Legal Aspects of Transit and Intermodal Transportation Programs. Topic 19-05. Legal Issues Surrounding Disasters and Evacuations

Facing increasing incidents of natural disasters, transit agencies are forced to address issues of resilience, evacuation, and recovery associated with those disasters. These issues are compounded by the important role of transit in emergency planning, including the evacuation of threatened populations within their service areas as well as those of other agencies under cooperative scenarios. Agencies must be prepared to execute emergency operations while simultaneously preserving their remaining equipment and infrastructure to facilitate recovery. The objectives of this research are to identify and address legal issues related to: (1) planning processes at the federal, state, and local levels; (2) resilience planning; (3) anticipation of equipment, supplies, and personnel needs within any response scenario; (4) cooperation and planning for cross agency and cross jurisdictional support; (5) cross jurisdictional issues related to evacuation from the agency service area; (6) cross jurisdictional issues related to cooperative evacuation operations in other service areas or even states; (7) the authority to undertake extended operations whether in an agency’s own service area or another’s; (8) liability issues related to non-traditional operations, particularly in support of other agencies (including pets, livestock, non-local movement); (9) authority to expend funds in these operations; and (10) insurance for equipment used in evacuations, facilities subject to disaster damage, and personnel.

• Record URL:
  http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=4822
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Contract to a Performing Organization has not yet been awarded.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Proposed
• Funding: $50000
• Contract Numbers:

  Project J-05, Topic 19-05

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Transit Cooperative Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC    20001

  Federal Transit Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Chisholm-Smith, Gwen

• Start Date: 20231106
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Disaster preparedness; Disaster resilience; Evacuation; Intermodal transportation; Legal factors; Liability; Public transit; Transit operating agencies
• Subject Areas: Law; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Security and Emergencies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01712955
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Board
• Contract Numbers: Project J-05, Topic 19-05
• Files: TRB, RIP
• Created Date: Jul 30 2019 9:03AM