On February 27th, TRA presented a joint webinar alongside the safety management experts at IndustrySafe on the ins and outs of 49 CFR Part 673, which requires public transit agencies to develop and implement a Public Transit Agency Safety Plan, or PTASP. This plan must incorporate the principles of Safety Management Systems, or SMS. All transit agencies to whom the regulation applies must have a PTASP in place by July 2019, and must implement it by July 2020.

TRA Vice President Rob Kogan reviewed the basics of Part 673, a requirement of the MAP-21 legislation, and outlined which transit agencies are in fact required to have a PTASP, and how it must be structured and implemented. NExt, IndustrySafe Chief Operations Officer Clare Epstein reviewed the regulation’s requirements for safety data gathering and analysis, and gave a brief overview of how the IndustrySafe software can help agencies log and track hazards, incidents, and safety training.

The webinar follows a series of web videos TRA created in November of 2018, which go into further detail on how the PTASP follows the principles of SMS, and how a gap analysis of current practices can benefit any agency developing a PTASP.

You can view and listen to the entire webinar at TRA’s YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/ZbHGEIYoeDA. In addition, check out TRA’s previous work related to SMS here: https://traonline.com/projects/ (scroll down and click “Safety”), and find more information on our approach to SMS here: https://traonline.com/services/safety-management-systems-sms/.