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Arnold Howitt on Transportation Security

Transportation security has become a high priority for government officials since 9/11, but only a small portion of funding has gone toward increased protection of the nation's surface transportation system - particularly highways, buses, and other transit vehicles. Arnold Howitt, executive director of the Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government, examines the factors involved in these decisions in a new study, 'On the Ground: Protecting America's Roads and Transit Against Terrorism.'

Q: How has the government prioritized its transportation security operations since 9/11?

Howitt: Given the circumstances of September 11th, it's not too surprising that our focus has primarily been on air transportation. We created the Transportation Security Administration, and we've taken a number of steps to improve airport security. A second priority has been ports and maritime activities. There have been increased patrols in harbors and around the perimeters of facilities. We've tried to figure out what's in shipping containers. There's been far less attention paid, however, to surface transportation - highways, bus systems, subway systems, and rail. These are quite important but we haven't really focused very much on them.

Q: Are the nation's rail systems and bus corridors susceptible to terrorist attacks?

Howitt: I think we're quite vulnerable. Worldwide, there have been many attacks on transit facilities: in 2004, there were horrific attacks in Moscow against the subway system and in Madrid against a railroad station. Terrorists have long found transit systems or major infrastructure a target that is very inviting because they can both terrorize the population - people taking these systems feel quite vulnerable - and they can also cause economic damage.

In the U.S. we're quite vulnerable because we have a very large system. We have about 160,000 miles of interstate highway and other major roads, about 3.8 million miles of roads in the country overall. There are 600,000 bridges and tunnels and the government has identified about 500 of these as playing key economic or traffic handling roles, and therefore they are potential terrorist targets. People in the U.S. take about 9 billion transit trips a year on buses and subways; 70 percent of those are in the 30 largest systems in cities around the country. So we have a tremendous amount of activity in transit and road systems and rail that makes them vulnerable.

A second factor beyond scale is that the system is very open and accessible. This is extremely important because a lot of the benefits that flow from transportation - the access and mobility that people have to live their lives, and the economic functions of roads and transit systems - flow from the system's openness and accessibility. But this also creates a tremendous amount of vulnerability, which leads us to a potentially big tradeoff: if we restrict accessibility and openness, then we limit the benefits we can get from that system. But, on the other hand, improving security may well require some of those changes.

I think the implication of this is that we're actually quite vulnerable on surface transportation. This country has been lucky in some sense that terrorists have not turned their attention to it, but suicide bombers who choose to target transportation vehicles with passengers could cause a lot of casualties and create a great deal of fear. And bombs and other devices that were aimed at economic damage could also do a great deal of harm.

Q: Around the time of 9/11 there was concern about bridges, like the Golden Gate Bridge. Is this something that has fallen off the radar screen?

Howitt: I think the government is quite worried about major infrastructure facilities and there have been a number of studies and plans done about this, but these are difficult facilities to protect. You could have guards stationed at facilities like the Golden Gate Bridge, but their effectiveness would not be total, and it's very expensive to maintain this kind of surveillance.

Q: How could road and transit systems be better protected and what are some of the policy recommendations that would tie-in?

Howitt: We've taken some steps already. I've mentioned that there have been a number of studies and plans developed. We've done a good deal of training of officials, particularly in transit systems, and we've begun to think about ways that we might be able to do a better job of protecting. But I think that there are a number of obstacles as well that need to be overcome and I think that it's in these areas that recommendations are important.

The first is that the financing system for improvements in transportation security has some difficulties. On the one hand, we have some very large grant programs that pump out more than 25 billion dollars a year to states and localities for improvements in transportation facilities. But none of this is earmarked for security purposes and the traditional constituencies and agencies that divide up this money and decide how it will be applied at the state level and then at the metropolitan level have generally been oriented towards the traditional transportation uses and much less for security. In fact, they've been sitting back and waiting to see whether the federal government will pass special programs giving them additional money to use for security. There's been a bit of this, particularly for transit systems, but for the most part money has not been specially appropriated to pay for surface transportation security improvements. So, on the one hand, you have a reluctance to use the traditional funding sources for surface transportation security and, on the other hand, you have a failure at the federal level to pass special bills that would give more funds specifically for this purpose.

Another issue that I think needs attention is the trade-off between accessibility and security. As I mentioned earlier, many of the benefits that flow from our system result from the openness and the highly networked nature of our transportation system. This also creates tremendous vulnerabilities. If we were to restrict surface transportation in somewhat of the way we've done the airline system, we would impose tremendous economic costs and inconveniences and probably the loss of mobility and accessibility on our population. And yet one might imagine if there were a very serious terrorist attack that Congress might be motivated in that kind of situation to mandate certain kinds of restrictions, particularly on big city systems. We probably would be much better off to pay attention to that now when the pressure isn't on us to make decisions immediately in response to an awful event, to think through where some of those improvements to security might come with a minimum loss of economic and social function of the transportation system.

The federal government could also play an important role in technology assessment. Many of the improvements to be made - either physically, though infrastructure systems or through the use of electronic surveillance or through other forms of surveillance systems - involve technology that is extremely expensive and where there are a lot of vendors out there who are trying to sell state and local governments systems. The states and localities have a limited ability to evaluate these in an intensive way and there's a problem across jurisdictions of standardization and cost effectiveness. There'd be a lot of benefit for the federal government to take a larger role in assessing technology, describing for states and localities what the benefits and drawbacks of these systems are, thinking about cost effectiveness, and perhaps encouraging with recommendations the adoption of specific systems.

Finally I think we need to look at the issue of emergency preparedness. Subway systems have traditionally done this and highway systems to some degree. We've intensified the amount of training that we do and the amount of exercising, but there's still a good deal of work to be done to integrate our emergency response systems and get them ready for the possibility of a disaster on the highway or a major transit system.

Reporters:

Please contact 617-495-1115 to arrange an interview with Arnold Howitt.