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Dear Colleague:
Launched in 2003, Transit Watch is a nationwide
public awareness outreach campaign that encourages the
active participation of transit passengers and employees in
maintaining a safe transit environment. The campaign was
also designed to help foster the role of transit as a safe
haven in communities across the country. Our goal was to
create a useful toolkit that enabled you to customize the
materials with your own information and select the campaign
and accompanying visuals that would most effectively address
your community to maximize interest and involvement.
Since Transit Watch began nearly three years ago,
many of you have taken the campaign and adapted it as your
own, or have instituted similar public awareness campaigns.
Now, building on the success of the initial campaign, the
Federal Transit Administration (FTA), along with its
partners at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Office
of Grants and Training (G&T), recently made significant
enhancements to the public awareness campaign. These
improvements include messages pertaining to unattended bags,
evacuation procedures, translation of the
original
Transit Watch
materials into Spanish, and the
development of a "Five Step Strategy" for use in enhancing
communication with State and Local Citizen Corps Councils.
Working with DHS, one of three areas that FTA identified
as a priority was increasing public awareness, so that
passengers can identify suspicious or unusual behavior,
communicate with transit officials, and exit safely in the
event of an emergency.
Enclosed in your Transit Watch toolkit is a
downloadable CD containing the transit evacuation "Listen,
Look, Leave" campaign, the unattended items "Be Alert" and
"Is this Yours?" campaigns, the "Five Step Strategy" for
linking Transit Watch and Citizen Corps, and the
Spanish language translation of the original Transit
Watch campaign. This enhanced Transit Watch
toolkit represents our combined efforts to make our Nation's
transit systems safer and more secure. We believe these
toolkits will provide an effective means for transit
agencies, transit employees and the riding public to keep
America safe and on the move.
If you have any questions or need further assistance in
implementing the enhancements to Transit Watch,
please feel free to contact Gail Taylor at FTA on (202)
366-1218, Marcus Taylor at TSA on (571) 227-2183, or
Heather King at G&T on (202) 786-9489.
Sincerely,
Sandra K. Bushue
Deputy Administrator
Federal Transit Administration
Kip Hawley
Administrator
Transportation Security Administration
Tracy A. Henke
Assistant Secretary Preparedness Directorate, Office of
Grants and Training
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
