Hearing on "Transit in the 21st Century: Successes and Challenges."

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before the Senate Banking Committee today.

I have made arrangements with Committee Staff to show a brief video tape that has been prepared that highlights some of the recent Olympic transit experience.

I have been in Washington for a week attending our trade association’s annual meetings and visiting with key congressional members and staff on the Hill. Everywhere I go people have been anxious to hear about our very successful Olympic experience. I like to call it our "Two Week Camelot Transit Experience". I am extremely proud of the great work of all of the individuals involved in the planning and execution of our transit operations for the 2002 Winter Olympics Games.

Mr. Chairman, we had more than 700 buses from 24 states, 29 Light Rail Cars from Dallas and over 1000 driver/operators from 47 states, including Hawaii. These 1000 drivers were senior operators, and were literally "the best of the best" from around the country and a key reason for our overall effectiveness.

There are 5 major points I would like to make regarding our involvement in the Olympics:

1. We had excellent planning and took advantage of the lead-time we had—preparing for the logistics of the Olympics. We had the support of many different organizations from around the country. I would especially like to single out, Dave Huber, our Director of Operations who was on loan to the Salt Lake Olympic Committee for two years who designed and helped execute a magnificent transit plan.
2. Communications: The Utah Transit Authority, the Utah Department of Transportation and the Salt Lake Olympic Committee worked together as one during the whole process. We had a state of the art Nextel phone radio system where we could communicate with each other, with the One Thousand out of town operators and deal with transit issues as they arose.
3. We empowered people to be able to make decisions: We assigned location captains and staff to separate locations around Salt Lake City and empowered them to make decisions on the spot in the field. For example, a lower level UTA employee could out rank me on a park and ride lot that they controlled.
4. We had experienced, high quality operators as I have previously mentioned who could handle surprises without difficulty. Remarkably, we had only 2 minor accidents during this period of time.
5. Lastly, we were able to receive the bus and light rail equipment in time to check out each vehicle to make sure it could handle the altitude and was reliable transportation.

We moved over four million people during the Olympics. On our peak day, Mr. Chairman, our light rail system carried an incredible 144,000 people.

There were public opinion surveys taken during the Olympics. They revealed that 92% of the visitors and local residents thought transportation was going better than expected and 94% said that they had a good to excellent experience.

We had no serious security problems but were prepared to handle them if they had occurred.

In summary, there was a USA Today article and quote that summarizes some of the pride we feel in Utah today. The article stated, referring to Utah: "The little city that could, did!"

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement and I am happy to respond to any questions that the Committee may have for me.

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