|
|
 |
IN-DEPTH |
|
|
| CLASSIFIEDS |
| » The Sacramento Regional Transit District is looking for a deputy chief executive officer. [More] |
| » The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority seeks a chief communications officer. [More] |
| » The Madison County Mass Transit District is soliciting proposals for the purchase of light-duty transit buses. [More]
|
| View more Classified Ads » |
| TO PLACE AN AD: E-mail the requested date(s) of publication to: ptads@apta.com. Mailing address is: Passenger Transport, 1300 I Street NW, Suite 1200 East, Washington, DC 20005.
Ad copy is not accepted by phone. DEADLINE: 3 p.m. EST, Friday, one week prior to publication date. INFORMATION: Phone (202) 496-4877. |
What Boards Need to Know about State of Good Repair
|
BY DAVID STACKROW
Chair, Capital District Transportation Authority Albany, NY
Chair, APTA Transit Board Members Committee
 As the issues, challenges and opportunities in public transportation grow increasingly complex and critical to a public transit agency’s short-term and long-term successes, the role of governing boards grows exponentially consequential.
Most policy questions are intertwined: The decisions boards make and directions they help set today can have a profound impact on public transit agencies for decades—far longer than most individual board members’ tenures. Funding and financing mechanisms, service and expansion plans, community investment and economic development, just to name a few. | Because I—and most of my board colleagues across the country—have “day jobs” and serve as volunteers with our agencies and APTA because we’re deeply committed to public transit’s mission, staying current on both the issues and on our appropriate roles and responsibilities is a never-ending task.
No issue is more challenging to understand than state of good repair (SGR): what it means; how it affects the agency’s safety and reliability, financial health, reputation and resource allocation; what actions are right today—and tomorrow.
Safety, Assets and FTA
SGR is a complex process that is part of transit asset management (TAM), which FTA defines as “a business model that uses asset condition to help prioritize funding to achieve or maintain transit networks in a state of good repair.”
Last fall, FTA issued a TAM Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in response to specific authority granted by MAP-21, including the development of comprehensive, far-reaching safety initiatives: the National Public Transit Safety Plan (NPTSP) and the Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan (PTASP), which is required of all transit agencies.
Among many other elements, PTASPs require agencies to spell out how they will allocate and prioritize resources for safety—and, consequently, state of good repair—and how they will appoint a designated “accountable executive” for safety.
Both requirements affect boards: First, most agency boards will be required by regulation to approve both the TAM and the PTASP. However, even though some boards might not be required to authorize the PTASP directly, they will be called upon to approve resource allocations for TAM and PTASP plans or projects. Second, boards will likely engage with the “accountable executive” on a range of safety and SGR-related issues. In fact, in some agencies, the designated accountable executive could end up being a member of the board.
Questions that Count
Based on my own board experience and with input from SGR experts at APTA and elsewhere, I suggest that the following questions can help a board hit the ground running and gain a broad understanding of SGR and its potential impact on the agency’s operations, culture and future:
* What is our overall strategy and how does it meet FTA’s guidelines?
* What is the status of our assets by category and where do they need to be?
* What’s our gap between resource needs and resource availability?
* How do we begin bringing our assets into a state of good repair?
* What level of investment is required over the next 10 years? Are P3s realistic options?
* What’s likely to happen to our assets if funding levels remain constant?
* What’s the impact on safety and reliability?
* Is our frontline workforce trained for achieving SGR as well as corrective maintenance?
* How do we avoid technical obsolescence when purchasing assets such as rolling stock?
* What are the SGR policies and practices of the partners we contract services to?
* How can the board provide appropriate support to agency leadership so each entity can fulfill its duties and optimize its attention and resources?
Dealing with Answers
It’s one thing to gather information; it’s another to do something with it.
Public transit boards and senior leaders always have one eye on the present and one on the future. Just as it can be a difficult balancing act in personal finances to pay the mortgage and save for that new roof you’ll eventually need, public transit agencies must tend to the urgent issues of the day while planning for the important challenges down the road.
To do so, boards need information (where we are) that enables analysis (where we’re headed) and informs decision making (how we stay on track)—all of which can help boards fulfill the three traditional duties of a fiduciary:
* Duty of due care to help ensure the long-term viability of all agency assets;
* Duty of loyalty to serve in the agency’s best interests; and
* Duty of obedience to follow ethical, legal and mission-based standards.
Context; Culture
Of course, these questions and others that address highly complex issues need to be (1) posed in the context and culture of each individual agency and fully vetted with the agency’s CEO and other senior leadership he or she designates—in advance of board discussions; (2) informed by the agency’s operational and financial processes; and (3) discussed within the board’s existing committee structure.
As always, an open and productive partnership between the board and the CEO is of paramount importance, with the ongoing goals of strengthening partnership, collaboration, mutual respect, trust and transparency—and while striving for the optimum balance between policy and practice, governance and management, and oversight and operations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
