Incorporating Security into the Transportation Planning Process (2005)

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44 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS This chapter presents the conclusions of this study regard- ing the incorporation of security in the metropolitan/local and statewide transportation planning processes. The following findings and recommendations address the current state of the transportation planning process and suggest what may be needed to encourage a more aggressive planning process that considers security as a comparable element of this process. The conclusions contain the challenges and opportunities to move this process forward. KEY FINDINGS • The framework for transportation planning at the metropolitan/local and statewide levels, as defined by federal funding legislation, includes security as one of the key elements of this process, linked to safety. How- ever, the definitions of security and safety are not clearly established in federal guidance on planning. These pre- cise definitions need to be established within the metro- politan or state planning processes. • The many metropolitan/local and state transportation planning efforts and plans (TIPs and STIPs) reviewed during this study reflect a growing consideration of such factors as safety, congestion management, economic development, neighborhood preservation, public involve- ment, social justice, sustainability, historic preservation, smart growth, and funding. In contrast, security consid- erations in metropolitan/local transportation planning are slowly evolving and are most evident in projects involving operational systems and equipment, particu- larly ITS for highway networks and video monitoring and surveillance systems for public transit facilities and vehicles. • Safety has been a factor in developing metropolitan/local and statewide transportation plans for almost 40 years, with public recognition of safety issues, the effective- ness of recent safety-enhancement efforts at the state and local levels, and emphasis and funding placed on this issue in federal funding legislation. • Security is not yet a major factor in the transportation infrastructure concept-development or planning phases for most metropolitan/local areas, except as it relates to personal or property security from criminal activity (per- sonal attacks, vandalism, graffiti, etc.). • Where security considerations have been included in metropolitan/local transportation planning, the cost of the planning process has increased as a result of the increase in technical considerations and number of stakeholders that must be involved in the process. • Security enhancement as a major consideration for trans- portation infrastructure is more recent, sporadic, and intangible to the public and many public agencies at the state and local levels of government, including those responsible for long-term transportation infrastructure planning. The public also perceives national security as essentially a federal responsibility. • Considering security in planning for transportation infrastructure has been deferred by the initial emphasis placed on operations-related considerations, such as emergency preparedness, mitigation, and response in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as reflected by the federal government’s program and funding initiatives to date. • Changes to local transportation planning processes to address additional issue areas are difficult unless there is local interest, a sense of responsibility, and institutional commitment. Making changes can be greatly facilitated by the provision of additional dedicated federal funding to support these efforts, since metropolitan/local and state transportation agencies worry about diverting avail- able funds from projects already judged as high priority using established criteria. In the absence of local inter- est, dedicated federal funding can promote a national objective of enhanced homeland security. • The longer the time span between terrorist attacks, the less likely that the transportation planning process will be significantly changed over the long-term due to the potential of a terrorist attack, as demonstrated by the Portland metropolitan area case study. • Where changes in the transportation planning process are made (as in San Francisco), the likely implications include the following: – Greater interagency coordination and communication in plan development, including emergency response agencies; – Changes in facility location, design, operations, and justification to promote increased prevention, protec- tion, redundancy, and recovery;

45 – Increased redundancy in the regional multimodal transportation system through increased capacity, alternative modes, and network connectivity; and – Changes in program goals, databases, analytical tools and systems, decisionmaking processes, organiza- tional arrangements, and spending priorities (between capital and operating, short-term and long-term, and security and the many other transportation prioritiza- tion criteria). • Key limiting factors to be considered when seeking to incorporate security into the transportation planning process include the following: – Uncertainty regarding what is security and how it might affect the local region, – Higher perceived relevance and visibility of safety, – Unavailability of security data, – Open accessibility of transportation systems, – Multitude of metropolitan/local area stakeholders, – Lack of security performance measures, and – Need to safeguard sensitive information. This last point runs contrary to the openness of the transportation planning processes in this country. It will be a major challenge for transportation planning agencies to retain a collaborative and transparent plan- ning process while protecting security-sensitive infor- mation and selected products of the planning process. • A number of local factors emerged from the four case studies that appear to significantly influence how met- ropolitan/local planning processes are likely to change to accommodate the nation’s heightened sensitivity to security issues and threats. These factors include the following: – The history of emergencies in a region, particularly terrorist attacks (New York City) and natural disas- ters (San Francisco) promotes including protection and prevention projects in TIPs/STIPs and promotes greater intergovernmental and interagency coordina- tion and communication mechanisms. – The development of federal transportation planning requirements in distinguishing security as a compo- nent of safety and linking security considerations to federal funding eligibility for