The Transport Workers Union strongly supports a proposed general directive from the Federal Transit Administration to specify how transit agencies must provide safeguards against assaults on transit workers. Read our full comment filed with the FTA below:
February 20, 2024
The Honorable Nuria Fernandez Administrator Federal Transit Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue SE Washington, DC 20590
RE: Proposed General Directive Number 24-1, Required Actions Regarding Assaults on Transit Workers
Dear Administrator Fernandez,
On behalf of more than 155,000 members of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), I am pleased to offer comments on the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Proposed General Directive regarding transit worker assaults. TWU members work in every frontline transit craft – including bus and train operators, mechanics, station agents, cleaners, and supervisors. Collectively, our members operate and maintain nearly half of all public transit rides in the U.S. In short, our members are risking assault every day in our public transportation systems. This directive is long overdue, urgently needed, and must be considered as a first step towards addressing the number one issue in our industry. We applaud the FTA for proposing this directive and we urge you to finalize it as soon as possible.
Assaults are the most important issue facing public transportation systems
There is no question that violence generally (and assaults on workers specifically) is the number one issue facing our public transportation systems today. The rate of assault on transit workers more than tripled between 2016 and 2021 (from 4.62 assaults/100 million trips to 16.71 assaults/100 million trips, per FTA data). The pandemic did not slow the frequency of assaults and the trend has not reversed since then. There are more reported assaults than any other kind of major safety incident onboard public transportation.
Those numbers are also MASSIVE undercounts of the assaults happening onboard public transportation. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL, P.L. 117-58) updated the definition of assault to include a much more accurate set of incidents in reports to the National Transit Database (NTD). Prior to this change, transit workers could have their nose broken, be hospitalized for 24 hours, and suffer first-degree burns without triggering any reporting requirements. Beginning with the 2023 reports, agencies are now obligated to include all “circumstance[s] in which an individual knowingly … and with intent to endanger the safety of any individual, or with reckless disregard for the safety of human life, interferes with, disables, or incapacitates a transit worker”1 . Reported assaults under this definition will be much higher and much closer to the reality on our systems.
The quantitative data only tells part of the story. The severity of these assaults is also increasing. Transit workers face not only dehumanizing, disturbing assaults like being spit on and having urine thrown at them, but broken bones, gun shots, and death. In Philadelphia, Bernard Gribbin, an Army veteran, was shot six times by an assailant who took time between rounds to check whether he had died before firing on him again. In New York City, 74-year old Baboo Singh was working as a station agent on a subway platform when he was struck in the back of his head without warning, knocked to the ground and beaten until his face and ribs were broken. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, an unhinged bus rider grabbed the onboard fire extinguisher and threatened to bash bus operator Sania Coleman while she was steering the vehicle.
Workers see this and seek other employment. Riders see this and seek other modes of transportation. A significant part of the slow ridership recovery post-pandemic in public transit (relative to other modes) is the belief from riders that these systems are not safe. Until and unless public transportation agencies can create a safe place for all transit workers, riders will continue to stay away, driving down farebox revenue and worsening the potential fiscal cliff facing many of our systems.
This General Directive takes necessary, immediate action
While this Directive is not a substitute for a full rulemaking to prevent assaults, it does take the immediate action necessary for transit agencies to understand the scope of the problem in their systems. Sadly, most of the Directive’s requirements are items that should be part of the normal process for updating public transportation agency safety plans (PTASPs) each year. The reality, as the FTA has recognized with this Directive, is that agencies far too often choose to ignore the assaults in their communities and hope they will go away. That is not an effective strategy.
The Directive requires agencies to 1) conduct a safety risk assessment for all assaults on their properties over the prior 12 months, 2) identify safety risk mitigations through the joint labormanagement Safety Committees, 3 and 3) share the results of these processes with the FTA. The Directive postulates that agencies, once they have a better understanding of the true threat assaults pose, will take the actions necessary to prevent them (a result we join the FTA in hoping for, though we do not anticipate that 100% of agencies will implement the mitigations identified by their safety committees). None of these steps are burdensome or unwarranted. Given the scale of the problem, this Directive is actually quite a small, initial step towards preventing this violence.
Importantly, the FTA notes that failing to comply with these simple tasks would put agencies at risk of enforcement action. We fully expect that the FTA will have to use such actions in to gain full compliance. We encourage the FTA to prepare now for this likely outcome.
The existing PTASP process has demonstrated that it cannot adequately address assaults
We are now two years into the reformed PTASP process following the updates within the BIL. This new process, which gives frontline workers an equal voice in the creation and approval of PTASPs, has already resulted in major changes across every TWU property. Most of the PTASPs that we have helped create now include chapters on assault prevention. These provisions are having a positive effect in both assault prevention and response after the fact. However, as the quantitative data mentioned above clearly shows, the reformed PTASP process has not been able to reverse the increasing threat of assault in our public transportation systems.
