DOT PREPARES TO CREATE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY AGENCY

DOT PREPARES TO CREATE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY AGENCY    The U.S. Transportation Department is ready to start building a new agency under its jurisdiction to focus on multimodal transportation security concerns of the country.
   The transportation security agency should be operational in six months and could include up to 30,000 employees at its height, said Michael P. Jackson, the Bush administration’s deputy secretary of transportation, during TransComp 2001 in Charlotte, N.C.
   Setting up the agency will require plenty of “brains and bodies” to cover upcoming security programs for ocean, rail, air and trucking modes of transport, Jackson said.
   Some industry executives believe that setting up this type of agency in the federal government won’t be easy and will require lots of training quickly. There is already a problem, some industry executives say, with individual agencies asking carriers and ports about their security programs. Down the road, industry executives are concerned that too much security could slow the flow of legitimate trade.
   “We’re urging the United States to talk to us,” said a Northern European port executive. “We have practices in place that already work.”