Norton Pressing Congress to Get Early Action on Administration's Transportation Safety Bill 11/16/09
Norton Pressing Congress to Get Early Action on Administration's Enforceable Transportation Safety Bill
November 16, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a co-sponsor of two subway safety and funding bills, said today that the Obama Administration's proposal for federal oversight of transit systems is "both welcome and necessary." The Congresswoman, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who has been working to pass two pending bills related to the June 22nd Metro collision, will be at the Highway and Transportation Committee hearing, entitled "Public Transit Safety: Examining the Federal Role," on Tues., Dec. 8, and she will press for the incorporation of the pending bills in the administration's proposal. Pending are a regional bill, the National Metro Safety Act, a bill to regulate subway safety and Norton's bill, H.R. 3975, the National Transportation Safety Board Interim Safety Recommendation Act of 2009 to allow the National transportation Safety Board to issue interim safety recommendations, when appropriate, when transit systems lack the funds needed to make the necessary repairs.
"If we are to get a transit safety bill passed this session, we will need the administration to weigh in early," Norton said. "The Congress has never been in the business of regulating transit and bus safety. While the Department of Transportation will have a broad idea, the June 22nd Metro tragedy tells us about what should be done to protect Metro, as well as, bus systems nationwide." Transit rail systems, where crashes would likely be most spectacular, have sprung up in the United States only in recent decades.
Norton said the government has now done much to encourage the development of rapid transit systems in order to alleviate congestion. "The federal government is way behind in its appropriate role to regulate public safety for the transit and bus systems many people use daily," she said. Airlines and railroads have been regulated for many years. Norton noted that not all transit systems are like Metro in crossing state lines, but their involvement in interstate commerce, for example, in purchases of subway cars, none of which have been shown to be crash-worthy, cannot be doubted. Seven of the nine people killed in the June Metro crash were D.C. residents. The collision has led NTSB to alert subway systems nationwide to possible flaws and to make recommendations, but no federal or local agency may compel compliance.