National Transit Database Safety and Security Newsletter

NATIONAL TRANSIT DATABASE
SAFETY AND SECURITY NEWSLETTER

SNAP SHOT

The NTD data from January to December 2004 indicate a significant fluctuation in reported incidents of between 187 and 115 for motor buses, while after lows of 5 and 17 in May for heavy rail and light rail incidents, respectively, peaks of 30 and 38 were attained a few months later. 2005 data could not be used since several stakeholders, including a number of the larger operators, had either not reported or under reported their incidents during that time period.

Major incidents by mode, 2004

Inside This Issue
Transit Security	2
Reporting Focus: Bus Fires	3
Updates	7
Subscription Information	8

SPRING 2005 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1

Watertown, MA Fire Department

Using NTD Data to Focus on
Problem Security Issues

You can use the NTD to help identify and prioritize potential security problems within your agency, by comparing your monthly or quarterly data with information from your peers. For example, let's say you are Agency A, one of the top 30 public transit agencies (by passenger-miles) in the NTD Program investigating security incidents. You could request a report from the Federal Transit Administration's NTD Program Administrator showing security-related incidents, and compare your monthly average to a composite monthly average of the top 30 agencies which would reflect agencies similar to your own. By comparing your monthly security-related incidents to the composite average, you could determine where your agency may have vulnerabilities. The two bar-charts on page 2 provide an illustrative example. One set of bars represents the top 30 agency composite average, while the second set represents Agency A's monthly average of reported incidents. Trespassing is in its own chart, since the number of trespassing incidents is much larger than the numbers of other incidents.

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