[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 19163-19164]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         TRANSPORTATION SAFETY

  Mr. TORRICELLI. Madam President, I am sensitive to the desire of 
Members of the Senate to avoid extraneous issues in this debate. The 
need for airline security is self-evident. The failure of confidence in 
our Nation's airlines is having a devastating economic impact on the 
country and its economy.
  I am certain Members of the Senate will understand that to those I 
represent, indeed to millions of other Americans around the country, 
railroad or bus or other modes of transportation safety are not only 
not extraneous, they are central. Three hundred thousand residents of 
New York and New Jersey cross the Hudson and East Rivers every day to 
their homes and places of business. Indeed, a significant multiple of 
the number of people who fly on airplanes every day is on these 
commuter trains. I cannot suggest to them that somehow their lives or 
their fortunes are less important than those who are on airplanes.
  It appears to me the debate in the Senate to concentrate exclusively 
on airplane safety is based on the assumption that terrorists will 
accommodate us by choosing the same means, employing the same strategy 
to strike our country that they used previously. Why is it that I doubt 
they will be so accommodating?
  There is nothing about an airplane that somehow makes it more 
vulnerable than a bus or a train or, for that matter, a powerplant or a 
reservoir. But as this legislation is focused on transportation and the 
assurance of safety and security, it must, therefore, by necessity, 
include other modes of transportation, particularly when those other 
modes are utilized by millions and millions of Americans and where the 
exposure to potential danger is so enormous.
  I will use for illustration simply those that are utilized by my own 
State of New Jersey because I know them so well. I suspect the 
arguments I will share with the Senate could be made by the Senators 
from California or Massachusetts or Illinois or Florida, Missouri, or a 
host of other States that have large metropolitan areas.
  In Penn Station in New York, through which hundreds, thousands of New 
Jersey residents travel every week, there are six tunnels that began 
construction in 1911. The four tunnels under the East River and those 
under the Hudson are 2\1/2\ miles long. As I suggested, they 
accommodate 300,000 people.
  In August the State of New York, by a strange coincidence, issued a 
public report which concluded the tunnels are ``woefully inadequate to 
deal with a major fire, accident, terrorist attack or other emergency 
situation.''
  The report went on to explain that the tunnels lack escape routes for 
the up to 2,000 people who can ride on a single commuter or Amtrak 
train. They are without anything but the most basic of ventilation and 
do not even have standing water pipes which today would be required in 
even the most modest of such facilities under current construction 
rules.
  The chart on my left illustrates for a major tunnel that can 
accommodate up to 2 trains and can have 2,000 people on every train, 
the kind of ventilation that is used is small, singular fans. If there 
were for some reason a fire on this train because of a terrorist act, 
it would not begin to be adequate to help the escaping passengers.
  The second chart illustrates something even more troublesome: For the 
2\1/2\-mile tunnel under the Hudson River, accommodating tens of 
thousands of commuters every day, a single spiral staircase through 
which 2,000 people would have to climb 90 feet while firefighters were 
using it as the only entrance to get to a burning train. It would not 
happen. Indeed, they would be lost.
  The greatest illustration of this is that the published plans of the 
fire department call for using a locomotive to tow the burning train 
out of the tunnels with passengers on board. It is assumed they could 
not exit.
  I use New York and New Jersey as the illustration. Were I to speak 
about train access from southern New Jersey to Philadelphia, I could 
make the same arguments. There would be the same vulnerability; only 
the numbers would be lower. Indeed, I could also make the same 
arguments about the Baltimore tunnels, built in 1877, tunnels for which 
150-mile-per-hour trains must now slow to 30 miles per hour to 
traverse.
  I could be talking about Washington, DC, itself, where the tunnels 
along Union Station by the Supreme Court annex, carrying 50 to 60 
trains a day, were constructed with the safety designs of 1907.
  In response to these concerns and those of Chicago and San Francisco 
and St. Louis and a host of other cities, Amtrak has proposed a 
multibillion-dollar security and safety plan.
  First, $471 million for additional police, bomb-sniffing canine 
units, and bomb detection systems for luggage. It is essential to get 
to even the minimum standards we are now using for the airlines.
  Second, $1 billion for the structural and safety improvements that I 
just outlined in tunnels across the Nation.
  Third, $1 billion in capacity enhancements to rail, bridges, and 
switching stations, which are necessary to support the massive increase 
in ridership that rails are now receiving across the country.
  The daily Acela Express in the Northeast alone has had an increase in 
ridership of 40 percent to 50 percent per day. It cannot be 
accommodated as people move from airlines that are not

[[Page 19164]]

operating at full capacity, to trains that are now operating beyond 
capacity.
  For example, Amtrak has had to add 608 seats on 18 Metroliners and 
Acela trains just to accommodate this demand between Boston, New York, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington alone.
  Madam President, like my colleagues, I understand our obligation to 
the Nation's airlines. They are the backbone of our economy. We owe it 
to the American people to put an armed Federal marshal on every 
airplane that flies in this country. We dare do no less. I believe the 
necessity of federalizing the check-in and inspection system is now 
manifest. It is also clear to me that in every aspect of air 
transportation, the need for security needs to be enormously enhanced. 
But it would not be responsible--indeed, I could not in good faith 
represent my constituents in New Jersey--to not simultaneously demand 
that all other modes of transportation receive equal protection. To 
protect our aircraft and leave vulnerable targets on other major 
transportation that carry not as many people but more people, not with 
the same degree of vulnerability but potentially greater vulnerability, 
would not be right. It would not be defendable, and I could not explain 
it to the people of New Jersey, who have already lost 2,000 or 3,000 
people from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. We refuse 
to lose yet another citizen, and I refuse to have another citizen of 
New Jersey live in vulnerability such as those who lost their lives on 
September 11.
  I want my colleagues to know--and indeed I put them on notice--that 
we will insist that this Senate deal with the broader issue of 
transportation security in this country.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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