Coast Guard

Vessel traffic service systems--typically a central monitoring location and an array of remote surveillance sensors, such as radar and closed circuit television cameras--can be used to help monitor vessel traffic to avoid collisions, groundings, and mishaps. The Coast Guard's plans for establishing, expanding, and improving vessel traffic service systems, as indicated by its fiscal year 1993 budget request, are consistent with the Transportation Department's 1992 Port Needs Study, which prioritized the need for such systems in various U.S. ports and channels. Ninety-one percent of the $26.8 million requested for vessel traffic service systems in fiscal year 1993 is earmarked for ports that the study considered a priority. The Coast Guard is using a cost-benefit approach to determine the specific areas within the chosen ports to be monitored by the systems. The Coast Guard plans, once it has selected the areas, to design systems that take into account specific operating needs and likely weather conditions.

GAO found that the Coast Guard: (1) developed VTS plans consistent with the study's recommendation; (2) earmarked 91 percent of the $26.8 million requested for fiscal year (FY) 1993 for VTS systems for the seven top-priority ports that the study identified; (3) estimated it would cost $145 million through FY 2001 to establish or improve VTS systems in 23 ports and improve existing VTS systems in other ports; (4) received only $9 million for FY 1993 for its VTS program, but it did not significantly alter its VTS plans; (5) expected to have VTS systems in all the ports by 2001, plus upgrade equipment in other areas with new VTS technology; (6) budgeted $35 million between FY 1989 and FY 1993 for expanding, improving or reestablishing five VTS systems, and $2.5 million of its FY 1993 budget for program completion; (7) used a cost/benefit analysis to select VTS monitoring stations within ports, and solicited opinions from local Coast Guard personnel and mariners on the most accident prone areas of the ports; and (8) set a possible zero-accident rate as the VTS systems' performance goal.