FTA Publishes Automated Transit Bus RFI

Today, DOT’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA) published a request for information (RFI) in the Federal Register (87 FR 33574-33576) for “Transit Bus Automation Research and Demonstrations”. The RFI is in support of the FTA’s formulation of their second five-year Strategic Transit Automation Research Plan (STAR Plan 2.0). The first STAR Plan can be found here.

The FTA's transit bus automation research plan has been organized around four complementary work areas:

• Enabling research,

• Integrated demonstrations,

• Strategic partnerships, and

• Stakeholder engagement, knowledge transfer, and technical assistance.

While none of those work areas specifically targets cybersecurity issues, the RFI does include cybersecurity related topics. They include:

Reassessing the priorities and areas of activity for the next five years, including cybersecurity,

Possible FTA-supported foundational research within the next five years, including cybersecurity, and

What types of new skills, training, and resources may be required?

FTA is soliciting public input on these topics. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # FTA-2022-0012). Comments need to be submitted by August 1^st, 2022.

Transportation Safety Plan ANPRM to OMB

On Thursday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that the DOT’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA – Old soldiers from the 70’s please no comments on that acronym) had submitted an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) for their National Public Transportation Safety Plan. This rulemaking was not listed in the 2015 Fall Unified Agenda so there is little to no public information available on this ANPRM.

While I am not intending to extend this blog’s coverage to public transportation in general, I will be interested to see if this rulemaking addresses cybersecurity, particularly in transportation control systems.