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As with all training, safety is most reliably achieved when labor and management work together in safety partnerships. It is only when frontline workers are engaged in a process where their real world experiences are heard, taken seriously and incorporated into applicable training that a culture shift toward a consistent safety culture is possible. The Center is committed to creating the safest environment for public transportation workers and the riding public and is dedicating the month of February to a series of articles focused on this important topic.
Safety Series Installment IV: Local Safety Practices that Work
Safety culture is not simply an abstract concept. It manifests itself and is reinforced through many concrete organizational practices. TCRP Report 174 has identified 24 such practices from a relatively small group of transit agencies. The table below provides a snapshot of these practices along the lines of key safety culture components. The full descriptions can be found in Chapter 7 of the report.
Several practices ranked particularly high based on expert panel review. For example, New Jersey Transit experimented with FRA's Confidential Close Call Reporting System along with three freight railroads a few years ago. The contractual agreement with its unions establishes the terms of the pilot project, including a labor-management peer review team and a senior management support team. The system improves safety conditions by allowing for non-punitive reporting and better data collection and analysis. It is based on employee involvement through action and intervention that strives to be just and informed. Through involvement of all stakeholders, these promising practices can be considered and implemented by other transit agencies, as appropriate for their local conditions, to remedy a deficiency in safety operations and help improve safety culture.
As we are wrapping up this series dedicated to transit safety culture, we'd like to hear from you. Does your agency have similar initiatives? What has your agency and/or local union done to cultivate a positive safety culture? How are employees involved and engaged in the safety process? Share your thoughts by emailing the Center at [email protected].
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If you're looking for the woman of your dreams, you might be better off riding SEPTA around town," declared PlanPhilly last month, when the Philly-focused design and planning news site reported their findings that the regional transit authority's female ridership stands at 64 percent - "a figure higher than New York, Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco, amongst others." This month, they've followed up with a noteworthy look at the agency's employees and came up with numbers of a different sort.
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Sometimes I get accused of being too bullish, or too optimistic, about the Class I railroad group. That looked to be the case last winter and spring, as service issues really called the "rail renaissance" concept into question. In my defense, I can be a harsh critic on the service front, as my shipper friends will allow - and I follow railroad capex trends closely. The only thing that can really disrupt the ongoing and powerful renaissance is execution: service, capacity, the Grand Bargain with shippers and safety.
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The media pays a lot more attention to bicycle and pedestrian fatalities than it does car deaths. If reporters went beyond sensationalism to give commuters more accurate, thorough information, people could make smarter choices about how to get around. One transportation myth the media often fuels is that driving is unusually safe. Car crashes are actually the nation's leading cause of death for school-age children.
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Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority said Monday, Feb. 23, 2015 it has restored normal service frequency to all branches and stations throughout its core subway and trolley system (the "T") in Greater Boston, including restoration of the hard-hit Mattapan Line. Restoration thus comes five days ahead of what MBTA had warned might be needed, following four successive winter snowstorms that have left Greater Boston with cumulative snowfall of 7 feet. While not all rail lines were fully disrupted, service frequency was hurt severely.
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VTA opened a new Innovation Center at our River Oaks headquarters on Feb. 18 as a space where VTA teams, companies, startups and students can develop, test and showcase new transportation technology. The technology displayed at the open house, like the innovation underway here at VTA, ranged from transit trip planning and biking to connected cars and security. VTA is looking at all kinds of ways to improve the transit customer experience, offer better transportation choices, and optimize our vehicles, roadways and other mobility infrastructure.
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DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx completed his four-day, five state bus tour at Washington, D.C.'s Union Station on Feb. 20, where he reiterated his appeal to Congress urging action on a long-term transportation bill and announced a proposed rule to increase the oversight responsibilities of State Safety Oversight Agencies (SSOAs).
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A dozen pieces of the electrified third rail pierced and lodged in the front car of a Metro-North commuter train as it slowed following the Feb. 3 collision with an SUV, federal investigators said in a new report Monday that detailed the moments before and after the fatal crash. The preliminary accident report from the National Transportation Safety Board also confirmed earlier conclusions that the train had slowed before the crash and that the SUV was thrust hundreds of feet along the track in the Westchester County community of Valhalla.
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BART will spend $5 million and two years to develop technology to protect workers from being hit by moving trains -- as occurred in 2013 when a train struck and killed two people. The transit district announced Tuesday that it received a $5 million federal grant to fund a pioneering safety system. Trains would be automatically stopped if employees working on tracks were in danger. Transit officials said the project would improve worker safety and also could enable BART to ask the state to relax restrictions that are making trains later on average.
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step toward saving lives in an earthquake as they met with about 20 businesses and government agencies that will get the first data from an earthquake early warning system. The technology is being tested in California, and now a similar test is starting in the Pacific Northwest. Sound Transit will receive the warnings, and might follow the lead of Bay Area Rapid Transit by developing a system that will slow light rail trains before the ground shakes to prevent derailment.
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The Supreme Court has been asked to take a case that could deal a crippling blow to the labor movement. Constitutional scholars sometimes like to commend courts for what they call "the passive virtues"-a reluctance to become involved in constitutional dispute, a reticence to announce new rules, a preference for standing by earlier decisions ("stare decisis"). Judges, too, like to cite what they call "the canon of constitutional avoidance," a set of rules designed to avoid unnecessary constitutional decisions. In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton promised that the new union's courts would have "have neither force nor will, but merely judgment."
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Building Transportation Infrastructure
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Want to know more about what Maryland's acting transportation secretary is thinking as he considers whether the state should build a $2.45 billion light-rail Purple Line? In his first sit-down interview Feb. 12, Pete K. Rahn told The Washington Post that he and his staff are reviewing whether a 16-mile transit line between Montgomery and Prince George's counties could be built for less money. (During the gubernatorial campaign, Rahn's new boss, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), called a Purple Line and a $2.9 billion Red Line planned for Baltimore too expensive.)
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