Guide to Developing the Safety Risk Management Component of a
Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan
Overview
The Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan (PTASP)
regulation (49 C.F.R. Part 673) requires certain operators of
public transportation systems that are recipients or
subrecipients of FTA grant funds to develop Agency Safety
Plans (ASP) including the processes and procedures necessary
for implementing Safety Management Systems (SMS). Safety
Risk Management (SRM) is one of the four SMS components.
Each eligible transit operator must have an approved ASP
meeting the regulation requirements by July 20, 2020.
Safety Risk Management
SRM is an essential process within a transit
agency’s SMS for identifying hazards and analyzing, as-
sessing, and mitigating safety risk. Key terms, as de-
fined in Part 673, include:
• Event–any accident, incident, or occurrence.
• Hazard–any real or potential condition that can
cause injury, illness, or death; damage to or loss of
the facilities, equipment, rolling stock, or infra-
structure of a public transportation system; or
damage to the environment.
• Risk–composite of predicted severity and likeli-
hood of the potential effect of a hazard.
• Risk Mitigation–method(s) to eliminate or re-
duce the effects of hazards.
The following is not defined in Part 673. However, transit
agencies may choose to derive a definition from other text
provided in Part 673, such as:
• Consequence–an effect of a hazard involving
injury, illness, or death; damage to or loss of the
facilities, equipment, rolling stock, or infrastruc-
ture of a public transportation system; or damage
to the environment.
Sample SRM Definitions Checklist
Part 673 requires transit agencies to develop and imple-
ment an SRM process for all elements of its public
transportation system. Part 673 requires the following
three elements to establish and implement a process
for managing safety risk:
• Hazard identification,
• Risk assessment, and
• Risk mitigation.
Published August 2019
The SRM process requires understanding the differences
between hazards, events, and potential consequences.
The Sample SRM Definitions Checklist can support agencies
with understanding and distinguishing between these
terms when considering safety concerns and to help ad-
dress Part 673 requirements while developing the SRM
section of their ASP.
Guide to Developing the Safety Risk Management Component of a
Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan
Safety Hazard Identification
Part 673 requires recipients to establish methods or
processes to identify hazards and consequences of
hazards. A hazard informs agencies of what is wrong,
while a consequence identifies what could happen.
When agencies properly identify and clearly define
hazards, they can more easily identify potential
consequences that will help decision-makers allocate
safety resources based on safety risk.
Transit agencies must include data and information
provided by an oversight authority and FTA (e.g.,
Safety Bulletin, General Directive, or Notices).
Agencies also may consider outputs of Safety
Assurance (SA) activities, such as employee safety
reporting programs, event investigations, monitoring
of operations and maintenance procedures, or system
changes, as sources for hazard and consequence
information.
Agencies may consolidate consequence and hazard
information in one location for easier sorting and
analysis (e.g., Risk Register or SharePoint forms) to
share information and enable analysis.
Safety Risk Assessment
As part of an ASP, agencies are required to establish
methods or processes to assess the likelihood and
severity of the consequences of hazards, and
prioritize the hazards based on the safety risk.
Agencies will establish a hazard’s safety risk based on
their assessment of how often they may experience a
potential consequence (likelihood) and the
consequence’s degree of harm or damage (severity),
including any existing mitigations.
Agencies may decide to use tools, such as a safety
risk matrix, to facilitate risk-based prioritization. This
approach combines assessed likelihood and severity
into one visual, which can help decision-makers
understand when actions are necessary to reduce or
The guidance in this document is not legally binding in its own right and will not be relied upon by the Federal Transit Administration as a separate basis for affirmative
enforcement action or other administrative penalty. Compliance with the guidance in this document (as distinct from existing statutes and regulations) is voluntary only,
and noncompliance will not affect rights and obligations under existing statutes and regulations.
mitigate safety risk. These tables are most useful when
customized to an agency’s unique operating realities
and leadership guidance.
Sample Safety Risk Matrix
Safety Risk Mitigation
Part 673 requires agencies to establish methods or
processes to identify mitigations or strategies
necessary, as a result of agencies’ safety risk
assessment, to reduce the likelihood and/or severity of
the consequences. The goal of risk mitigation is to
reduce the assessed risk rating to an acceptable level;
however, mitigations do not typically eliminate the risk
entirely. Agencies may consider obtaining input from
subject matter experts from different departments to
ensure that the selected safety risk mitigation is
appropriate. Input from multiple sources can help
prevent unintended effects, including new hazards.
In an SMS, transit agencies conduct SA activities to
know whether mitigations are having the intended
effect. Part 673 requires agencies’ SA processes to
include activities to monitor the effectiveness of safety
risk mitigations. Agencies may consider defining the
mitigation monitoring approach when implementing
safety risk mitigations.
Resources and Questions
Visit FTA’s Safety Training page for information on SMS
course offerings and registration and submit questions
to PTASP_QA@dot.gov.
