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Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
The nation's air, land, and marine transportation systems are
designed for accessibility and efficiency, two characteristics that
make them vulnerable to attack. The focus of chapter 1 is how best
to implement and finance a system of deterrence, protection, and
response that effectively reduces the possibility and consequences
of terrorist attacks without unduly interfering with travel,
commerce, and civil liberties. Almost every conversation about
surface transportation finance begins with a two-part question:
What are the "needs" of the national transportation system, and how
does the nation pay for them? Chapter 2 is aimed almost entirely at
discussing the "how to pay for them" question. On 4 December 2015,
President Barack Obama signed the Fixing America's Surface
Transportation Act (FAST Act; P.L. 114-94). As reported in chapter
3, the act authorised spending on federal highway and public
transportation programs, surface transportation safety and research
activities, and rail programs for five years to 30 September 2020.
Despite significant investments in public transportation at the
federal, state, and local levels, transit ridership has fallen in
many of the top 50 transit markets. If strong gains in the New York
area are excluded, ridership nationally declined by 7% over the
past decade. Chapter 4 examines the implications for federal
transit policy of the current weakness and possible future changes
in transit ridership. Congress created the Railroad Rehabilitation
and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program to offer long-term,
low-cost loans to railroad operators, with particular attention to
small freight railroads, to help them finance improvements to
infrastructure and investments in equipment. This program is
discussed in chapter 5. The Department of Transportation's (DOT)
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Federal Transit
Administration (FTA) carry out different approaches to rail safety
oversight. FRA has a more centralised safety oversight program for
railroads, while FTA's program for oversight of rail transit safety
largely relies on state safety agencies to monitor and enforce rail
transit safety, as established in federal statute. Chapter 6
examines (1) key characteristics of FRA's and FTA's rail safety
oversight programs and (2) strengths and limitations of FRA's and
FTA's rail safety oversight programs. Research sponsored by the
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has identified driver
behaviour as the main cause of highway-rail grade crossing crashes
and that factors such as train and traffic volume can contribute to
the risk of a crash. Chapter 7 examines: (1) the focus of FRA's
grade-crossing-safety research, (2) how states select and implement
grade-crossing projects and what data are available from FRA to
inform their decisions, and (3) the challenges states reported in
implementing and assessing projects and the extent to which FHWA
assesses the program's effectiveness.
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