Award-Winning Public Transit Systems Set the Safety Standard

Work at the speed of safety. That is the mantra that guides public transportation in New York City, according to Brian Lapp of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), who described how the largest transportation system in the U.S. prioritizes the welfare of its workers and passengers above all else.

“Everything is safety and service—and those are not competing entities. Those need to be done together,” said Lapp, senior VP, safety and security for MTA, speaking at the Setting a New Standard: Approaches to Safety, Security, and Emergency Management session at APTA’s TRANSform conference in Boston, MA.

MTA’s focus on prioritizing passenger and its worker safety—the hallmark of any well-run transit system—helped it win APTA’s 2025 Gold Rail Safety Award for heavy rail. Central to that effort is its rigorous internal monitoring system.

“We actually go out and do safety audits along the right of way. Our audits are random, unannounced, and keep them [workers] on their toes,” Rapp said.

The Sacramento Regional Transit District (SacRT), the largest public transportation provider serving California’s capital region, homed in on a different aspect of safety: illegally parked vehicles that create hazards for bus drivers and passengers, leading to scheduling delays.

SacRT’s innovative bus stop enforcement program, which detects when vehicles are illegally parked at bus stops, received APTA’s 2025 Gold Bus Safety Award. AI-powered cameras on agency buses detect and report violations and have proved to be a boon not just for safety, but for the city’s bottom line, with collected revenues shared by the government, SacRT, and two partners in the project: Artificial intelligence company Hayden AI and Duncan Solutions, the  transportation management company that issues the citations.

In Maryland, meanwhile, focusing on safety means attending to trees along light rail routes that can create hazards. Large limbs from dead and dying trees can fall on tracks, sometimes causing service disruptions and thousands of dollars in damage to Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) infrastructure.

Officials at Maryland MTA are being proactive in preventing such incidents. “We deployed professional arborists to categorize the hazard severity from trees all along the light rail route,” said Mike Winger, chief safety officer. Any tree listed as an imminent hazard was removed quickly, with high-risk trees removed shortly afterward. The trees listed at medium and low risk were subsequently removed as well. Winger said that the ounce-of-prevention approach has been a huge success.

“Since the program was implemented, there have been zero major tree incidents threatening rider safety or disrupting service along our entire 30-mile light rail system. And constant monitoring of the route continues to make sure that safety record stands.”

Enhancing the rider experience is also about improving safety. Foothill Transit in Southern California worked with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to come up with a strategy for training staff in de-escalation and pre-empting conflicts. As a result, the agency has seen physical assaults drop more than 60 percent.

Among bus drivers “morale has increased,” said Ali Showkatian, director of customer service and operations for Foothill Transit. “From a cost perspective, we’re seeing less absenteeism,” he said, adding that ridership has increased as well. “We’re back to about 90 percent of pre-COVID ridership level. So, we’re building trust within the community.”

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) was awarded APTA’s 2025 Gold Security Award for heavy rail for its innovative policing. Initiatives by its dedicated police force, the Metropolitan Transit Police Department (MTPD), include extensive use of statistical and analytical data to help predict where a police presence is needed before criminal activity actually occurs, extensive use of video footage, and the creation of a Youth Advisory Council to help build trust among young riders.

“That kind of stuff really does improve our image, our legitimacy, within the community,” said Stephen Boehm, deputy chief of the transit agency’s police department.

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