rim is solid and is built properly. Every now
and then you send it in, and yes, there is an inspection. There
is an overhaul coming up on all the trucks, for instance, the
wheel sets. And at that time, there is an opportunity to do a
more detailed inspection of the discs.
Ms. Brown. Right. My understanding is that you are supposed
to have been operating, doing a certain level three maintenance
requirement that you do a check so often. You had only
completed 70 or so of the brakes. That percentage should have
been much higher.
Mr. Spurr. Are you talking about spare parts? I didn't
understand.
Ms. Brown. Yes, it says, why did the consortium only have
70 or so brakes, discs in reserve, spare parts, yes.
Mr. Spurr. No, we had around 40 in reserve, plus we had
around 14 wheel sets also in reserve. But the wheel sets,
unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, had the same disc on them as
the ones that were found to be faulty. So unbeknownst to us,
the wheel sets that were in reserve were not necessarily all
adequate directly for usage. And we had also under order an
additional 40 discs with WABCO.
So that in actual fact we believe was sufficient to do what
we call normal maintenance on wear and tear of the discs.
Ms. Brown. Would you like to add something to that, sir?
Mr. Jelensperger. Well, I would have answered exactly the
same way, maybe just a little piece of additional information.
In the life of these trains, I think we changed 15 discs
altogether. They were damaged by ice, damaged by other things,
but only 15 were changed. We had basically enough wheel sets to
change two train sets. And we had new discs that would have
been used also. I think we had an adequate supply to respond to
normal wear and tear.
Ms. Brown. Well, are you saying that the problems that
existed were not normal problems, is that correct?
Mr. Jelensperger. That's exactly right, that's what we
think. It had nothing to do with maintenance, it had to do the
quality of the component. And we discovered, thank God early
enough, that that component was flawed. I guess all we are
doing together with FRA is trying to find out what has
happened, what was the cause, and once we knew, once we made
the tests, we can basically reinstall the discs on these
brakes, the brakes on the trucks and finally have the train in
service.
Ms. Brown. I am just hoping that we can come up with a
system that just doesn't operate on luck. I yield back the
balance of my time.
Mr. LaTourette. I thank the gentlelady. I just have a
couple more questions, and I will be happy to yield to the
gentlelady if she has additional questions as well, and I thank
you for your patience.
But two things that I wanted to clear up. One I asked the
FRA, and I just want to get back to you, Mr. Crosbie, as my
last one. On this disc we're talking about, my understanding is
that when the contracts were let out, Knorr was the winning
bidder on the brake assembly but not on the disc? The disc
comes from WABCO to Knorr and Knorr does the rest of the brake,
Mr. Spurr, is that right or not?
Mr. Spurr. No, let me explain it a little bit. We gave a
contract to Knorr for the total braking system. It was their
responsibility to select the appropriate disc for the system.
Of course, they had to go through a qualification process and
they have to go through a design review process for all the
components for the whole system. But that's the way it works.
Mr. LaTourette. I had thought Amtrak did not find the--so
it's Knorr that didn't even take its own disc, they decided to
take the WABCO disc? Amtrak, FRA had nothing to do with that,
Mr. Crosbie?
Mr. Crosbie. No, they did not.
Mr. LaTourette. They did not. Okay. The last question on
the disc is, this new disc that is being tested in Germany with
the spoke turned 90 degrees, do you know if that was in
existence at the time of this original contract? Did Knorr have
such a product or is it a new product?
Mr. Crosbie. My understanding is it existed some time in
2002 and 2003, in that time frame. At least there was a design
and possibly at least two discs on hand.
Mr. LaTourette. Which is after the construction of Acela?
Mr. Crosbie. Yes.
Mr. LaTourette. And the last question I have, and I asked
the FRA this, but there was a local news report here last night
about the tunnel that goes near the Cannon Building. I made a
series of declarative statements and I will ask you to either
agree with them or tell me that I'm wrong. It's my
understanding that that tunnel that was pictured on the news is
patrolled by the Amtrak police, that only trains that carry
passengers go through and there is no freight, no tank cars, no
hazardous materials, only passengers trains, that the rail
access is controlled at the CSX dispatch control center, and
that both CSX and Amtrak, in cooperation with the FRA and the
Department of Homeland Security, have developed an extensive
security plan relative to that tunnel, that for obviously
security reasons we don't discuss in open session.
And lastly, I understand that the camera crew was met by a
police officer when they attempted to begin their filming. Are
those things all right or are some of them right and some of
them wrong?
Mr. Crosbie. That is a correct assessment. Amtrak is
responsible for that tunnel. We are working with the local and
Federal authorities, Homeland Security, DHS, and we have a
program in place for security for the tunnel which we are not
going to discuss here.
Mr. LaTourette. I really appreciate all three of you
coming. I appreciate the first panel as well. If there are
follow-up questions--
Mr. Crosbie. Sir, if you wouldn't mind. I just want for the
record to note that we have submitted a comprehensive
transition plan to the GAO for their comments. We gave it to
them this week. They have that, and we look forward to their
comments.
Mr. LaTourette. Maybe you and Ms. Hecker can make friends
after the hearing and get everything all squared away. Thank
you, Mr. Crosbie.
