Even how we hail a cab. We have opportunities to dramatically reduce Public Safety, address infrastructure problems in creative new ways. The federal government can be a key player in helping to advance and utilize the developing technologies. Lets take a look at safety. While trafficrelated fatalities injuries continue to decline, over 30,000 people each year still die on our highways. We continue to see trains that derail too frequently. Putting enormous burdens on our first responders. In the face of these challenges we have got to understand the opportunity that comes with technology and improving our transportation system. Our country has already invested billions in interstate highways, bridges, rails and ports. Technology can help us to get more out of what weve already built. Today, there are exciting marketready proving solutions to make our roads safer. From automatic breaking, dispensers and even Autonomous Cars and drones. Advancements in taking control of a vehicle if it drifts out of their lane, with stopped traffic ahead. Technology with enable a smartphone using realtime information to suggest to a driver the best time to hit the road for a commute or family trip or direct the driver to the nearest available onstreet parking place, something we need in washington. Harnessing the technology will not only save time and fuel, it will reduce Traffic Congestion for everybody on the road. Something that drivers in my state and the northeast know all too well. It can improve the efficiency of our rail and port facilities. It is critical how we plan for the future and make the best use of these technologies. I look forward to hearing from our Witnesses Today and about how the federal government can help existing businesses thrive. How the federal government can be a worldwide leader, help us to be a worldwide leader innovation, an advance not saw in transformative innovation. Thank you. Thank you, senator booker. I would like to welcome our first panel of Witnesses Today. We have ms. Susan alt, the Senior Vice President of public affairs. Vice president of Global Public policy amazon, mr. Gregory fox, executive Vice President of operations, bnsf railway and mr. Michael christianson, Senior Executive lead supply chain. Chairman fisher, Ranking Member booker and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today to talk about new Transportation Technologies and how to improve the safety and efficiency in our network. And the role that the federal government plays in either facilitating or hindering that development. The volvo group is the world leader in sustainable transportations. We build stuff that makes the roads and we build stuff that uses the roads. In the u. S. We produce heavy trucks. Volvo construction equipment, marine engines and novo transit buses. We have more than 12,000 u. S. Employees with nine manufacturing facilities in six states. And our goal is zero accidents. We learned a comment today from a heavy duty trucking implement. Buyers of heavy duty trucks today can have technology that keep the drivers and others safer. Things like warning departure systems, or braking. But on the drivers, we see tests to vehicle and v to eye technologies. Messages for v to v and eye applications are sent on the 5. 9 g gigahertz radio system. In 1999 the government got it right when it set aside and protected this frequency for only safetyrelated communications. But in 2013, the fcc also proposed to support wifi users. Proposals have been provided, but no consensus reached. The concern is that it could create a lag or latency in saving lifesaving communication signals. So let me clarify. Lets say vehicle number one is approaching an investigation with a green light. But the view is blocked by a building. Using the application, the driver in vehicle number one can be alerted to the oncoming vehicle number two that is not slowing down. And it will allow the collision to be avoided. If there is in latency, for example, wifi user watching the video the accident likely would not be avoided. So until a solution is found for spectrum sheering, we want it to remain dedicated for safetyrelated applications only. An example of vehicle to infrastructure is the roadside weight and inspection stations where trucks stop along the interstate to wait in long lines that can create potential hazards. The volvo grip has already demonstrated Technology Using v to eye communications, protocols from the truck to the weigh station that allows moving trucks to wirelessly communicate to the station. Such as if the weight is below the limit or the driver is wearing a seat belt it keeps those trucks moving and allows authorities to focus on the condition of other trucks that have not been validated in a program we call trust to trust. Let me emphasis the talk of the town, Automated Technology or autonomous vehicles, using the technology. We think the area is very interesting but caution our pace and implementation will be set how safely it can be adapted to the vehicle, to the infrastructure and society. Platooning is one example of Automated Technology. This is where there is a lead or pilot truck, wirelessly linked to a truck following behind it. Providing for Transportation Technology or path are in the process of implementing a twotruck demonstration at slow speeds that will be extended to three trucks in 2016. Fullscale demonstration has yielded 10 fuel efficient gains because of the reduced air drag. Were developing technologies because of the potential to enhance safety and increased productivity. Increasing the speed of adoption where the technologies could be achieved if we eliminated 12 federal excise taxes added to the new truck and offsets the added fuel tax. Another challenge is the product rolls across state lines. Different states are developing different regulations to promote autonomous testing. With uncertain funding for the u. S. Transportation surface transportation system, adoption of these new technologies will allow us to move increasing amount of freight for a growing population. But it wouldnt solve all of our passenger problems and it doesnt let congress off the hook to do its job in providing federal funding and passing a longterm surface transportation bill. Thank you for the opportunity to testify to you today. I look forward to questions. