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Video Surveillance Uses by Rail Transit Agencies (2011)

Chapter: CHAPTER ONE Introduction

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Suggested Citation:"CHAPTER ONE Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Video Surveillance Uses by Rail Transit Agencies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14564.
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Suggested Citation:"CHAPTER ONE Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Video Surveillance Uses by Rail Transit Agencies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14564.
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Suggested Citation:"CHAPTER ONE Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Video Surveillance Uses by Rail Transit Agencies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14564.
×
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Suggested Citation:"CHAPTER ONE Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Video Surveillance Uses by Rail Transit Agencies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14564.
×
Page 10
Page 11
Suggested Citation:"CHAPTER ONE Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Video Surveillance Uses by Rail Transit Agencies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14564.
×
Page 11

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

5 targeted transit systems around the world, individual tran- sit providers are responsible for the safety and security of patrons, employees, stations, and vehicles. In the event of rail systems, this concern extends to their rights-of-way (ROWs), which throughout this synthesis rely on the U.S.DOT’s Fed- eral Railroad Administration (FRA) definition of the path- way on which a train travels and that any piece of equipment or person within 25 ft of the track is considered to be in the ROW. Although transit agencies may receive assistance from all levels of government, starting with their cities or coun- ties and also including federal assistance primarily from either the U.S.DOT’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA) or from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the primary responsibility for securing each of these transit sys- tems rests with the individual transit agencies. Commuter rail agencies, which are regulated by the FRA rather than by the FTA, are also eligible for a number of safety and secu- rity grants as well as for funds under the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Highway-Rail Crossing Program. The job is huge. In 2000, mass transit systems provided more than 9 billion passenger trips and employed more than 350,000 people; by 2002, about 14 million people in the United States relied on mass transit each workday. More recently, in 2009, estimates were that public transit accounted for more than 10.2 billion trips annually (Guerrero 2005, p. 5; Stelter April 5, 2010). The complexity of providing security for passenger rail transit goes beyond the often-discussed need for transit agencies to balance security with concerns about accessibil- ity, convenience, and affordability. The decision to use pub- lic transit in most parts of the United States is discretionary; only in highly urbanized areas such as New York; Philadel- phia; Boston; Washington, DC; Chicago; San Francisco; and Los Angeles are highway and street congestion sufficiently dense and parking costs sufficiently high to discourage the use of personal automobiles by most commuters and by occasional patrons traveling to recreational or cultural activ- ities. Although this is changing in many areas, where the travel time from home to work has begun to impact the use of automobiles, in most parts of the nation rail transit agen- cies continue to compete for riders with private automobiles. A number of factors affect transit usage. Although the cost of gasoline and concerns with pollution are factors some CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Transit systems in North America, as elsewhere around the world, are faced with law enforcement and crime preven- tion issues that many rarely thought about two decades ago. In the 1980s and 1990s, transit systems, particularly those in large cities, saw their major law enforcement problems as containing growing numbers of homeless persons who turned stations into encampments and often rode equipment endlessly when they had nowhere else to go. Systems were also concerned with graffiti, which symbolized to patrons that transit agencies which were unable to keep their stations and railcars clean were also unlikely to be able to keep the patrons safe. As graffiti was literally wiped clean from those stations and railcars, “scratchiti,” which involved etching rather than spray painting onto surfaces, presented a newer variation of an old problem. Transit agencies addressed these issues locally. Larger agencies turned to law enforcement solutions, increasing patrols in stations, on vehicles, and in rail yards. They also relied on emerging crime prevention through environmen- tal design (CPTED) principles, lighting and fencing, and electronic video surveillance to monitor physical property. Smaller systems relied on less labor-intensive or less costly solutions; a few were able to deter rowdy youths and loiterers by following simple steps such as re-arranging furnishings to create fewer private, unobservable spaces within their waiting areas or by playing classical music, which seemed to discour- age noisy teenagers from staying any longer than necessary. Solutions could be tailored to meet local needs because transit agencies are local entities. In contrast to other coun- tries but similar to most public services in the United States, transit providers are numerous and operate independently of one another. The number of systems throughout the coun- try has grown within the past two decades, primarily owing to city or regional governments deciding to wean residents away from car-dependency and onto mass transit as part of their attempts at traffic management and air pollution con- trol. These efforts have resulted in development of a number of new light rail transit systems (LRTs) throughout the coun- try but especially in parts of the west and the south. Today, more than 6,000 agencies are responsible for bus, rail, ferry, and other transit modes (Guerrero 2002, p. 5). At a time of heightened concerns over safety and security, driven in large measure by international terrorists who have

