mister gardner, your testimony please. >> thank you. i appreciate the opportunity to be here this afternoon and the subcommittee setting aside time to focus on railroad safety. i am stephen gardner, i am very proud to be here on behalf of the 20,000 amtrak employees across our network. as you know, this is been a challenging year for amtrak as we faced a series of accidents, including the two you mentioned in your opening statement. these incidents have weighed heavily and raised concerns internally and externally about the safety of the company and passenger rail, generally. i am here to share with you we are tackling these concerns. amtrak had already begun to implement a number of strategies to improve safety prior to these incidents, we have expanded these efforts and strengthened our policies, training and operations to ensure they reflect the highest degree of safety. leading this effort is our new chief safety officer who was devoting himself to learning from the recent incidents and putting in place new safeguards for our custome