Lxinfo - Policy

New Delhi, India: Prime Minister expects safety plans to be submitted
Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister doubled-up as acting Railways Minister after Mamata Banerjee was elected as Chief Minister of West Bengal. Unfortunately the period when Manmohan Singh was Railways Minister was marred by a series of high profile railway accidents including two at level crossings. As a result a call was issued that Indian Railways develop and submit a detailed safety plan to address the presently unacceptably large number of fatalities occurring on the country’s railways.		A key issue that has to be addressed is the chronic under-funding of railway safety and an historic attitude that deaths of road users at level crossings were not a significant safety management issue as virtually all such deaths were the fault of road users, including pedestrians and cyclists. Now there is a recognition that more has to be done to address risk arising from user misuse, particularly at unmanned passive level crossings. (July 23rd, 2011)

London, United Kingdom: ORR recognises progress, details continuing concerns

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) as Great Britain’s railway safety regulator annual health and safety report has welcomed the increased focus on level crossing risk in 2010/11, including Network Rail’s establishment of a national level crossing lead and a fundamental review of risk assessment and control.

One of ORR’s key finding was that too many people are involved in the overall risk control processes, with questions about competence and the priority they give to level crossings.

Site specific risk assessment, distinct from the prioritisation provided by the industry’s All level Crossings Risk Model (ALCRM), remains a worry to ORR. Network Rail has set ambitious targets for reducing risk before the end of the current control period (CP), with more planned in CP5.

We welcome Network Rail’s moves to target risks at crossings in long signal sections, such as that involved in a serious collision in East Anglia. Similarly, Network Rail’s programme of work to improve passive crossings with compromised sighting is a positive recognition of a risk that had previously not been tackled.

Network Rail has started to consider less expensive technical solutions to control risk. ORR recognises this to be a positive development and ORR expects to see trials at a number of automatic open crossings, in the next few months.

ORR’s inspection work has found continuing weaknesses with the maintenance of level crossings. We found issues with vegetation, road surfaces, signage and communication with regular users of user-worked crossings, some of which merited enforcement action.

The full ORR safety report can be found at: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/health_safety_report_2011.pdf.

(July 19th, 2011)

Gatineau, Quebec: TSB says stringer effort is needed to resolve safety issues

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) announced today that a "stronger effort" is needed to resolve key safety issues highlighted on watchlist released in March 2010.
"The TSB's goal is to improve transportation safety," said Board Chair Wendy Tadros. "That means speaking up if risks still remain, and pushing for change when not enough has been done. And right now, progress is stalling."

The Watchlist highlights nine key issues posing the greatest risk to Canada's transportation system. Underpinning these issues is a series of 41 safety recommendations — action items aimed at both industry and regulators. And while Tadros said the past year has seen progress on Marine and Rail safety issues—with seven recommendations receiving the Board's highest grade of "Fully Satisfactory"—she called the lack of similar progress in aviation "troubling".

Tadros added that the TSB also plans to release a periodic "scorecard" aimed at tracking developments and commitments by the regulator, Transport Canada. "We will report publicly on the results next spring," she said, "when we update our Watchlist. Those issues that have been squarely addressed will be removed, and if necessary, we'll add new issues of concern at that time."

Level crossing safety is an area where Canada’s federal government is through Transport Canada working to develop new regulations tightening standards on high-speed corridors and preventing any new crossings from being built where train speeds exceed 80 mph.

(July 7th, 2011)

Washington, DC: Final rule for crossing action plans published
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has published the final rule requiring the ten states having the largest number of level crossing collisions to prepare and submit to FRA their action plans to reduce the number of collisions. The rule which takes effect on August 27th, 2011 is seen by many as imperfect. In particular there are concerns that the number of collisions by state is in no way normalised to take account of the relative size of the states, the rate of accidents per crossing or any other way which would identify those states really having the worst level crossing safety rates. The ten states which are required to prepare and submit five-year plans are Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Ohio, and Texas as they had the highest average annual rate of collisions in the baseline years’ 2006 to 2008. The full rule and supporting analysis can be found at: http://www.fra.dot.gov/rrs/pages/fp_1776.shtml (June 28th, 2011)