How much a transportation provider is paid has an obvious impact on safety. But more important is the rate structure by which that provider is paid. Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) service is a poster child for the dysfunctional consequences of a hapless rate structure and compensation formula. Insights Squandered In 1964, President Johnson created the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) to support the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Model Cities Program. UMTA capital funds paid for 80 percent of buses, trains and other capital improvements. In 1967, when Johnson created the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), UMTA (now
Tight Schedules, Part 1: The Other Achilles Heel
Early in my 42 years working in the public transportation field, I learned that the industry’s Achilles Heel is negligent monitoring. Almost no one knows how to do this effectively. Few agencies or companies do this at all. Most of their officials do not care. So the industry is rife with crossing accidents, negligent retention, wheelchair tipovers and passenger molestation, among other common accident and incident scenarios. (See transalt.com/expertwitness/scenarios). From years observing patterns of failure, I’ve come to recognize that a second Achilles Heel in public transportation is tight schedules. In my examination of evidence in more than 600 public
The Folly of Fake Facts, Part 2
In Part One of this short series, we explored the rudiments of reaction time and braking distance. The arithmetic for understanding both concepts was learned in the third grade (multiplication), fourth grade (long division), seventh grade (fractions) and eleventh grade (drivers’ education). Most bus and motorcoach drivers have high school educations, during which time they presumably learned the four processes noted above. But they often do not retain these processes, and cannot convert them into safe driving practices. And their training rarely acknowledges the existence of these disciplines, much less their importance, much less the need to integrate them into
The Folly of Fake Facts
Thankfully, mowing down pedestrians in a crosswalk is not yet commonplace. But it is also not rare. This incident scenario is most common to transit buses making left turns (see “The Danger Deterrent,” National Bus Trader, April 2016) But it happens occasionally with almost every transportation mode. Yet the defenses almost always cited by the drivers are no match for someone with a high school diploma. Pencils and Erasers A driver or motorist requires some time to recognize that something bad is about to happen. Most drivers or motorists need roughly ¾ of a second to recognize this. It then
Safety Compromises, Part 12: Conclusions
The final installment of this series examines the socio-economic dynamics and choices which led to the increasing commission of safety compromises by America’s public transportation services. The trade-offs of safety for other benefits are more common and more severe in some modes then in others. The most common safety compromises also vary from mode to mode. But the same set of dynamics has affected all these modes, and has influenced the tendency to commit safety compromises of all types. Risks and Choices Particularly in our heavily-litigated society, the notion of risk is paramount. A tightrope walker assumes enormous risk. He
Safety Compromises, Part 11: Wheelchair and Passenger Securement
As with most things, the ADA requirement to make all new motorcoaches purchased after 2001 wheelchair-accessible, and the 2015 ruling to install three-point occupant restraint systems, introduced an entirely new spectrum of safety, liability and social concerns to the motorcoach industry. But a couple of responses to these requirements, particularly by one OEM and one supplier, have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for savvy motorcoach operators. For reasons noted below, few motorcoach operators currently transport many (or any) wheelchair users, just as most wheelchair users are reluctant to travel by motorcoach. With conventional coaches and traditional securement
Safety Compromises, Part 10: Passenger Assistance — Standards, Practices and Disincentives
An industry outsider (say, a juror) might consider the variation in passenger assistance within the public transportation industry alarming. Exploring a single theme like boarding and alighting illustrates the extremes: Drivers of MediCare-funded non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) services are required, as a regulatory matter, to physically assist every passenger on and off the vehicle. In real life they do not, of course: NEMT reimbursement rates pay service providers only when the vehicle is moving. In contrast, many paratransit companies are paid on a per-hour basis. So they sporadically assist non- or semi-ambulatory passengers on and off, even while they obviously
Safety Compromises Part 9: Rolling Turns and Sharp Turns
It might seem obvious that a bus driver would know how to properly turn a vehicle with a long wheelbase. Yet it is surprising how many are not taught to. More interesting, bus drivers often do not have the time to. In some states, municipalities (e.g., Louisville) and/or transit agencies, bus drivers are required to come to a complete stop before turning left. But with the tight schedules common to most routes of many transit systems, coming to a complete stop before every left turn could consume a considerable amount of running time. This is especially true if the driver
Safety Compromises Part 8: Boarding and Alighting
Given the mass of a bus or motorcoach, the carnage a moving bus or coach can inflict on a pedestrian is not surprising. Yet readers may be surprised by the carnage such a vehicle can cause when it is not moving – or just beginning to move or come to a stop. More importantly, this latter carnage (as well as much of the collision-related carnage) is often the deliberate result of efforts to accomplish other goals at the expense of passenger safety. (See safetycompromises.com.) The most typical of these goals is to keep the vehicle on schedule. Often, schedules are
Safety Compromises, Part 7: Stopping on the Wrong Side of the Intersection
For each route in each direction, transit stops are almost always located on one side of an intersection, not both. Stops just before the intersection are referred to as ‘near-side’ stops. Those just after the intersection are referred to as ‘far-side’ stops. For decades, and still-debated, there are trade-offs between these two stop positions, although mid-block stops are nearly taboo for transit service. The “Bible” for evaluating these trade-offs is TCRP Report #19: Guidelines for the Design and Location of Bus Stops. The latest thinking is that, if all things are equal, far-side stops have more advantages and fewer disadvantages than