This article analyzes possible terrorist attacks on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach using a radiological dispersal device (RDD, also known as a "dirty bomb") to shut down port operations and cause substantial economic and psychological impacts. The analysis is an exploratory investigation of a combination of several risk analysis tools, including scenario generation and pruning, project risk analysis, direct consequence modeling, and indirect economic impact assessment. We examined 36 attack scenarios and reduced them to two plausible or likely scenarios using qualitative judgments. For these two scenarios, we conducted a project risk analysis to understand the tasks terrorists need to perform to carry out the attacks and to determine the likelihood of the project's success. The consequences of a successful attack are described in terms of a radiological plume model and resulting human health and economic impacts. Initial findings suggest that the chances of a successful dirty bomb attack are about 10-40% and that high radiological doses are confined to a relatively small area, limiting health effects to tens or at most hundreds of latent cancers, even with a major release. However, the economic consequences from a shutdown of the harbors due to the contamination could result in significant losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including the decontamination costs and the indirect economic impacts due to the port shutdown. The implications for countering a dirty bomb attack, including the protection of the radiological sources and intercepting an ongoing dirty bomb attack are discussed.

A risk and economic analysis of dirty bomb attacks on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

Toward Socially Sustainable Urban Transportation: Progress and Potentials

The Senate's equal representation of states shapes coalition building in distributive politics. The great variation in state population means that some states have far greater need for federal funds than others, but all senators have equal voting weight. As a result, even though all senators' votes are of equal value to the coalition builder, they are not of equal “price.” Coalition builders can include benefits for small states at considerably less expense to program budgets than comparable benefits for more populous states. Building on formal models of coalition building, two hypotheses are developed and tested. First, coalition builders will seek out less costly members to build supportive coalitions efficiently. Second, the final outcomes of distributive policy will more closely reflect the preferences of small-state senators than large-state senators. The hypotheses are tested by examining the 1991 and 1997–98 reauthorizations of federal surface transportation programs. The findings support both hypotheses.

Senate Representation and Coalition Building in Distributive Politics

Belief that transportation investment and operations have caused environmental damage in poor and minority communities to benefit the more affluent has prompted planning agencies to craft policies aimed at promoting environmental justice. Yet, we have only scattered evidence about the distribution of the costs and benefits derived from transportation policy, investment, and planning. This article creates a framework based in distributive justice for categorizing the existing research into cost-based and benefit-based claims of injustice. The authors go on to synthesize the cost-based research, which measures the distribution of pollution and hazards from transportation. From this survey, myriad research opportunities emerge.

Environmental Injustice and Transportation: The Claims and the Evidence

Few environmental justice studies of air pollution have examined the adverse health implications of exposure to transportation-related emissions or used statistical techniques that are appropriate for spatial data. This article addresses these gaps by examining the distribution of cancer and respiratory risks from inhalation exposure to vehicular emissions of hazardous air pollutants in the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Statistical Area, Florida. This study advances quantitative environmental justice research by (a) focusing on mobile source air pollution instead of major point sources; (b) examining the health risks of disproportionate exposure; (c) including transportation disadvantaged individuals, in addition to minority and low-income residents; and (d) using multiple regression models that account for spatial dependence. Data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1999 National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment are utilized to estimate lifetime cancer and respiratory health risks from on-road vehicles f...

Automobiles, Air Toxics, and Adverse Health Risks: Environmental Inequities in Tampa Bay, Florida

On June 9, 1998, Association for Community Transportation (ACT) scored a major victory when President Clinton signed into law the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. Known as TEA-21, this sweeping legislation completely changes the way employers will be able to provide commute benefits to their employees, and opens the doors to greater accessibility to TDM programs nationwide. The article provides highlights of the major provisions of TEA-21.

S Crane

Papers

Transportation equity act for the 21st century (tea 21)