October 29, 2025
A major Pacific Northwest transit system transformed operator safety reporting with a mobile-first approach, revealing critical blind spots and giving leadership unprecedented visibility into what's really happening on the front lines.
In the span of two weeks, a major Pacific Northwest transit agency serving 90 million annual riders with a fleet of 1,600+ vehicles lost two bus operators to violence. Both killed in the line of duty. One over a fare dispute.
These weren't statistics. They were colleagues. Parents. Friends.
And they were the catalyst for change.
The agency's leadership faced an uncomfortable question: If operators are being killed, what else is happening that we don't know about?
The answer was worse than they imagined.
Before the pilot, the agency's incident reporting system required operators to return to the base after their shift to file a report. The process took an average of 37 minutes per incident.
Think about that. After a 10-hour shift dealing with drug use, harassment, or a safety threat, operators were expected to stay late and navigate an outdated system just to document what happened.
The result was predictable: almost no one reported anything.
In fact, in the period before the pilot launched, the agency logged just 2 incident reports from operators.
Two.
Not two per day. Not two per route. Two total.
Leadership knew this couldn't reflect reality. With 1,600+ vehicles operating daily across a sprawling metro area, the math didn't add up. Incidents were happening. They just weren't being captured.
The agency was operating blind.
Flag Transit deployed a mobile-first reporting app designed specifically for transit operators. The implementation was intentionally frictionless:
Read that again. From 37 minutes to 12 seconds. A 99.5% reduction in time-to-report.
Within 90 days, the results were undeniable.
268 incident reports in 90 days. A 13,300% increase in visibility.
But the numbers alone don't tell the full story. What mattered was what those reports revealed.
The 5% assault figure may seem low, but consider: under the old system, assault reports were virtually non-existent. Now, every incident—no matter how "minor" it seemed—was being captured and documented.
One of the most striking discoveries: a single transit center generated 17 times more incident reports than the second-highest location.
This wasn't previously known. Without real-time data, it was invisible.
The reports from this location revealed a concentration of assault-related incidents, unsanitary conditions, and drug use. It was a hotspot hiding in plain sight—one that could now be addressed with targeted resources and patrol strategies.
The response from agency leadership validated everything the data showed.
"Thanks for taking the initiative on this project. I think there is a ton of value in making access easier for our operators. The real-time aspect of it would undoubtedly assist us in our deployments and patrol strategies."
— Chief of Transit Police, Major Pacific Northwest Transit Agency
"This is a great initiative. We definitely need to be proactive with this."
— General Manager
"The design is so simple and easy to use."
— Director
The simplicity was the point. Operators didn't need training. They didn't need to stay late. They could report in 12 seconds and get back to their job.
This agency's experience reflects a national crisis. Transit worker assaults have nearly tripled since 2015, according to Federal Transit Administration data:
And these are just the "major" events, those resulting in fatalities or injuries requiring immediate medical transport. The FTA's expanded reporting mandate in 2023 revealed the true scale: 26,616 total assaults on transit workers in just nine months, including:
The old reporting systems were designed for a different era. They captured a fraction of reality. Modern threats require modern tools.
In September 2024, the Federal Transit Administration issued General Directive 24-1, the agency's first-ever general directive, requiring more than 700 transit agencies nationwide to:
Agencies that fail to comply risk federal funding. The directive isn't optional.
Flag Transit was built for this moment. Every report is timestamped, geotagged, categorized, and stored in a compliance-ready format. Agencies can export structured data for FTA audits, PTASP documentation, and internal safety reviews.
The old model of transit safety was reactive: something bad happens, someone files a report (maybe), and leadership finds out days or weeks later.
Flag Transit flips the model.
The Pacific Northwest agency's pilot proved what's possible. In 90 days, they went from near-total blindness to comprehensive visibility. They discovered a 17X hotspot they didn't know existed. They gave their Chief of Transit Police the real-time intelligence needed to adjust patrol strategies.
And they did it without requiring a single minute of operator training.
Two operators were killed. That tragedy forced a question: What don't we know?
The answer was everything.
With Flag Transit, the agency now knows:
2 reports became 268. That's not a software upgrade. That's a transformation in how a transit agency understands and protects its workforce.
If your operators are reporting fewer incidents than you'd expect, the problem isn't that incidents aren't happening. The problem is that your system makes reporting too hard.
Flag Transit eliminates the friction. Pre-loaded routes. Voice transcription in any language. 12-second average reporting time. No training required.
See what you've been missing.
