Lisa Staes is the Associate Director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) She was appointed by U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg to the Transit Advisory Committee for Safety (TRACS) and serves at its vice chair, is the chair of TRB’s Standing Committee on Transit Safety and Security (AP080), Advisory Board Member of Elsevier’s Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives Journal, and former chair of APTA’s Bus Safety Committee. She is currently conducting two transit assault research projects – FTA's Transit Worker and Rider Safety research project and a second for the Mineta Transportation Institute focused on mental health and associated contributors to assault events. She was also CUTR’s project manager for FTA’s Transit Standards Development Research and is now a consultant for APTA managing FTA’s current Transit Standards Development Program. She also serves as the project manager for FTA’s Safety Research Demonstration Evaluation programs, where she is actively involved in transit research and stakeholder involvement activities. She was the lead consultant on TCRP Synthesis SA-38 –
Successful Practices and Training Initiatives to Reduce Transit Bus Accidents and Incidents at Transit Agencies, TCRP Synthesis SA-45 –
Onboard Technologies to Prevent Transit Bus Incidents, and TCRP F-27 –
Characteristics and Elements of Non-Punitive Employee Safety Reporting for Public Transportation. Sample research topics include transit assaults, collision/crash energy management for transit buses, mitigations for rail trespassing and suicides, fitness for duty/fatigue risk management, simulator training and its impact on transit safety, training and certificate programs and elements of success, rural and senior mobility initiatives, and other topics. Additional research and program management information can be found
here.