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, madam chair, thank you for having me. They began selling on line 20 years ago in july 1995. Our challenge was to create a new form of warehousing where truckloads of pallets of greats would be stored. We would ship brown boxes via carriers directly to customers. Thus we developed pallet in, box out. At first the sales through our website were only at retail. But now Third Party Sellers are only responsible for the sales sold through amazon. And many use our services to warehouse and fulfill orders to their goods. So now we receive not just pallets of goods, we also receive orders waiting for the customers to replace the goods. In some offices they now support box in and box out. Last december, Time Magazine produced a video illustrating this process. And thank you, madam chair for showing it here today. It begins deep inside a truck trailer, parked at the loading dock at one of our warehouses, looking backwards as the trailer door is opened. There is sound for this. There we go. Thank you. After we receive an item it is stored, waiting for a customer order. Those orange things are robots. They move shelves to up to 750 pounds. Once a customer orders an item it is retrieved and sent for packing. And then it is loaded on a truck for shipping. While we continue to improve the efficiency of operations within our facilities we also developed and invested in an efficient way to handle offboxes at the u. S. Federal service. Rather than giving a stack of boxes we developed a center that produced groups of boxes all going to roughly the same location. This method benefits the usps by letting it make better use of its facilities without incurring the cost of the additional capacity. Of course we and our partners and ultimately our customers need government to keep up by providing adequate funding, innovative policies and balanced regulation. Thank you for inviting me to testify. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, mr. Fox, welcome. Thank you very much for the opportunity. My name is greg fox. Im the executive Vice President of operations for bnsf railway. What i want to do today is walk through bnsf to show how technology is improving our efficiency and networking. It is a large western railroad, over 32,000 miles and over 47,000 employees. My team runs with the railroad. And in my 31 years at the railroad, i have seen improved safety. In 2013, we achieved the best ever safety results. You can see the trend that we achieved over the last decade. Technology has clearly played a role in the success. While the technology is the focus of todays hearing, the investment in Rail Infrastructure and the inconclusiinclusive safety. They invested significant amounts of this type of capital into our network to contribute to Safety Operations as well as to ensure the reliability of our network for our customers. This is the largest component of our 6 billion of capital spend in 2015. The nations rail operations are basically 140,000 mile outdoor production line. This scope and complexity means that infrastructure and equipment sometimes fails or that human error can occur. Because of this, bnsf focuses on a risked based initiative for all aspects of our operations. This shows the measures and countermeasures that we put in place. There are complicated processes as well as technology. While youre very familiar with the implementation of positive train control i would now like to share a brief video that illustrates the numerous other inspections and technologies that we deploy on the railroad. These vehicles utilize electronic and operations. Where the relationships of the rails at one point are over a distance. The detection systems that detect the internal rail defects. Temperature detectors that use infrared technology to identify the Barrel Technology and the Machine Systems that inspect the cars for defects and passing trains. Now, deploying Unmanned Aircraft systems for supplemental bridge, track and a variety of conditions. Also earlier this year we were one of three Companies Awarded the Pathfinder Program status for faa extended range track integrity flights. The dot has been a valuable partner for advancing our safety program. All of these technologies as you might expect generate a tremendous amount of inspection data. Leveraging this data through advanced analytics is where were headed next. Bnsf is currently working on an advantaged initiative to take the information we already use to detect safety standard deviations to understanding what caused them in the first place. Our goal is to drive proactive maintenance practices that ultimately prevent derailments from occurring. Well walking through one to learn how to use the advanced safety. You saw the equipment in the videos earlier. Bnsf currently has two