Regardless of the potential good of individual PTASPs, the PTASP process is extremely balkanized. Every agency in the country has a different set of safety approaches and wildly different standards can be found across localities. It simply isn’t possible to combat the national threat of assaults through thousands of agencies without a national standard to build upon.
Furthermore, the final document created through the PTASP process shows only the end result of extensive compromises in committees equally weighted between frontline workers and management. Even in committees where all members share deep concerns about assaults, budgetary concerns have watered down the most ambitious plans. The ultimate product almost never covers the full breadth of the issue.
The FTA also does not collect PTASPs for review or the identification of best practices. While it maintains a library of example PTASPs, agencies need only certify each year that they have completed their PTASP, not submit the final product. There is a stunning lack of information at the national level of the practices in place (or lack thereof) to prevent assaults in public transportation systems. Even were the FTA to simply collect the PTASPs, these would not show the depth of information necessary to extrapolate good public policy or identify positive trends.
While, in an ideal world, the PTASP process would include all of the items in this proposed Directive, in practice, it simply doesn’t. We know of no agency that undertakes a full safety review each year for any topic, much less one specific item like assaults. Without such a review, Safety Committees have a difficult time fulfilling their statutory responsibilities to identify and mitigate these assaults. And, as mentioned above, even if such a complete analysis did take place, there is not currently a mechanism to share that data with the FTA outside of this Directive.
While we have great faith in the reformed PTASP process to increase the total level of safety in public transportation, the TWU does not believe the PTASP system is capable, on its own, of addressing the growing threat of assault.
The Safety Committee is essential to the success of this proposed directive and its role should be expanded
In setting up the joint labor-management safety committees, Congress clearly intended that they become the safety arbiter on assault prevention and response, as well as other vital issues. In a letter to the FTA in response to a rulemaking in 2023, Senators Sherrod Brown (Chair of the relevant committee), Chris Van Hollen (sponsor of the underlying legislation), Robert Menendez, Jack Reed, and Elizabeth Warren noted that the safety committees were intended “to ensure that pressing safety issues are addressed or mitigated in a manner that draws on the expertise and experience of both a transit agency’s management and its frontline workforce.” The group went on to note that these committees should not be “advisory in nature only” and that there was “Congressional interest in ensuring that the work of the agency safety committee is not ignored or rejected by an Accountable Executive or their designees.”4 We believe these comments are relevant to the design of this proposed General Directive, as well.
While the Directive includes the safety committee as part of identifying safety risk mitigations, it does not include them in the safety risk assessment process and it allows agencies to potentially submit answers to the FTA’s questions without the safety committee’s knowledge or consent. In both cases, the TWU believes this downplays the central role of the safety committee envisioned in the statute.
The TWU encourages the FTA to involve the joint labor-management safety committees at every stage of the process envisioned in the proposed Directive by 1) adding a requirement that the safety risk assessment be conducted under the auspices of Safety Committee and 2) requiring that the information submitted to the FTA be first approved by the safety committee (just as the PTASPs must be).
This General Directive is an urgently needed first step
As noted above, both the number and severity of assaults in our public transportation systems are getting worse as time goes on. This trend will not reverse itself. This is not a matter of efficiency, though assaults do destroy transit operations; this is not a matter of finances, though the threat of assault is driving up costs and driving down revenue for transit agencies. In many cases, this is a matter of life and death for the frontline workers providing essential services in our transit systems every day. Delay in addressing this issue means more workers assaulted, harmed, and killed without any federal action to save them. This General Directive is a clarion call to every employer to take this issue seriously and a beacon of hope for every worker that the FTA can and will take action to protect them on the job.
It is vitally important that the work envisioned in this Directive be completed ahead of the 2025 PTASP process, where possible. For most agencies, these plans must be completed by December of this year. Allowing for discussion and integration into the larger plan, we would hope to see the safety assessment and risk mitigations identified no later than September. This means the final directive would have to go into effect by July – though sooner is better in this case.
Finally, the FTA must have access to the information collected through this Directive as quickly as possible so that it may complete its work on a general rule protecting transit workers from assault as required by P.L. 114-94. This Directive cannot be the last step, it must be the first and it must be quickly followed by clear, effective, and mandatory protections for transit workers everywhere.
The TWU fully supports this General Directive
We hope the FTA will move swiftly to finalize General Directive 24-01 as presented in this filing. This is an essential step for the overall health of the transit industry and for the wellbeing of transit workers across the country. The TWU strongly supports this Directive and we look forward to working with you to protect workers from assault.
Sincerely,
Willie Brown Director, Transit, Universities, Utilities, and Services Division