6 Not mentioned in the report but adding to the complex- ity are the widely varying methods of securing and policing public transit. These methods are as different as the systems themselves. Methods range from virtually no staff assigned solely to security to large, full-service police departments. Although many transit police agencies are concerned about publicizing the sizes of their staffs, this information is often available on their websites, in local news stories, or in tes- timony by chiefs before various local, state, and federal oversight agencies. All figures in the synthesis for agency staffing and for funds obtained from various outside sources are from published materials or were provided to the authors by the agencies. Among the largest full-service transit police agencies are New York–Connecticut’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), with more than 600 officers, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s (PANY&NJ) police staff of more than 2,000 (most of which are not assigned to passenger rail but with specialized department resources available as needed). Transit police departments of this size are rare. Amtrak, the national passenger rail agency, has about 500 police officers, while the New Jersey Transit (NJT) police department, responsible for rail and bus transit throughout the state, has about 250. Others agencies, including those that responded to this survey, have about 200 officers, although some, again including survey participants, are considerably smaller, including agencies selected as case study participants. A number of agencies contract with local police or county sheriffs’ offices to provide patrol services and sometimes also investigations of past crimes. The amount of control the tran- sit agency has over these officers differs depending on the actual wording of their contracts with the police agencies or with local custom. Generally in these arrangements the tran- sit agency receives specialized services in addition to patrol, such as emergency response to accidents or incidents, and use of, for instance, evidence or bomb technicians as needed. Other agencies employ no or very few persons with police authority but either employ or contract for security personnel who work solely for that transit agency. In some jurisdictions these security officers may be armed, in oth- ers they do not carry firearms. Again depending on agency needs or local licensing regulations, these security offi- cers may have some level of police authority or they may be authorized solely to act as “eyes and ears,” calling for local police as needed. One case study agency, the Altamont Commuter Express (ACE) in California, has no dedicated police or security officers of its own. It relies on the local police departments whose jurisdictions it travels through, the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) on whose tracks it trav- els, and the Amtrak police, with which it shares several sta- tions, for its law enforcement. consider, this concern competes with riders’ other percep- tions. Many, for instance, are concerned with limited service during non peak periods. The consistency with which transit agencies in less densely populated areas offer some variation of an emergency ride home program indicates their recogni- tion of the concern by patrons that using mass transit rather than traveling in their private vehicles limits their freedom if their regular travel schedule is for some reason interrupted. The conventional wisdom states that a controlled access system in public transit even remotely similar to today’s airport travel experience will discourage patronage. There are also concerns about the costs of instituting such con- trols. The few experiments around the country that tested airport-like passenger and baggage checks were just that— tests—which generally reinforced the incompatibility of such systems with the culture and infrastructure of pub- lic transit. A major finding of a lengthy study of passenger screening concluded that: “Screening 100 percent of urban mass transit passengers is not a realistic security option” and that “[t]he human resources required, added security costs, and delays would destroy urban mass transit” (Jen- kins and Butterworth 2007, p. 5). Various combinations of either selective or random baggage inspections and targeted but brief interviews of patrons add uncertainty and may deter those with evil intentions. Although they provide a measure of risk reduction to an agency and its patrons, they are not realistic long-range solutions to safeguarding open systems with multiple access points. Technological and sci- entific advances may at some time in the future alter this determination. But because transit systems need to develop risk reduction and security solutions that are more immedi- ately available, electronic video surveillance systems have become the preferred technology. No one likes to mention dollar values when lives may be at stake. Amid all the discussions of safeguarding surface transportation systems, one government survey of ten large transit agencies noted that their top three safety and secu- rity funding priorities were communication systems, video surveillance equipment, and additional training. Based on estimates developed by eight of the ten, the cost of those improved measures for just those eight systems totaled $711 million (Guerrero 2002, pp. 9–10). The total for all agencies would be in the billions of dollars. The logistics of instituting such controls are equally over- whelming. The sheer number of independent transit systems makes any form of centralized control, even by the federal government, unlikely. As aptly pointed out by a report pre- pared by White House staff, “surface transportation modes differ significantly based on size, location, ownership, capacity measures, and redundancy of operations,” lead- ing to challenges in prioritizing assets and systems (Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment 2010, p. 15).

