At the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) 2016 Rail Conference, Thomas Littleton, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) associate administrator for Safety and Oversight, hosted an overview on safety and safety management systems (SMS). SMS is a popular topic in the transit world and the session delved into the ongoing process and what still needs to be accomplished to make SMS a reality. As Littleton pointed out, safety and security are very similar issues.
Making Endeavors Interact with Each Other
“I can emphasize how much we have pressed forward with the safety management system,” Littleton said. “We will layout the SMS framework for agencies and how it can work with them. It takes about 3-5 years from concept to publishing it — and that’s if you’re lucky. We’re doing it through a guidance process so it hopefully won’t take longer than that timing.”
When going forward with implementing SMS, Littleton explained the lengthy process. Once they’ve put together a rulemaking for the FTA, they are required to listen to public comments. While anyone can comment — that can bring the problem of confliction videos and desires from the different individual.
“So we have to organize that, address it and add changes into our rule,” explained Littleton.
While it is illegal to mention what specifically takes place in the rulemaking process, the process needs to be as transparent as possible.
“With our SMS program we want to get as much feedback as we can,” said Littleton. “The other thing that will make a difference soon, you’ll see FTA safety officers and that program will expand over the next couple of years.”
Safety Culture
While processes are handled differently in other countries, Littleton said that they have looked at other systems to gain further information on how they’ve implemented their own safety systems.
Safety is a constant concern and Littleton had an analogy to describe it: “We’re building the firetruck as we’re trying to put out the fire”
Littleton made the strong point that there can be plenty of security and safety issues; fires, attacks or other unforeseen issues. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what caused it, but we need to prepare in the event of an accident.”
