4.0 Key Takeaways The most acute problems in railroad safety are with trespassing and grade crossing incidents, but most federal focus is on train accidents and crashes not at grade crossings. Existing federal policy on rail safety has largely been successful. Dramatic declines in train crashes and safer workplaces for employees are the direct result in the rules, regulations, and mandates like PTC. Aside from addressing some specific issues such as persistent derailments in yards, significant further improvement will be challenging without immense expense. On the other hand, trespassing and grade crossing incidents are trending in the wrong direction. Together these make up only 28 percent of total railroad safety incidents, but they comprise 97 percent of all deaths on the railroads. While some federal policies and grant programs exist, more federal action is warranted in addressing the persistent and growing problems related to grade crossings and trespassing. For example, of the 19 most wanted and other recommendations from the NTSB, only two are tangentially related to grade crossings and trespassing. The federal grant programs directly addressing grade crossings and trespassing are relatively small.
Addressing railroad safety will require a tailored approach. Part of the problem in crafting the next phase of railroad safety will be the fact that the conditions affecting safety on the railroad network vary from state to state and from railroad to railroad. California, Texas, and Florida all have significant problems with grade crossings and trespassing, even when controlling for population and rail traffic. Meanwhile, other states like Michigan and New Jersey have a fraction of the national average for incidents involving trespassing and grade crossings, respectively. Amtrak and short line railroads have above average incident rates at grade crossings and trespassing deaths, which often happen on host railroad infrastructure. Conversely, train derailments and crashes tend to happen more often on freight railroads than passenger railroads. Part of the problem in addressing railroad safety is that the issues surrounding suicide, homelessness, poverty, despair, addiction, road design and the like are broader societal issues that go beyond the ability of transportation professionals and policymakers concerned solely with transportation to fix. The next phase of federal railroad safety policy will need to both extend beyond railroading and acknowledge its relationship to other societal issues and also require a more discrete approach involving finding the problem areas and addressing them in the local context.
Safer Railroading
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