USA Today’s Alan Levin reports on a three-day hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board into the safety of metro public transit systems (a hearing brought about by last June’s subway crash in Washington):
Peter Goelz, the NTSB’s former managing director, said systems such as Washington’s Metro have no incentive to improve safety. “What’s going to happen to them?” Goelz said. “It’s not like an airline and you can ground them.”
Unlike heavy rail, airlines and highway transportation, safety on the nation’s 40 subway and light-rail systems is overseen by state agencies, not the federal government. More than 4 billion passengers a year travel on these systems, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).
The Tri-State Oversight Commission, which oversees safety in Washington’s subway system, has six employees, five of whom have other duties and work part time on the issue.
Last fall, the Obama administration proposed tightening the rules to give the Federal Transit Administration greater control. States could continue to oversee transit safety but would have to follow new federal regulations. States could opt out of oversight and turn that responsibility over to the federal government. Legislation that would require the changes was introduced in the Senate on Monday.
This nicely illustrates how public transit safety is a secondary concern. The use of public transit has never really been part of a national transportation plan that is mostly focused on planes and cars. So it does make sense that regulation is de-centralized. By that logic, new federal regulations would suggest an acknowledgment of public transit’s national importance.