The APTA Bus Safety & Security Awards program recognizes transit organizations and transit contractors for their commitment to improving the safety and security of transit employees, customers, and communities through application of effective safety and/or security initiatives. The award recipients should represent exemplary standards in the development and implementation of educational, training, and supportive programs that create and sustain a culture of safety within the workplace and result in exceptional service and security for the public and the communities served.

This bus safety awards program is designed to not only recognize exceptional safety and security performance for individual transit providers, but to also better serve the industry by benchmarking successful programs for others to adopt and derive similar benefits.  The winning submittals will be posted on the APTA website for access by all agencies and APTA members. 

Categories

For the purpose of these awards, public transportation systems are divided into categories based upon annual unlinked passenger trips, consistent with other APTA awards.

• Public transportation systems providing fewer than 4 million annual passenger trips
• Public transportation systems providing more than 4 million and fewer than 20 million annual passenger trips
• Public transportation systems providing more than 20 million annual passenger trips
• Private companies providing contracted transportation management and services to public transportation systems

Private transit providers are expected to meet the same threshold of excellence in safety as public transportation systems; however, private operators typically are not responsible for public outreach and education.  Therefore, private operators have been placed in a separate category.  The evaluation criteria by which private operators are judged are identical to the public transportation systems.  Entries by private operators are considered to be corporate level and thereby the information submitted should be inclusive of all contracted services.

It is recognized that a special relationship exists between Safety and Security, at times overlapping each other, but both have distinct roles and responsibilities that are essential to transit operations.  To recognize the important contribution that security plays in the transit industry, a unique award category is provided. An agency can opt to enter either a Safety Award or a Security Award category, but they may not enter both categories the same year. 

Awards

Within each category group, one major award and one certificate will be presented.  These are as follows:

• Gold Award - presented to the system from each category with the best overall safety or security achievement.
• Certificate of Merit - presented to the system from each category considered by the subcommittee as a finalist in competition for the gold award of that category.

In addition to recognizing the system or provider, information on the successful programs and projects will be posted to the APTA website as industry best practices.  This will allow the award recipient's programs to help enrich the entire industry.  Proprietary or copyright protected programs purchased from third party vendors which cannot be shared openly as work products of the transit agency or contract provider will not be considered for award.

The APTA Bus Safety Committee will appoint an awards subcommittee to determine the winners in each category as specified, based on the information submitted.  The winners will be announced at the APTA Bus and Paratransit Conference.

Nomination Instructions

• Read each of the foregoing descriptions carefully before preparing a nomination. 
• Use the online form to submit your nomination as an attachment (.DOC or .PDF). You may attach multiple files.
• Submit safety/security program element descriptions, as well as any data that document their effectiveness.
• Nominations are limited to no more than five pages (8.5 by 11 inch, font size 12) and may include an additional three pages of supporting evidence attesting to the results achieved.
• No fee is required to enter the competition.

The nomination should include the following:

• A brief description and history of the safety or security problem and the impact to the transit system;
• The program or project that was implemented to address that problem, the goals and objectives identified to fix the problem;
• A summary of the specific results achieved and the related benefits to the system.  What was the system like before the intervention and what was it like after.  Results should correlate directly to the specific program or project; and
• A description of how this practice could be beneficially applied to other bus systems.