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PTASP Technical Assistance Forum

In light of the extraordinary challenges presented by the COVID-19 public health emergency, on December 11, 2020 FTA issued a second Notice of Enforcement Discretion for the Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan (PTASP) regulation (49 CFR Part 673). FTA will refrain from taking enforcement action until July 21, 2021 for recipients and subrecipients unable to certify compliance with the PTASP regulation. Please visit FTA’s COVID-19 FAQs page for more information about the Notice.


This forum offers peer-to-peer sharing of effective practices to support you in developing an Agency Safety Plan and implementing a Safety Management System.  It also provides an opportunity for you to ask questions and request and share resources with the transit community.

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  • Post a question, comment, or idea, or offer or request a resource.
  • Check out questions, comments, or ideas others have suggested and vote on your favorites.
  • Please include one question, comment, or suggestion per post to help us keep the forum organized.
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12 results found

  1. 4 votes

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  2. Bus Contractor's Existing SSPP?

    Question: Our agency contracts our bus and paratransit service operations and maintenance to a contractor, and that contractor has an existing System Safety Program Plan (SSPP). Since our agency is the recipient of the FTA funds (not the contractor), can the contractor keep their existing SSPP, and can our new ASP cite/reference sections of the contractor's SSPP?

    1 vote

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  3. Sub-contractors in ASP?

    If fixed route and paratransit is provided by a contracted entity, does ASP also need to address sub-contracted companies such as security, janitorial, visiting personnel, etc. If so, do they need a separate section in the ASP?

    1 vote

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  4. How to coordinate ASP and SSEPP

    How does FTA anticipate the ASP working together with the System Security and Emergency Preparedness Program Plan (SSEPP)? Can we integrate the SSEPP into the ASP, essentially eliminating it as a document? Alternatively, can we separate safety from security functions and keep two distinct documents?

    1 vote

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  5. 1 vote

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  6. Safety Performance Measures

    The PTASP requires agencies to provide four safety performance measures to FTA. One of the measures is safety events. What does FTA considerer a safety event? And should agencies also add injuries and fatalities to this figure since they are events that occur within the operating system.

    1 vote

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  7. SMS/ASP Gap Analysis Checklists

    In 2015, “FTA piloted its new SMS gap analysis tool and provided training to apprise [WMATA] executive, safety, and technical management personnel of SMS concepts and requirements.”
    The 2015 SMS gap analysis appears to have overlapping checklist items compared to the latest FTA ASP checklist published in August 2019. The assessment scales are also different - understandably so - given the 2015 checklist was meant for what appears to be an effort to assess WMATA’s SMS implementation “maturity” while the 2019 checklist appears to be more of a documentation effort, using a simplified assessment scale.
    Does FTA consider the checklist…

    1 vote

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  8. 1 vote

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  9. Template

    This seems like an obvious question but I've looked and can't seem to find the answer. Is there a template that is able to be filled out via my computer? As in, not printed and then written in?

    1 vote

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  10. 1 vote

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  11. What is the definition of a close call?

    What is the definition of a close call for a bus-only system?

    1 vote

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  12. 1 vote

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