Federal Transit Administration Major Safety and Security Events Time Series

Major Safety Events is a monthly time series of major safety and security incidents reported by U.S. transit agencies to the Federal Transit Administration's National Transit Database. The dataset covers events from January 2014 onward, published with a typical 90-day lag. The Department of Transportation maintains this record, which includes a transit worker assault flag implemented after a 2023 reporting change.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in the 'transit worker assault flag' to assess the impact of the 2023 reporting change on incident visibility.
• Model temporal patterns in major event frequency using the monthly time-series structure from 2014 onward.
• Filter and summarize pre-2023 transit worker assault events using the logic now incorporated into the production of the flag column.
• Correlate event occurrences with other transit agency performance metrics available in the National Transit Database.

Strengths

• Time series spans from January 2014 to present, providing over a decade of longitudinal data.
• Data is updated monthly within three months of submission, ensuring regular refreshes.
• Includes a specific 'transit worker assault flag' column designed to align counts with annual totals across files.

Limitations

• A known 90-day lag exists between event occurrence and dataset inclusion, limiting real-time analysis.
• The 'transit worker assault flag' column values for events prior to 2023 are misleading without understanding the reporting change.
• Specific row counts, sample sizes, and geographic breakdowns are not provided in the description.

Provenance

Source

Federal Transit Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation.

Collection Method

Submitted by transit agencies to the National Transit Database (NTD).

Time Range

January 2014 to present.

Freshness

Updated monthly; last platform update was April 2026.

Geography

United States (transit agencies reporting to the NTD).