TIP/STIP approved proj- ects will provide a strong impetus for incorporating security in the transportation planning process. – The relative proximity of the region to places where terrorist attacks have occurred (New York City and Washington, D.C.) or where likely terrorist targets are located (San Francisco) affects the degree to which security considerations are included in the local plan- ning processes. – The core values of the regional population have a sig- nificant bearing on whether the region’s planning processes will take a broad (Portland) or strict (Wash- ington, D.C.) interpretation of federal regulations regarding the incorporation of security in the region’s transportation planning process. The interpretation is affected by the proximity of the region to the source of these regulations and the ideological orientation of the local populace and decisionmakers. – The extent to which the local transportation planning process is considered to be highly successful and a best practice example from a local perspective can reduce the potential for changing the process to accommodate issues perceived to be less relevant to the region (Portland). – The linkage of security preparedness with emergency preparedness related to more imminent disasters (earth- quakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and high-rise fires) provides a stronger impetus for incorporating security into metropolitan/local transportation plan- ning processes (San Francisco and Portland). – The multiplicity of jurisdictions in a metropolitan area poses a significant challenge to developing uni- fied and integrated security preparedness capabilities, which include infrastructure planning for prevention and protection and operational coordination of response and recovery. MPOs were established to aid this pro- cess and have been given increasing responsibilities and authority over regional planning and transportation project approval. The more successful and respected the local MPO, the more effective are its planning processes, which will ultimately impact the region’s ability to successfully incorporate security into its transportation planning processes. RECOMMENDATIONS • A more concerted effort needs to occur at all levels of government and industry within a state or metropolitan area to develop a consensus on what elements of security incident prevention and consequence mitigation can and should be incorporated into each state and metropolitan area’s transportation planning processes. Instead of pro- mulgating national standards, this effort needs to be part of a holistic approach to statewide or area-specific secu- rity issues that arise during the life-cycle development and operation of transportation infrastructure. The results should be based on the perceived level of threat, impor- tance and vulnerability of area-specific transportation assets, availability of resources, and institutional envi- ronment. All this should be done without revealing sen- sitive security threat or vulnerability information, unless specific clearance is obtained. • The incorporation of safety into the traditional trans- portation planning process is a useful model for encour- aging consideration of security issues as well. Linking the two elements is a first step. However, the nature of security issues and the strategies to address them need to be incorporated as distinct elements for developing both TIPs and STIPs.

• MPOs should plan and support modifications to facili- ties and operations that provide long-term recovery after an attack, such as providing traveler information, tem- porary and permanent re-routing of services, and recon- struction. MPOs are well positioned to incorporate long- term strategies to help prevent and facilitate recovery from security incidents. • Security needs to be an on-going consideration by all levels of the government and the private sector needs to be included in transportation planning processes, in terms of facility features, operations, and management. Key actions that MPOs can take in response to potential security threats and incidents include providing improved facility designs that prevent large scale destruction and surveillance, monitoring, and sensing technologies to deter terrorists (51). • Key security elements for incorporation in the trans- portation planning process include the following: – Security definition; – Relationship to public health and safety, as well as to private productivity and continuity; – Goal development; – Transportation asset identification; – Security risk assessment, including potential bottle- necks or choke points, by transportation asset; – Probability assessment of incident attempt by trans- portation asset; – Vulnerability assessment by transportation asset; – Damage assessment (including direct and indirect, short-term and long-term) by transportation asset; – Risk/consequence trade-off analysis of potential strate- gies, based on the probability of terrorist attacks occur- ring, the severity of the consequences of such attacks, and the impact value of proposed strategies for miti- gating the likelihood and consequences of terrorist attacks; – Coordinated planning and prioritization of security- enhancement projects, both short-term and long- term; and – Project funding and programming, with involvement of both public and private sector stakeholders. • To ensure appropriate consideration of security in the metropolitan/local and statewide transportation plan- ning processes, the following elements are needed: – Recognition of security as a specific component of the process to preserve the reliability, robustness, and resiliency of the transportation infrastructure system and maintain essential services to preserve a sense of confidence in the transportation system and the capability/resiliency of the region to survive ter- rorist attacks and continue to function effectively. – Linkage of security to other major disaster threats that are more apparent and imminent to improve the sup- port for security projects and leverage their cost- effectiveness. 