Federal Transit Administration Administrator Marc Molinaro recently issued a final warningletter to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's New York City Transit (NYCT) to address safety risks for track maintenance workers following tragic accidents involving NYCT employees, including one death.
According to an administration release, FTA issued a Special Directive 24-6 to NYCT in August 2024 after "the transit agency failed to strengthen safety measures" between the November 2023 death of a track maintenance employee and a second serious injury to an employee in June 2024.
"Secretary [Sean] Duffy has said time and again, safety is USDOT's top priority, and we will not accept anything less than full accountability," Molinaro said in the release.
The FTA's Special Directive 24-6 followed an FTA audit in June 2024 of the New York Public Transportation Safety Board's (PTSB) State Safety Oversight (SSO) program, the agency designated by the State of New York to provide safety oversight for the NYCT rail transit system.
During that audit, FTA reported safety deficiencies in NYCT's Rail Transit Roadway Worker Protection (RWP) program and a noted increase in near miss events involving transit workers. FTA issued a Special Directive 24-7 to the PTSB to perform additional oversight activities to address an escalating pattern of safety incidents and concerns affecting transit workers at NYCT.
In total, NYCT experienced 38 potential employee-near misses in calendar year 2023, a 58% increase from 24 incidents in 2022 and a 65% increase from 23 events in calendar year 2021.
NYCT Must Submit A Revised Safety Risk Assessment
In the last year, FTA has communicated to NYCT the need to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment of its RWP program, including information from recent safety events. After two attempts, FTA has determined that NYCT's safety risk assessments (SRA) failed to account for a rise in risk levels adequately and excluded critical data.
Specifically, several track worker events occurred from calendar years 2021-2023, representing an incident rate approximately 3.4 times higher than the preceding eight-year period, calendar years 2013-2020.
Through the issuance of FTA's letter, NYCT must submit an updated SRA to FTA within 30 calendar days. The SRA must address the following:
Incorporation of recent risk trends: The revised SRA must incorporate and analyze the demonstrated acceleration in worker contact incidents, including CY 2024 incident and near miss data.
Application of appropriate exposure measures: Risk calculations must be based on measures that accurately reflect actual worker risk exposure.
Alignment of probability classification with operational reality: The likelihood rating must be revised to ensure it accurately reflects NYCT's documented operational experience of recurring worker-train contact events and near misses.
According to the administration release, if NYCT fails to meet these deadlines and produce an adequate SRA to address the safety risks to its track workers, FTA may take prompt enforcement actions against NYCT in accordance with federal law.
This includes directing NYCT to use Federal financial assistance to correct safety deficiencies, withholding up to 25% of financial assistance, and issuing restrictions or prohibitions as necessary to address unsafe conditions or practices that present a substantial risk of death or personal injury.