Ms. Brown. Maybe they can answer my time about how much
time does it take the GAO studies. You have done nine since
2000. I'm just wondering how much--we mandated it, so I just
wanted to know how much time it takes, what's the cost. You
don't have to tell me at this point.
Mr. Crosbie. I couldn't tell you at this point, but it is a
lot of work. Amtrak has a number of oversight agencies and GAO
is one of them. It is a lot of work to put it together, a lot
of time, especially given that Amtrak has gone to great extents
to try and reduce its work force in the last few years, so that
the people that might have been there that were able to just be
at the beck and call of these oversight agencies are no longer
there. The people that answer these reports are individuals
like myself, my staff, people that are running the railroad. It
is an enormous task for us at times with the requests.
Ms. Brown. Thank you.
Mr. LaTourette. Thank you very much for coming. Mr.
Oberstar had asked earlier to potentially submit additional
questions that may come up. We would appreciate your continued
courtesy in answering those if we send them to you.
Thank you all again, and we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:42 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Statement of the Honorable Corrine Brown, Subcommittee on Railroads
Hearing on--``Getting Acela Back on Track''--May 11, 2005--10:00 AM
I want to begin by thanking Chairman LaTourette for holding this
hearing to Get Acela Back on Track.
On April 15, during a routine inspection of an Acela Express train,
the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) discovered cracks in the
spokes of the train's brake discs. This led to an investigation of
brake discs on the entire Acela fleet. Among the 1,440 brake discs,
about half of the rotors have failed. As a result, Amtrak has been
forced to suspend Acela Express service.
Let me first congratulate Amtrak for being cautious and erring on
the safe side. I understand that while the FRA recommended that Amtrak
ground the fleet, it was Amtrak's discretion to do so. Too often, this
Subcommittee has investigated mechanical failures after an accident has
occurred and lives are taken. In this case, Amtrak did the right thing
and grounded the fleet before a catastrophe struck.
A few weeks ago, I attended a press conference on the Acela crisis,
and I just want to once again state how much I appreciate Amtrak and
Amtrak workers for stepping-up to the plate, I working hard to minimize
service disruptions, and address the needs of Amtrak passengers.
Amtrak has a lot to deal with. Since its inception in 2000,
Amtrak's Acela has been I plagued with a host of problems. First there
were problems with construction of the trainsets. Then the trainsets
were delivered late. In 2002, Amtrak was forced to ground the entire
Acela fleet because of cracks in the yaw damper brackets, which act as
a shock absorber to frames of power cars and locomotives maintained and
manufactured by the Consortium. According to Amtrak, the service
disruption cost the corporation a net $17 million in lost revenue.
Now the FRA has discovered cracks in half of the Acela brake discs,
and Amtrak is bound to lose even more revenue. The Acela is Amtrak's
most successful service. It generates about $300 million a year, enough
to cover its operating costs. In the end, Amtrak stands to lose
millions of dollars.
But Amtrak isn't at fault here. The Northeast Corridor Maintenance
Co., under the auspices of the Consortium, is responsible for
maintaining these trains--not Amtrak. The Consortium, however, never
discovered these cracks. I understand that there is evidence that the
Consortium should have been inspecting and replacing brake discs with
cracked spokes and hubs, but that never happened. In fact, a technical
manual and a separate service bulletin that were sent to the Consortium
both recommended routine inspection and replacement of cracked spokes
and hubs, but those recommendations were ignored and the Consortium
never updated its inspection, testing, and maintenance plan to reflect
the new inspection procedures. I fear that if the FRA inspector had not
found the cracks in those spokes, the Consortium would not have
identified the problem until it was too late--until a major accident
had occurred.
I believe--however devastating--the Acela crisis was a blessing in
disguise, and it should serve as a wake-up call for this
Administration. The Administration has proposed separating operations
from infrastructure in its so-called Amtrak reform plan. This crisis is
the perfect example of why that is a bad idea.
Here we have a private corporation, the Northeast Corridor
Maintenance Co., which is under the direction of the Bombardier-Alstom
Consortium, and separate from Amtrak, the train operator, that failed
to fulfill meaningful maintenance and inspection responsibilities. Just
look at the British experience with privatization and separation of
operations from infrastructure and maintenance to understand the
devastation such failures can cause.
In March, Chairman LaTourette and I traveled to Europe to look at
their rail network. We learned that Railtrack, Britain's former rail
infrastructure manager, had like Amtrak outsourced all of its
maintenance and engineering work. As a result, the condition of the
track deteriorated rapidly. Two fatal accidents in 1999 and 2000
revealed the extent of the deterioration and the company's poor
understanding of asset conditions, prompting what one observer
described as "a collective nervous breakdown of the entire British rail
industry." Thankfully, the British Government learned from their
mistakes. The Government took back control of their rail network, and
is now investing billions of dollars in infrastructure, maintenance,
and other improvements to get their trains back on track. Let's hope it
doesn't take a few fatal accidents to teach this Congress and this
Administration a lesson.
Going back to Amtrak's fiances, I am concerned about Amtrak's
outlook for the 2005. I heard estimates of what this will cost Amtrak--
from $10 million net per month to hundreds of millions of dollars in
total damages. I would appreciate it Mr. Crosbie told me whether Amtrak
has assessed liquidated damages, and to what extent Amtrak and the
Consortium have discussed legal liability associated with the brake
disk crisis.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses.
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