SUMMARY

Transit Recovery in the Aftermath of Severe Weather Events: Current State of Practice

Severe weather events can impact transit agency operations, equipment, and infrastructure. High heat days, extremely cold temperatures, high winds, tornadoes, flooding, and winter storms can create worker and customer health and safety concerns and damage or destroy transit vehicles and facilities. Billions of dollars of transit assets—buses, trains, trolleys, tracks, stations, subsystems, and more—have been destroyed by climate-related disasters in the past decades. As a result, millions of passengers have been deprived of reliable transit service for short or long periods.

TCRP Project J-07, Topic SA-61, “State of Practice for Transit Recovery in the Aftermath of Severe Weather Events,” documents the current state of practice around transit recovery plans (plans that direct transit agency actions to transition from response to recovery). This synthesis identifies how often transit agencies have recovery plans, what is included in recovery plans, the timing of recovery, measurements of recovery success, and how agencies finance recovery.

The literature review found that although recovery is commonly thought of in terms of the restoration of services and the reconstruction of infrastructure and facilities, it includes restoring and strengthening key systems and resources that are critical to the economic stability, vitality, and long-term sustainability of communities. Recovery is one phase of emergency management and often begins while the response phase is still ongoing. The timing of recovery depends on the type and severity of the event, the extent of the impact, and a range of factors that include resources, capabilities, and interdependencies. The recovery period can range from within 24 hours to many years after an event.

A recovery plan documents the roles and responsibilities of the transit agency during recovery and a service restoration and resumption plan after a disruption. There are guidelines on recovery planning, including what to include in recovery plans. For example, APTA-recommended practices address recovery as part of emergency management, and there is an APTA Recommended Practice on Suspension of Service and Recovery. Defining what recovery means for the agency and including it in the plan are important. Establishing recovery priorities and agreeing on trigger-setting processes before an event are essential to avoiding conflicts and delays during the recovery process. Because each event is unique, having flexibility in the plan is critical.

Recovery plans can accelerate the recovery process by predefining roles and responsibilities, identifying resources, and building the awareness and capacity to engage in recovery activities. Having a recovery plan to review with agency personnel before events is particularly valuable as a refresher if events are infrequent and to relay institutional knowledge and maintain continuity with personnel changes. Some transit agencies have worked together to develop regional multimodal recovery plans to plan and document a coordinated post-event recovery.

According to the survey, many transit agencies do not have recovery plans for severe weather, especially those that do not experience frequent severe weather events. Agencies are limited in staffing and time. Senior executives may not be aware of the importance of having a recovery plan. Transit agencies with recovery plans often include them as part of another plan, such as a response plan or continuity of operations plan. Information contained in transit agency recovery plans includes protocols to address adjustment of staff work schedules and duty assignments, prioritization guidelines for re-establishment of normal service plans, situational awareness processes, standard operating procedures (SOPs) to conduct emergency repairs, public outreach plans and protocols, contact lists, and coordination with community or regional essential services plans. Some agencies include SOPs for emergency contracting and procurement.

Interviews were conducted with five transit agencies across the country that experienced frequent severe weather, such as hurricanes or snow and ice storms, to develop case examples focused on various aspects of recovery and recovery planning. Most of these agencies have hazard-specific recovery plans that allow them to quickly recover from events using established pre- and post-event procedures for vehicles and employees, prioritized route adjustments, and situational awareness/damage assessment processes.

The transit agencies experienced common challenges, such as resource management—especially getting vehicles and drivers back on the routes after events—and addressing the conflicts between agency capabilities and community and local and regional needs after an event. Recovery plans can guide the agencies in how to address these challenges.

Successful strategies were identified in the case examples, such as keeping service changes and restoration processes as simple as possible by, for example, making changes effective at the start of the day rather than during the day to avoid confusion. Establishing memoranda of understanding with local and community agencies and organizations before an event can expedite recovery and ensure that expectations are met.

Much of recovery effectiveness is grounded in pre-planning. These steps include establishing partnerships and setting expectations with partners, safeguarding vehicles and personnel with effective staging expectations, and developing phased plans to return to service.

Federal funding is typically available for recovery from declared disasters through various federal programs, including Federal Emergency Management Agency and FTA programs. Understanding the requirements for recovery funding before an event happens and keeping accurate records of personnel hours and expenses during recovery for reimbursement are critical. In addition, federal funding sources increasingly require or incentivize investments that increase the resilience of the infrastructure.