7 This synthesis is not a review of policing configurations within the transit industry. Yet information assembled on decision-making on where to install or how to make use of electronic video surveillance equipment and technology often was influenced by how an agency set up its police or security department, even though decisions on surveillance technology and its uses are rarely made by only one tran- sit agency department. Generally a committee that involves police/security, safety, risk management, rail operations, information technology (IT), and grant-writing specialists ensures that many internal stakeholders are invested in the final decision. Internal staff may also be augmented by con- sultants, especially for the initial installation of an electronic video surveillance system or when it is part of an extension to the existing transit system. Anticipating that different agencies might put their video surveillance systems to different uses, the study located and queried 58 U.S. heavy, commuter, and light rail passenger transit agencies. Some agencies had been in existence for many decades, some were relatively new, and some had not yet entered revenue service. Many of the agencies are mul- timodal; the synthesis questionnaire focused on only the rail modes under the systems’ control. Some of the newer agencies have had video surveillance in their stations, park- ing lots, and onboard vehicles since their inception, whereas older agencies are faced with the challenge of retrofitting stations that were not designed with video in mind. Forty- three agencies completed the questionnaires, a response rate of about 73%. Five agencies offered their programs as case studies to document different aspects of the roles that video surveillance can play in an overall security or risk manage- ment program. Because of the high response rate reflect- ing such a wide range of agencies, the synthesis provides a unique perspective. Its focus is not solely on homeland security concerns or on large, urban agencies with their own police departments. Nor is it solely on crime control; the role of video surveillance in risk management and in monitor- ing employee work sites is also considered, because terror- ist threats cannot be separated from other concerns facing transit agencies. In the area of crime control, any concerns an agency may have over being a terrorist target will overlap with concerns about criminal acts. In addition, terrorism concerns are not the same for all agencies. Not all facilities are equally attractive to terror- ist groups. The attractiveness of a particular target may be based on a facility’s financial value or its symbolic value, and may include the effect its disruption or destruction will have on the local economy, or on creating fear and disrup- tion at the local, regional, national, or even international level. International terrorists, for instance, are likely to want to cause multiple deaths and injuries, and therefore are most likely to strike where patrons will be the victims and where maximum press coverage will be obtained. Domestic terror- ists and activist groups are generally less eager to kill and more interested in bringing publicity to their cause, which may make the transit system itself the more attractive target. For instance, causing trains to run late by mass trespassing on the light rail tracks or creating a noisy disturbance in front of or in a station will more likely suit the purposes of a community action group than would destroying a sta- tion or derailing a train. These groups are unlikely to want to cause numerous deaths or to put the transit system out of operation for days or weeks or longer. However, interna- tional and domestic terrorist groups share the need to enter onto the system to evaluate where they want to place any deadly devices or to cause their nonlethal commotions. The role of electronic video surveillance in these instances is to alert those protecting the system of suspicious persons or activities, whether terrorists or nonterrorist potential crimi- nals (whose behavior is more likely to involve planning a robbery, theft, or act of vandalism). Stations are not the only areas of vulnerability for a tran- sit system. Employee areas, equipment yards and storage areas, electrical or traction power substations or junction boxes, the overhead contact system, and the ROW itself are targets for thieves, vandals, or terrorists. In such incidents, particularly if terrorism is not suspected, vulnerability to safety hazards play as important a role in decision-making as do security issues. In addition to concerns over stationary facilities, transit agencies need to prevent injury and criminal activity on their moving targets: the railcars. Agencies have also begun to consider what role electronic video surveillance might play in addressing the vulnerability of ROWs, where the diffi- culty of locating perpetrators of violence was illustrated by the as-yet-unsolved derailment of Amtrak’s Sunset Limited in Hyder, Arizona, on October 9, 1995. PROJECT BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES This synthesis investigates the implementation and use of electronic video surveillance by passenger rail transit agen- cies to protect patrons, employees, railcars, and infrastruc- ture. It describes the current state of practice, including what is being surveilled; whether systems are monitored regularly and, if so, by whom; whether the images have been used in criminal or civil prosecutions; and whether the surveil- lance systems have resulted in fewer claims of injury or loss. Funding sources are also explored. The objectives can be summarized as follows: • To provide a brief history of the use of electronic video surveillance technology by transit systems in the United States and internationally. • To describe the current use of surveillance technology by passenger rail transit agencies, including heavy rail, commuter rail, light rail, and monorail and funicu-

