Technology Applications Partnership with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

TADERA’s Transit Safety and Operations Compliance System (TSOCS) was designed to scale our best-in-class technology solutions beyond airports to support transit agencies across the country. TSOCS was developed with input from safety managers across public agencies, and its tools assist transit agencies in managing safety risk using a process that follows the FTA’s Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan rules. TADERA has partnered with transit agencies across the United States to improve safety culture and outcomes.

The key value-add of TSOCS is that it provides a centralized and comprehensive system for storing safety information, including hazards, incidents, and risks. Staff members from across an organization can submit risks and hazards anonymously, improving the culture of safety across an organization, and increasing the quality of data for analysis and reporting. From there, it includes a comprehensive process for reporting, analyzing, and responding to the risks, allowing agencies to measure the effectiveness of their safety management processes over time.

Key features of TSOCS include:

• Proactive reporting to improve safety for all: TSOCS provides proactive tools that enhance the client through significant operational efficiencies.
• Reduce costs with centralized tools and reduced redundant technology: TSOCS provides a comprehensive data system that multiple departments can use to communicate effectively and efficiently, inherently reducing risk.
• Improve data quality by quickly identifying and assessing operational risks: TSOCS allows users from across an organization to submit reports on safety hazards, increasing both the quantity and quality of information available for analysis.
• Implement risk management processes to lower risk and increase safety operations: All users with appropriate access can view relevant data in real time. TSOCS serves as a “single source of truth” with an intuitive process for reviewing and managing incident and hazard reports. Its Transit Operations Event Log serves as the central record and legal documentation of activities that require monitoring by the agency’s operational units. It maintains critical operations data for easy access and reference.  
• Reduce reliance on “paper-based” processes, improve business efficiency: TADERA’s solution helps you transition from using paper-based forms to an integrated solution using electronic forms accessible even from smartphones and tablets to report incidents and safety hazards.
• ISO Certification: TADERA’s secure hosting environment, AWS, has certification for compliance with ISO/IEC 27001:2013, 27017:2015, 27018:2019, 27701:2019, 22301:2019, 9001:2015, CSA STAR CCM v4.0, SOC2 Type II, FedRAMP moderate, and FedRAMP.
• Comply with FTA regulations: TSOCS provides the data, reporting, and management tools needed to comply with the Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan, which is required by the Department of Transportation to be eligible for FTA grants.
• Improve safety culture with anonymous employee reporting: With TSOCS, safety hazard reporting is placed in the hands of all employees, allowing for the collection of more data points for safety hazard analysis.

TADERA and Sound Transit Partner to Improve Safety for All

Sound Transit is the public transit agency serving the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area. It serves over 3 million people in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties with a light rail, regional commuter rail, and bus services. In August of 2023, Sound Transit began a search for a cloud-hosted enterprise-level software partner to help them manage and track hazards and risks as part of their organizational safety and risk management initiatives. As they reviewed various options, they determined that TSOCS was the best fit to help achieve their goals of improving safety, reducing costs through streamlined technology solutions, improving data quality, improving efficiency by reducing reliance on paper-based processes, and ISO certification. 
TADERA began to plan, deploy, and personalize the system to solve each of their stated and intended goals. Key features for Sound Transit were the ability for internal staff members to build and modify their own workflows to keep track of risk management and mitigation plans; reporting on outcomes of risk management efforts; and integrating disparate systems into a single, unified whole. As we have built out these features, we are confident that TSOCS will play a key role in Sound Transit’s work to improve safety across its system.

Wichita Department of Transportation Uses TSOCS to Improve Safety Culture 

In early 2023, the City of Wichita’s Department of Transportation found that, as part of their Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan, they needed a safety management system to help them track, remedy and improve their safety culture. They were looking for a system to help them gather safety and risk data, evaluate the risks identified, prepare root cause analysis, and develop responsive mitigations which could, in turn, be tracked for effectiveness and alteration as needed.

After evaluating several options, they selected TADERA’s TSOCS because of its’ ability to facilitate data compilation using existing forms completed for state agencies, gather anonymous employee reports, and perform analytics on that data. Wichita Transit staff can use this information to evaluate risks, prepare root cause analysis, and develop responsive mitigations which could in turn be tracked for effectiveness and alteration as needed. 

With that scope and direction, TADERA began our implementation process, which was completed within six months. The Wichita Department of Transportation’s goal was to shift from a reactive response to safety incidents to a proactive mitigation of foreseeable safety hazards. TSOCS encourages more complete and accurate data collection by allowing users to submit information from the field. This results in better analysis, and stronger and more effective risk mitigation efforts.