On July 6, 2012, President Obama signed into law the surface transportation legislation Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21). Contained within the Act were provision for mandated transit asset management. Four years later, per the direction of MAP-21, the Federal Transit Administration issued the “Final Rule for Transit Asset Management and the Nation Transit Database” to establish minimum Federal requirements for transit asset management that will apply to all recipients and sub recipients of Chapter 53 funds that own, operate, or manage public transportation capital assets. The result of this legislation and rule-making has been that transit providers receiving FTA funding are required to implement a compliant program of transit asset management, documented within a transit asset management plan.
The above-referenced legislation and rule has fundamentally shifted the focus of Federal investment in transit in relation to maintaining, rehabilitating, and replacing existing transit assets. Given existing fiscal constraints at the local, State, and Federal level, it is unlikely that the overall national decline in transit assets can be addressed through increased spending alone. Therefore, the goal of this plan is to implement effective transit asset management by providing insight and strategy for the areas of procuring, operating, inspecting, maintaining, rehabilitating, and replacing transit capital assets; thereby minimizing risks and costs over the asset’s life cycle to provide safe, cost-effective, and reliable public transpiration to the traveling public.
The foundation of successful transit asset management is the transit asset management plan. To secure this foundation, the West Virginia Division of Public Transit, in coordination with the state’s transit providers, have elected to develop a group plan with the Division of Public Transit as the Sponsor. This group transit asset management plan will provide a Federal Transit Administration compliant planning document that will function to guide the Division and the participating transit organizations in operating, maintaining, upgrading and replacing public transportation capital assets effectively through the lifecycle of such assets toward an end result of providing safe and reliable public transportation services to the citizens of West Virginia.
The Transit Asset Management Plan may be found
here.