trackside detectors located along our 32,000 mile network. They continually monitor the Overall Health of passing trains, using a combination of thermal, vision and other technologies. Today, these systems identified defective equipment and actions to address these actions. Our goal is to move to a more proactive preventive type of response. We go from alarms to really understanding composite alarms that tell us when a combination of factors that are combined in such a way to monitor equipment health, over geography and across railroads and ultimately assist in extending asset life, improve will capacity and safety. As you can see, the current breadth of technology and the potential here is tremendous as long as we have a Regulatory Framework that encourages innovation. The technologies and the advanced analytics themselves are very complex and evolving at a very fast pace. This means that the regulatory focus should be on the safety outcomes they focus on producing. One of the most significant Things Congress can do for us is ensure that we have the right Regulatory Framework for railroads. If it does, it will continue to Deploy Technology in support of Risk Reduction and invest adequately in maintenance renew al. Thank you for allowing me to testify today. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, mr. Fox. Mr. Christensen, welcome. Madam chair man, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. Technology will help us address the unprecedented challenges that are facing our industry which i believe are as revolutionary as advent of containerization was years ago. Big ships and ocean carrier lineses are game changers. Ill spend the next few minutes talking about specific technologies and strategies that were implementing to meet these challenges. Modernizing our infrastructure is the first strategy. No port in the United States is investing more than the port of long beach in our 4 billion Capitol Improvement program. 1. 3 billion Middle Harbor term knoll is the port of the future. Its the greenest, most sustainable container cargo terminal in the United States that can accommodate the worlds biggest, greenest ships up to 22,000 20foot equivalents or teus. Middle harbor will strengthen our ability to compete against canada and mexico for the trade that sends cargo to every Congressional District in the United States and supports a million and a half american jobs. The terminal this terminal by itself would be the fourth largest port in the nation. And it will boost the capacity for the port of long beach by 20 . Long shore jobs at the terminal will also be modernized and will shift to technical occupations with long shore labor actually increasing over current levels when the terminal reaches full capacity. Now, these advanced technologies will help improve efficiency and help reduce air pollution, but they will also demand a great deal more electricity. So how will we deal with this increased demand for reliable electric power . The answer is our Energy Island initiative. The technologydriven strategy for transitioning energy at the port to resilient and sustainable selfgeneration systems and Renewable Power sources. So ive talked about the infrastructure or lets call it the hardware strategy. But what the software . Well, it will not be possible to meet the challenges we face without changing the way the port operates. We have joined our neighbor, the port of los angeles, in a Federal Maritime Commission sanctioned joint Port Initiative that will be aimed at enhancing the velocity and the reliability of shipments that come through the San Pedro Bay gateway. And were making progress on this active with the active involvement of stakeholders, which include the full range of benefit cardinal owners, ocean carriers, Marine Terminal operators, licensed Motor Carriers that take it to the destination, chassis, railroad partners, labor and management. Now, a few things have already come out of this joint Port Initiative. The supply chain optimization will largely be data driven. The current highly proprietary and silo supply chain suffers from an in adequate data sharing. San pedro bay port authorities are examining new roles to gather, filter and distribute reliable data to the benefit of the entire supply chain. Promising entrepreneurial software is also appearing and holding great potential. One example is a software called cargomatic. It operates on a smartphone. It is an uberlike operation. It is being used as a pilot study in San Pedro Bay. They move containers to inland port as much as as taxi driver would move passengers from an airport. U. S. Department of transportations freight advanced traveler Information System or fratis is showing great promise in transferring information in realtime between Marine Terminals and trucking operations. So stay tuned for much more that will be coming from this joint Port Initiative. In conclusion, our supply chain optimization efforts are all heavily relying on technology in order to meet our objectives of not only good but world class velocity and reliability. As local public agencies, san bead row bay ports are shifting from traditional landlord role to one of active supply chain participant. We hope to see the federal Government Support us in this new role by engaging with us and in setting effective Goods Movement policy that recognizes the value of sea ports and by creating infrastructure and Energy Funding that support the land and the water Side Investments required to accommodate much needed growth in International Trade. We look forward to worki