Providing Safe & Secure Transportation: Ensuring America's Emergency Response

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America's public transportation systems play a critical role in assuring the safety and security of our families and communities.

• Safe transportation. Bus and rail systems provide a consistently safe mode
  of travel.
  
• Secure systems. To keep their systems secure in today’s world, transit agencies have made increased investments in security.
  
• Strategic role. Transit systems regularly perform a variety of lifesaving services
  in local and regional emergency response efforts.

Providing Safe and Secure Transportation; Ensuring America's Emergency Response

Americans enjoy safe and secure public transportation systems. Bus and rail transit services offer widespread availability, affordability, convenience, reliability and ease of access. Now confronting unprecedented threats, transit systems today are meeting the challenge of strengthening levels of service while maintaining systems that are open and easily accessible.

On September 11, 2001, public transportation in New York City, New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and throughout the country helped to safely evacuate citizens from center cities. Similarly, buses have played a major role in response to a full range of disasters, including road, rail and air transport accidents; natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods and fires; and chemical, radiological and
other industrial releases.

Public Transportation’s Mandate: Meeting Today’s Priorities

When Americans face either natural or man-made disasters, America’s public transportation systems provide comfort, safety, security and rescue, no matter what the threat.

A Record of Safe Travel

The risks of fatality and injury on public transportation are far lower than in an automobile. According to the National Safety Council, the chance of a fatality in a passenger car is 79 times greater than on a transit bus. 1 In addition, travel in private motor vehicles generates a high toll in incapacitation, injury and monetary costs. Overall, transit passengers are much safer than motorists, and residents of more transit-oriented regions experience still lower fatality rates, which tend to decline as transit ridership increases. 2

Applying tough equipment standards, thorough system maintenance and proven operating practices, transit agencies make the safe transport of their customers their priority and mandate. While the bus makes its rounds, computer-controlled diagnostics identify any problems before service is affected. Programs such as system safety plans, safety management audits, standards development programs and peer review panels are only a few of the ways in which APTA works with bus and rail systems to maintain and enhance safety practices. And the transit safety record attests to the success of these efforts.

Prepared to Respond

The interstate highway system was begun by President Eisenhower in 1956 as a national defense program. Today, public transportation also provides a significant component of our national defense, and is a fundamental element in responding to community emergencies. Transit systems often provide the only opportunity to avoid or flee potentially catastrophic events, and regularly serve as and/or give critical support to first responders by delivering emergency equipment and supplies, ferrying emergency response personnel and controlling access to and from disaster sites.

Time after time, public transportation’s contribution during a crisis has proven critical in saving lives and property from unthinkable consequences.

• On August 28, 2005, actions by the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority helped evacuate residents from homes, schools and businesses upon detection of a chemical leak from a rail tanker.

• Transit systems in Texas, Florida and other Atlantic and Gulf Coast states provide critical evacuation during hurricanes and flooding. 3

• San Francisco Bay-area ferries have provided alternative access during six separate incidents in the last 23 years. 4

• Across the nation buses are used as heated or air- conditioned shelters and treatment centers for emergency workers at the sites of fires or hazardous materials incidents. 5

• On and following 9/11: In New York City and rural Pennsylvania alike, transit buses shuttled police, fire and construction workers to emergency sites; trains, buses and water transit evacuated many times their normal daily ridership from Lower Manhattan and in Washington, D.C.; and New Jersey's Hoboken Terminal housed three medical triage operations and a decontamination center.

• Also on 9/11: In Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and many other communities unscheduled services provided safe routes out of downtowns where buildings were evacuated and businesses closed; and in Little Rock, Portland, Denver and Kansas City transit agencies operating in traffic-free zones helped take stranded airline passengers to hotels and special shelters. 6

Immediately following 9/11, APTA was supported by the Federal Transit Administration through a two-year grant that enabled the creation of the Public Transit Information Sharing Analysis Center (ISAC), a highly successful security intelligence communications system. As of the publication of this brochure, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had not indicated that it would support the continuation of ISAC, thereby causing APTA to look to other systems to fulfill ISAC’s role.

Investing in Strategic Support Systems

Like the national defense system and our communications, energy and power networks, our transit systems are complex. They require built-in redundancy to assure that there is backup capacity to meet the most severe potential threats or breakdowns. Our nation’s roadway systems function more effectively because we are expanding state-of-the-art public transportation options that provide the redundancy to guarantee the safe, secure and reliable flow of people and commerce, despite threats that may arise.

The Need to Invest in Transit Security

New and innovative policies, strategies and partnerships… dedicated leadership and employee commitment… critical investments in new technologies and training. Our transit agencies are working hard to meet the challenge to remain safe and secure. Investments have been made in chemical/gas detection systems and programs. Modern communications and fleet management technologies, including Intelligent Transportation Systems applications, also play a critical role in providing safety and security for transit passengers and
employees.

But to assure that mounting security challenges can be met— without diminishing the fundamental quality or availability of basic services—more funding is essential. There is no question that increased threat levels have a dramatic impact on budget expenditures of transit systems. The heightened “orange alert” following the July 2005 attacks in London cost U.S. transit systems over $900,000 per day, or an estimated $33 million over the 36-day code orange period.

A December 2003 Presidential Directive on Homeland Security (HSPD-7) delineated the Secretary of Homeland Security as being responsible for critical infrastructure security. Mass transit is defined as a critical infrastructure.

Transit agencies around the country have identified in excess of $6 billion in transit security needs—$5.2 billion in security- related capital investment and $800 million to support personnel and related operational security measures—to ensure transit security and readiness. 7

To this end, a strong federal/state/local funding partnership is essential. Important security-related capital and operational investment priorities are as follows:

Capital Investment Priorities

• Reliable and interoperable radio communications systems, including operational control redundancy

• Security cameras on vehicles

• Controlled access to facilities and secure areas

• Security cameras in stations

• Automated vehicle locator systems

Transit Operations Investment Priorities

• Funding support for current transit agency/local law enforcement security personnel

• Training for security personnel, including preparatory drills

• Funding for additional transit agency/local law enforcement security personnel

• Security training for other than law enforcement personnel

• Joint transit/law enforcement training, including preparatory drills

• Funding support to sustain a Public Transit Information Sharing Analysis Center

Investment in Transit Keeps America Safe and Secure

Safe travel, dependable emergency preparedness and response, and redundancy are top priorities for today’s public transit systems. As local, state and federal officials continue to work to strengthen our ability to recognize, deter and respond to both man-made and natural disasters, we must direct the necessary resources to our transportation systems to assure that they continue to serve as effective agents in protecting our safety and security.

Our future depends on it.

Works Cited

1. National Safety Council, Injury Facts, Itasca, IL, 2004.
2. Litman, Todd, Terrorism, Transit and Public Safety: Evaluating the Risks, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Victoria, B.C., Canada, July 12, 2005.
3. Higgins, L., Hickman, M., Weatherby, C., Emergency Management Planning for Public Transit Systems, Federal Highway Administration and the Texas Department of Transportation, Report 1834-3, Washington, D.C., May 2000.
4. www.watertransit.org/pubs/iop_response.pdf
5. Higgins, op. cit.
6. “America Under Threat: Transit Responds to Terrorism: September 11 Special Report,” Special Supplement to Passenger Transport, American Public Transportation Association, Washington, D.C.
7. Survey of United States Transit System Security Needs and Funding Priorities—Summary of Findings, American Public Transportation Association, Washington, D.C., April 2004.

For more information on public transportation and its many benefits, visit www.publictransportation.org.