Proposed changes to PTASP requirements at 49 CFR 673

Sospes’ primary goal is to help our customers achieve their goals and maintain compliance. In that interest, we felt that it would be useful to make sure you were aware of the proposed changes coming to the Public Transportation Agency Safety Plans.

See the full PTASP proposed changes on their site here:
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2023-04/49-CFR-Part-673-Proposed-Changes-04-26-23.pdf.

Summary of the changes:
Here are the major potential changes, as well as a link to the Federal Transit Authority’s website for the full document.

Definition Changes:

• Several additions to public transport and how they are defined.
• Major changes to what is considered an accident, incident, and emergency.
• New definition for assault on a transit worker.
• Additions for what a Safety Committee and Safety Event are.

General Requirements:

• Updates to who approves transit safety plans, now including a safety committee and the transit agency’s board of directors.
• Updates to emergency policies and procedures for rail transit workers and agencies.
• Safety Committees and Responsibilities:
• New Safety Committees must be established and scaled according to the size, scope, and complexity of the transit agency.
• Major changes to Safety Committee Procedures and how they must be organized and run.
• The Safety Committee must consist of equal amounts of frontline worker representatives and management representatives, and include frontline representatives from all major functions (i.e., operations, maintenance, etc.).
• The Safety Committee must review and approve safety plans, annual safety performance targets, and risk reduction programs.
• It must identify safety risks and recommend risk mitigation practices and efficiencies.
• The Safety Committee must create and monitor safety risk reduction programs for both vehicular and pedestrian safety events.
• Changes to the transit agency’s continuous safety improvement; it must now be reviewed annually.
• Safety committees must identify deficiencies in performance against the annual safety targets.

Safety Management Systems:

• Agencies must establish and implement processes for transit workers to report safety concerns, near misses, and unsafe acts and conditions to senior management.
• They must identify an Accountable Executive who will receive and review recommendations for safety risk mitigation.

Continuous Improvements:

• Several additions to continuous improvement processes, roles, and plans to address deficiencies through safety performance assessments.

Safety Promotion:

• – Safety training must be included for all workers, including de-escalation, safety concern identification, reporting training, and refresher training as necessary.
• – Refresher training must be provided for all transit workers, operation workers, and maintenance workers.

For the full document of proposed changes, please visit:
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2023-04/49-CFR-Part-673-Proposed-Changes-04-26-23.pdf.