and lawmakers nationally through AASHTO, whose membership includes highway and transportation departments in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. AASHTO’s Rail Council addresses all railroad policy, safety, regulatory, operations and investment issues and makes recommendations to the FRA and Congress on behalf of the states through reports, presentations and other means. AASHTO and ASLRRA have an ongoing partnership to assist states with securing financing for projects to enhance the service and capacity of short-line and regional railroads. These projects often result in safety improvements, such as the elimination and fortification of grade crossings (such as by installing barriers in road medians to prevent vehicles from going around lowered gates) and upgrades to signal and train control systems. Two participating states, Kentucky and Oklahoma, restrict their financing programs exclusively to grade crossing improvement projects.68
2.7 Individual Railroads The entities with the greatest responsibility for ensuring safe operation, complying with federal and state laws, regulations and technical standards, and investing their resources into physical and technological changes that impact safety are the public and private railroad companies themselves. The vast majority of FRA-regulated railroad track in the U.S. is owned by private companies, while a small minority is owned by public entities – either regional passenger service operators or state or local bodies that lease trackage to freight railroads. The Class I freight railroads, by virtue of owning the majority of the track, are the key actors in determining how safety programs are to be carried out and how safety technologies are to be deployed, with short-line and regional railroads as well as most passenger carriers generally following their lead. There are also 30 commuter railroads in the US, half of which own all or part of the tracks they use. Half of these also contract out train operations and equipment maintenance to private contracting firms, and seven of the 15 that own all or part of their infrastructure contract out maintenance of way in the same manner. Five commuter railroads have the track-owning railroad over which they operate (either a freight railroad or Amtrak) conduct all operations and maintenance under purchase-of-service agreements. In all cases except for those five, however, the public agency that manages the service, not the contract operator/maintainer or track owner, is the “entity of record” responsible for safety and regulatory compliance and for reporting to FRA and state regulators. Thus, it is incumbent upon the agency to ensure that its contractors are in compliance. In most cases, both the agency and the contractor employ safety professionals -- the agency’s employees overseeing the contractor’s management, which then oversees its workforce.
Safer Railroading
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