Transit Security Design Against Terrorist Attack

Course Summary:

This course offers preliminary security-oriented design considerations for transit bus vehicles, transit rail vehicles, and transit infrastructure as a whole. These considerations are intended to assist public transit agencies in their efforts to determine and minimize the effects of attacks against their facilities, riders, employees, and the general public. The public transit industry has a long history of defining its own infrastructure needs and designing and constructing to meet them; consequently, these design considerations are intended to supplement and assist, not to impose a standard.

This effort reflects an increased awareness of the importance of the physical components of public transit. The threat of terrorism and other acts of large-scale violence can be combated not only through administrative policies and new technologies-although both are important-but also through the physical protection of the structures of which public transit is comprised. The FTA security design considerations will provide the transit industry with suggested security-oriented modifications to the physical and technological infrastructure of rail and bus systems. In addition to providing guidance on three major components of transit systems-bus vehicles, rail vehicles, and transit infrastructure-this course addresses the topics of systems integration, access management, and communications, all of which are crucial to the protection of transit assets.

Learning Objective:

• Introduction
• Systems approach to security design
• Security in the transit environment
• Developing a security strategy
• Access management
• Infrastructure
• Vehicles
• Communications
• Security System Integration

Review the quiz before studying the course.

Course Content

Course Author: US Department of Transportation