FTA to perform safety management inspection of WMATA rail and bus system

Written by Jenifer Nunez, assistant editor

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is conducting a safety management inspection of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's (WMATA) rail and bus transit system.

 

FTA says the purpose of the inspection is to help WMATA assess the strengths and weaknesses of the safety of operations and identify areas where the agency can further reduce risks and make other safety improvements. This is the second time FTA has undertaken a comprehensive evaluation of a transit agency’s safety operations utilizing its new safety regulatory authority established by the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21).

“Safety is a shared responsibility and our goal is to ensure that WMATA is living up to the expectation of the FTA and, perhaps most importantly, the expectations of the public,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “We will be vigilant and thorough in our safety inspection of WMATA and instruct the agency on how to close any gaps that we find.”

The safety management inspection is an opportunity for WMATA to test the effectiveness of a Safety Management System (SMS) approach and gather critical data to establish the agency’s safety risk profile. SMS focuses on organization-wide safety policy, proactive hazard management, strong safety communication between workers and management, targeted safety training,and clear responsibilities for critical safety activities.

“The FTA has an important role in transit safety under their expanded statutory authority and we welcome their participation as all of us—board, management, employees and other stakeholders—work to make WMATA an even safer system,” stated WMATA Board Chair Mort Downey. “A similar collaborative review with FTA in 2012 helped to document WMATA’s considerable progress in strengthening our safety capabilities and suggested areas of continued effort that we have followed through on since that time.”

The WMATA safety management inspection, scheduled to begin March 2, 2015, will entail three major activities that will help develop an SMS approach. This includes a SMS gap analysis, including SMS training across several levels of WMATA and a safety culture assessment survey for front-line personnel and supervisors; a rail safety inspection, whereby FTA will conduct an evaluation of WMATA’s rail operations and maintenance programs to acquire the safety information and data needed to support meaningful analysis of safety risks and a bus safety assessment, conducted in a similar manner to the rail safety assessment.

At the conclusion of the inspection, FTA and WMATA will summarize the results of this safety management inspection and develop a roadmap to help WMATA build a mature and effective SMS process.

Concurrent to the safety management inspection, FTA is also conducting a State Safety Oversight audit of the Tri-State Oversight Committee and its oversight of WMATA. FTA will issue a final report later this year.

 

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