The American national well-being is dependent upon the provision of safe, efficient, and reliable public transportation. Every day, people use buses and trains to get to and from work, school, medical appointments, and to visit friends and family. Transit systems are a part of the fabric of our nation–weaving our urban and rural environments together and encouraging economic development. In calendar year 2014, public transit systems across the nation provided 10.7 billion trips–the highest annual ridership number in 58 years–with the number of trips exceeding 10 billion for the seventh year in a row. There is reason to believe that this is just the beginning of a sustained period of growing demand for public transportation as the population of elderly individuals who will become reliant on public transportation increases and as more young people move to urban areas to have greater access to transit options. To keep pace with growing demand, transit operators will need to balance competing priorities to expand service, while continuing to operate existing service, replace and maintain existing capital assets, and ensure that operations are safe for their employees and the riding public. Although transit is a relatively safe mode of travel, the statistical reality is that as transit ridership increases, data indicates that the total number of fatalities and serious accidents likely will also increase. For example, although transportation-related fatalities declined in the years 2002—2012 by approximately 25 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ (BTS) injury rates for transit modes have been trending upward since 2002.5 Now is the time to implement a new framework to support and complement the existing approach to public transportation safety, and to identify deficiencies and promote improvements in transit safety performance. The National Safety Plan will serve as FTA's key communication tool for this new safety approach. This Plan sets forth a proactive approach to safety risk management that is outcome-focused and emphasizes safety performance. Traditionally, the transit industry has made safety improvements reactively: a crash occurs, a cause is determined, and action is taken to mitigate those causes. SMS will focus on the use of data to anticipate future risks and detect problems before crashes occur. In other words, move to a more proactive risk management approach. SMS will support FTA and transit providers of varying sizes and operating environments in the development of a data-based framework for identifying and analysing safety hazards and risks, and prioritising resources toward the mitigation of those safety hazards and risks. Improving safety performance within the public transportation industry is a collaborative effort that requires participation from a number of partners at every level of the transit industry, including the Federal government, States, regional entities, local governmental authorities, tribal governments, and transit providers of all sizes in both cities and rural areas. Guided by FTA’s safety mission and vision, the National Safety Plan will guide the collective effort to manage safety risks within our Nation’s public transportation systems. FTA and the industry’s success will be based on delivering positive, measurable results, and ensuring the best use of available resources to identify safety hazards, analyse safety risks, and mitigate the potential of accidents occurring. This requires collection and sharing of safety data to build situational awareness and enable effective risk-informed decision making. In addition, safety risk management depends on noticing risk precursors such as training compliance or preventive maintenance compliance — not just objective information about risk probability and severity, but what these precursors tell us about safety and reliability, and the public interest that drives many decisions. FTA has a responsibility to help the industry transition into the new regulatory environment under the Public Transportation Safety Program. The National Safety Plan will be FTA’s primary tool for disseminating guidance, technical assistance, templates and other information to educate, inform and assist transit providers to improve their safety performance. This Plan is not a regulation. Although transit providers are required by law to set safety performance targets based on the measures in this Plan, FTA is not currently proposing to impose mandatory requirements on the transit industry through this Plan, but may do so in the future. Accordingly, FTA will publish future iterations of the Plan in the Federal Register for public notice and comment. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting