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What's New from FTA

FTA recently released a proposed rule for the Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan (Agency Safety Plan), a notice of availability for the proposed National Public Transportation Safety Plan (National Safety Plan) and a new Transit Award Management System (TrAMS) to award and manage federal funding.

Safety Plans
FTA is accepting public comments by April 5 for both the Agency Safety Plan and the National Safety Plan. Links to the Federal Register notices can be found here.

FTA’s Office of Transit Safety and Oversight will host four webinars covering provisions of the proposed rule and plan and how industry stakeholders can become involved in the regulatory process. All four webinars will offer the same content, but the Feb. 24 and March 3 webinars are for small urban, rural and tribal agencies, the March 1 session for bus agencies and the March 2 session for multimodal agencies. FTA will record all sessions and post them to its website. For registration information, visit the FTA website.

In addition, FTA will hold a listening session during the APTA Legislative Conference at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 16, at the JW Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC.

“FTA is making great progress in establishing the regulatory framework which will become the blueprint for the future of safety performance in public transit,” said FTA Acting Administrator Therese McMillan. “Today’s proposals are about setting safety performance criteria and targets, voluntary minimum safety standards and a means to communicate safety issues industry-wide.”

The Agency Safety Plan proposed rule takes into account agency size, complexity and operations, providing flexibility in establishing processes to address safety risks in agencies’ safety plans.

The proposed rule would also require performance targets based on the safety performance criteria established under the National Safety Plan and to have their plans approved by the board of directors or equivalent and perform an annual review and update.

Additionally, the Agency Safety Plan proposed rule would require rail transit agencies to include an emergency preparedness and response plan consistent with existing regulations.

The proposed National Safety Plan is not a rulemaking action, but would guide the national effort in managing the safety risks of public transportation systems.

Launch of TrAMS
TrAMS, unveiled Feb. 16, replaces TEAM, FTA’s previous grants management system, to increase efficiency and improve transparency and accountability.

The new system allows public transit agencies to more easily apply for and report on federal funding and provides a one-stop shop for FTA to manage and monitor how transit funding is used.

The TrAMS process is almost entirely electronic, eliminating most of the antiquated paperwork requirements of TEAM.

FTA has scheduled a series of training webinars on several topics to help TrAMS grantees become familiar with using the new grant management platform. The sessions will include live demonstration and question-and-answer periods as time permits. For information, click here.

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