46 – Involvement and input from all stakeholders in the transportation planning process, including those with security responsibilities. – Establishment of security goals and performance mea- sures and standards to track the effectiveness of cap- ital projects that promote improved security from terrorist attack and other major disasters, such as earth- quakes, landslides, flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, and high-rise fires. – Development and integration of information sys- tems and analytical tools to determine transportation infrastructure vulnerability, assess the risk of attack, develop effective countermeasures (both design and operations-related); and prioritize alternative projects for providing a more secure transportation system within resource limits. Such projects may include the following: ■ Providing network and multimodal redundancies, particularly at known choke points such as bridges, tunnels, major interchanges, and major intermodal terminals, to facilitate the free movement of goods and people in the event of critical link closures due to a terrorist attack. ■ Adding corridor capacity (such as the Route 66 example described in the Washington, D.C., met- ropolitan area case study). ■ Increasing movement of emergency vehicles and accessibility to medical facilities. ■ Providing countermeasures to protect critical assets, such as intermodal facilities, bridges, tunnels, and so forth. ■ Expanding ITS applications such as surveillance and information dissemination. ■ Sizing the public transit fleet to accommodate emer- gency evacuation and provide contingency move- ment during potential fuel shortages. ■ Providing traffic control centers and related facil- ities to enable communication and coordination between transportation and emergency services providers (4). – Development of decisionmaker understanding and sensitivity to security issues associated with transpor- tation infrastructure and planning staff capabilities and resources to incorporate security considerations into the transportation planning process in a mean- ingful way (52). – Federal, state, and regional agencies must determine the level of resources, both financial and human, to be devoted to security considerations in developing and implementing transportation infrastructure planning and delivery. This determination should be based on a careful assessment of the following: ■ Extent of critical transportation assets within the region and their susceptibility to attack;

■ Probability that a successful attack will be launched against the region’s critical transportation assets; ■ Direct and indirect consequences of losing criti- cal transportation assets on the regional and state economy; ■ Availability of dedicated funding to address the most critical projects to safeguard critical trans- portation assets, provide alternative capacity, and protect the economic vitality of the region from ter- rorist attack (4). • Promotion of security considerations in the transportation planning process should follow the guidelines set out by the report of the President’s commission on protecting critical infrastructure assets, which states the following: States should further facilitate coordinated planning and preparedness for critical infrastructure and key asset pro- tection, applying unified criteria for determining criticality, prioritizing protection investments, and exercising prepared- ness within their jurisdictions. (15) CONCLUSIONS This study has sought to identify (1) the status of state and metropolitan/local area transportation planning processes relative to the consideration of security issues and incorpo- ration of security enhancement strategies and (2) the best practices among key states and metropolitan/local areas to incorporate security into the transportation planning process. What the study found is that security has not yet been effec- tively incorporated into the transportation planning process of major state and metropolitan/local areas as it relates to transportation infrastructure, despite the availability of numer- ous technical resources available from federal agencies, as noted in the introduction to this report. Limited efforts have been made to include ITS-related items related to the highway mode and surveillance and monitoring equipment related to the public transit mode. However, the current status of secu- rity planning for transportation infrastructure at the state and metropolitan/local area level is undeveloped, because of con- fusion over what is security, the distinction between security and safety, the recent nature of this issue, the indefinable and unexpected nature of terrorist threats, the absence of funding specifically dedicated for security-enhancement projects, and 47 the perceived competition for funding from other critical transportation program and project needs. With very limited progress having been made to include security in the transportation planning process to date, too few examples were identified to form the basis for determin- ing best practices at this time. However, most metropolitan/ local planning organizations are seeking greater guidance to define security issues, concerns, and strategies; identify spe- cific funding for security-enhancement projects; and obtain technical support to better understand and advance the pro- cess. They are also suggesting that the very nature of the long-term transportation planning process requires a number of years to develop and change, geared to the 6-year cycle of fed- eral transportation funding programs. Another concern is the conflict between the openness of the state and metropolitan/ local area transportation planning process and the need to keep confidential certain sensitive results of the process when security issues are included. When taken together, these factors suggest it will be a long and varied process to include security in the state and metropolitan/local transportation planning process in any meaningful way, and there will be a significant cost to achieve widespread compliance. The Administration’s pro- posed reauthorization bill (SAFETEA) addresses many of the issues and needs identified by this study. Whatever final form the approved reauthorization bill takes will likely pro- vide significant guidance and funding authorization to greatly encourage security-specific planning, programs, and projects at the local and state levels. There are numerous federal documents and tools available to metropolitan/local and state transportation planning agen- cies to make their transportation planning programs more security-enabled. However, there is little evidence that these available resources are known to or used by state or metro- politan/local planning agencies in their transportation plan- ning processes. Using these and other tools is important to having state and metropolitan/local planning organizations incorporate security considerations in their TIP-development processes. Certainly federal support, guidance, and funding will greatly facilitate the local adoption and adapting of best practice processes and tools from other types of organizations more experienced with security-related capital planning to achieve security-enhanced metropolitan/local transportation systems.