8 lar systems, by examining where the technology is employed, including in stations, onboard vehicles, and along ROWs. • To examine agencies’ experiences on how successful the technology is for crime/vandalism prevention; fare collection/dispute mediation; other complaint resolu- tion; accident investigation; employee monitoring, or other uses. • To summarize findings on a number of relevant legal issues, including archiving of and employee access to images/records, whether patrons are notified of the presence of surveillance, and policies for public access to images/records. • To summarize funding sources for surveillance systems. The synthesis draws on the findings of earlier TCRP syn- theses, particularly Synthesis 38 (Maier and Malone 2001) and Synthesis 80 (Nakanishi 2009) as well as Improving Transit Security (Needle and Cobb 1997) and Guidelines for the Effective Use of Uniformed Transit Police and Security Personnel (Interactive Elements Inc. 1997). However, the study differs substantially from these earlier works because it focuses solely on passenger rail transit agencies and it describes uses of surveillance technologies beyond crime and terrorism. Similar to the other studies, though, a major focus of this synthesis is to provide transit agencies with a current snapshot of how passenger rail systems use surveil- lance systems and to help agencies decide how and where to employ this expanding technology. METHODOLOGY AND SCOPE The following methods were employed to achieve the mul- tiple aims of the synthesis: • Reviewing articles in academic and popular jour- nals and government and transit-specific studies and reports. The most relevant can be found in the litera- ture review. • Investigating the introduction of video surveillance as a law enforcement tool in transit systems and its cur- rent uses in such noncriminal enforcement areas as claims adjustment, risk assessment and management, employee safety, and integrity control. • Developing, distributing, and analyzing the results of a questionnaire survey sent to 58 U.S. passenger rail transit agencies of varying sizes and modes. • Conducting case studies. Literature Review The literature review of relevant materials includes articles in academic journals and in popular magazines written for law enforcement/security, safety, risk management, and IT professionals. It includes a variety of government reports and studies undertaken on behalf of an array of agencies. Technical materials published by surveillance system ven- dors were reviewed, as were media announcements from a variety of transit agencies that are upgrading their video surveillance systems. In recognition of the growing atten- tion being paid to video analytics (often termed “smart” or “intelligent” video), articles in this area were also reviewed. The literature review is presented as an annotated bibliog- raphy following the conclusion, chapter six. It summarizes the publications and documents that seemed most relevant to synthesis readers and that were readily available online or from the publishers. Questionnaire Survey A survey questionnaire was developed and sent to 58 agen- cies, including established rail systems and those operating for only a few years or about to enter revenue service. The systems, a number of which are multimodal, varied widely in size and scope relating to numbers of passengers and numbers of railcars and stations. (Appendixes A and B contain a copy of the questionnaire and a list of the responding agencies.) Questionnaires were sent primarily to police/security and/or safety directors by means of a group email from TRB. Subsequent emails were sent individually by the proj- ect’s authors. Throughout the questionnaire phase, names of recipients were updated as information was received from the transit systems to ensure a maximum level of partici- pation. Eliminating duplications where questionnaires were sent to an agency’s security manager as well as to the local police who patrol the system resulted in a total population of 58 individual agencies; responses were received from 43, resulting in a response rate of 73%. The percentage of respondents is well in excess of the acceptable range and reflects the largest collection of data solely from passenger rail agencies on issues pertaining to the use of electronic video surveillance. REPORT ORGANIZATION Following the summary, chapter one introduces the project and its objectives and explains its methodology, scope, and organization. Chapter two provides a history of the use of video surveillance in transit operations, its role in crime pre- vention and detection, and its role in risk management and internal control systems. Chapters three and four are based on the questionnaire responses; chapter three documents how systems are employing video surveillance, and chapter four discusses administrative considerations that make up a coherent video surveillance policy, as well as describing funding sources for purchasing and upgrading existing sys- tems. Chapter five contains case studies of how individual agencies are using their video surveillance systems. Finally,

9 chapter six provides conclusions based on the findings of the case studies and questionnaire responses, and presents items for further research. These chapters are followed by references, an annotated bibliography, and appendixes that include the survey questionnaire and a list of participating transit agencies.

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TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 90: Video Surveillance Uses by Rail Transit Agencies explores the current use of electronic video surveillance technology solely by passenger rail agencies onboard railcars, along rights-of-way, and more.

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