Supplement to MTI Study on Selective Passenger Screening in the Mass Transit Rail Environment, MTI Report 09-05

This supplement updates and adds to MTIs 2007 report on Selective Screening of Rail Passengers (Jenkins and Butterworth MTI 07-06: Selective Screening of Rail Passengers). The report reviews current screening programs implemented (or planned) by nine transit agencies, identifying best practices. The authors also discuss why three other transit agencies decided not to implement passenger screening at this time. The supplement reconfirms earlier conclusions that selective screening is a viable security option, but that effective screening must be based on clear policies and carefully managed to avoid perceptions of racial or ethnic profiling, and that screening must have public support. The supplement also addresses new developments, such as vapor-wake detection canines, continuing challenges, and areas of debate. Those interested should also read MTI S-09-01 Rail Passenger Selective Screening Summit

Emergency Management Training and Exercises for Transportation Agency Operations, MTI Report 09-17

Training and exercises are an important part of emergency management. Plans are developed based on threat assessment, but they are not useful unless staff members are trained on how to use the plan, and then practice that training. Exercises are also essential for ensuring that the plan is effective, and outcomes from exercises are used to improve the plan. Exercises have been an important part of gauging the preparedness of response organizations since Civil Defense days when full-scale exercises often included the community. Today there are various types of exercises that can be used to evaluate the preparedness of public agencies and communities: seminars, drills, tabletop exercises, functional exercises, facilitated exercises and full-scale exercises. Police and fire agencies have long used drills and full-scale exercises to evaluate the ability of staff to use equipment, protocols and plans. Transit and transportation agencies have seldom been included in these plans, and have little guidance for their participation in the exercises. A research plan was designed to determine whether urban transit systems are holding exercises, and whether they have the training and guidance documents that they need to be successful. The main research question was whether there was a need for a practical handbook to guide the development of transit system exercises

An Approach for Actions to Prevent Suicides on Commuter and Metro Rail Systems in the United States, MTI Report 12-33

The primary goals of this report are to discuss measures to prevent suicides on commuter and metro rail systems, and to outline an approach for suicide prevention on rail systems. Based on existing literature and analysis of data obtained from the Metrolink system in Southern California, it was found that most suicides occur near station platforms and near access points to the track. Suicides occurred most frequently when relatively more trains were in operation and in areas of high population density. There do not appear to be suicide “hot spots” (e.g., linked to mental hospitals in the proximity, etc.), based on data analyzed for U.S. systems. The suicide prevention measures range from relatively inexpensive signs posting call-for-help suicide hotline information to costly platform barriers that physically prevent people from jumping onto tracks in front of trains. Other prevention measures fall within this range, such as hotlines available at high frequency suicide locations, or surveillance systems that can report possible suicide attempts and provide the opportunity for intervention tactics. Because of the relatively low number of suicides on rail systems, as compared to the overall number of suicides in general, a cost-effective strategy for preventing suicides on rail systems should be approached in a very focused manner. The prevention measures executed by the rail authorities should be focused on the suicides occurring on the rail systems themselves, while the broader problem of suicides should be left to community-based prevention efforts. Moreover, prevention measures, such as surveillance and response, could “piggyback” on surveillance and response systems used for other purposes on the rail systems to make such projects economically feasible

Designing and Operating Safe and Secure Transit Systems: Assessing Current Practices in the United States and Abroad, MTI Report 04-05

Public transit systems around the world have for decades served as a principal venue for terrorist acts. Today, transit security is widely viewed as an important public policy issue and is a high priority at most large transit systems and at smaller systems operating in large metropolitan areas. Research on transit security in the United States has mushroomed since 9/11; this study is part of that new wave of research. This study contributes to our understanding of transit security by (1) reviewing and synthesizing nearly all previously published research on transit terrorism; (2) conducting detailed case studies of transit systems in London, Madrid, New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.; (3) interviewing federal officials here in the United States responsible for overseeing transit security and transit industry representatives both here and abroad to learn about efforts to coordinate and finance transit security planning; and (4) surveying 113 of the largest transit operators in the United States. Our major findings include: (1) the threat of transit terrorism is probably not universal—most major attacks in the developed world have been on the largest systems in the largest cities; (2) this asymmetry of risk does not square with fiscal politics that seek to spread security funding among many jurisdictions; (3) transit managers are struggling to balance the costs and (uncertain) benefits of increased security against the costs and (certain) benefits of attracting passengers; (4) coordination and cooperation between security and transit agencies is improving, but far from complete; (5) enlisting passengers in surveillance has benefits, but fearful passengers may stop using public transit; (6) the role of crime prevention through environmental design in security planning is waxing; and (7) given the uncertain effectiveness of antitransit terrorism efforts, the most tangible benefits of increased attention to and spending on transit security may be a reduction in transit-related person and property crimes

Risk analysis: comparative study of various techniques

Researchers in the safety field are facing more challenges everyday with the expanding modern socio-technical systems. Safety analysis such as hazard analysis, accident causation analysis, and risk assessment are being revisited to overcome the shortcoming of the conventional safety analysis. With increasingly complex human system interaction in today\u27s modern systems, new safety challenges are being faced that needed to be assessed and addressed. Managers and engineers face the challenge to choose from the vast amount of techniques available and utilize the correct one. Indeed, new or improved risk assessment tools that can address these complexities are needed. One of the most important steps in assessing risk is first to categorize it. There are risks associated with product component failure, human error, operational failure, environmental disasters, etc. So far, however, there has been little discussion about how do managers choose between the available risk assessments tools, which this considered the first step in risk analysis. In this research, risk assessment tools have been investigated, analyzed, categorized, and then applied to case studies in different industries. A pathway for researchers has been paved to overcome the difficulties in choosing risk assessment tools --Abstract, page iv