United States Government Accountability Office

GAO Testimony 

Before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation 

and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and 

Security, Committee on Commerce, Science and 

Transportation, U.S. Senate 

RAIL SAFETY

The Federal Railroad 

Administration Is Better 

Targeting Safety Risks, but 

Needs to Assess Results to 

Determine the Impact of Its 

Efforts 

Statement of Katherine Siggerud, Director 

Physical Infrastructure Issues 

For Release on Delivery

Expected at 10:00 a.m. EDT 

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

 

GAO-07-841T 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

 May 22, 2007

RAIL SAFETY

The Federal Railroad Administration Is 

Better Targeting Safety Risks, but Needs 

to Assess Results to Determine the 

Impact of Its Efforts 

Highlights of GAO-07-841T, a testimony 

before the Subcommittee on Surface 

Transportation and Merchant Marine 

Infrastructure, Safety, and Security, 

Committee on Commerce, Science and 

Transportation, U.S. Senate 

Although the overall safety record

in the railroad industry, as 

measured by the number of train

accidents per million miles 

traveled, has improved markedly

since 1980, there has been little

sustained improvement over the 

past decade. Serious accidents 

resulting in injuries and deaths 

continue to occur, such as one in

Graniteville, South Carolina, in 

2005 that resulted in 9 deaths and 

292 injuries. The Federal Railroad 

Administration (FRA) develops 

safety standards and inspects and 

enforces railroads’ compliance

with these standards. 

On January 26, 2007, GAO reported

on FRA’s overall safety oversight 

strategy. (See GAO-07-149.) The 

report discussed how FRA (1) 

focuses its efforts on the highest

priority risks related to train 

accidents in planning its oversight,

(2) identifies safety problems on

railroad systems in carrying out its 

oversight, and (3) assesses the 

impact of its oversight efforts on 

safety. GAO recommended that

FRA (1) put into place measures of 

the results of its inspection and 

enforcement programs and (2) 

evaluate its enforcement program. 

In its response, the Department of

Transportation stated that FRA 

agreed to develop such measures 

and would consider requesting 

additional resources to conduct an

evaluation of its enforcement

program. 

This statement is based on GAO’s

recent report.

In planning its safety oversight, FRA is focusing its efforts on the highest 

priority risks related to train accidents through initiatives aimed at 

addressing their main causes—human behaviors and defective track—as 

well as through improvements in its inspection planning approach. FRA’s 

May 2005 National Rail Safety Action Plan, the agency’s overall strategy for 

targeting its oversight at the greatest risks, provides a reasonable framework 

for guiding these efforts. FRA’s initiatives to address the most common 

causes of accidents are promising, although the success of many of them will 

depend on voluntary actions by the railroads. In addition, under the action 

plan, FRA has adopted a new inspection planning approach in which 

inspectors focus their efforts on locations that data-driven models indicate 

are most likely to have safety problems. 

In carrying out its safety oversight, FRA identifies a range of safety problems 

on railroad systems mainly by determining whether operating practices, 

track, and equipment are in compliance with minimum safety standards. 

However, FRA is able to inspect only about 0.2 percent of railroads’ 

operations each year, and its inspections do not examine how railroads are 

managing safety risks throughout their systems that could lead to accidents. 

Such an approach, as a supplement to traditional compliance inspections, is

used in the oversight of U.S. commuter railroads and pipelines and of 

Canadian railroads. GAO did not recommend that FRA adopt this approach 

because the agency’s various initiatives to reduce the train accident rate 

have not yet had time to demonstrate their effects on safety. 

 

FRA uses a range of goals and measures to assess the impact of its oversight, 

such as (1) goals to target its inspection and enforcement programs at 

reducing various types of railroad accidents and (2) related measures, such 

as rates of track-caused accidents, to monitor its progress. However, FRA’s

ability to make informed decisions about these programs is limited because

it lacks measures of their direct results, such as the correction of identified 

safety problems. Furthermore, FRA has not evaluated the effectiveness of 

its enforcement program. 

Track Inspector Examining Rail to Assess Its Safety Compliance

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-841T.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Katherine 

Siggerud at (202) 512-2834 or 

siggerudk@gao.gov. 
Rail Safety Oversight

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

We appreciate the opportunity to participate in this hearing today to 

discuss the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA’s) rail safety oversight 

activities. Although the overall safety record in the railroad industry, as 

measured by the number of train accidents per million miles traveled, has 

improved markedly since 1980, there has been little sustained

improvement over the past decade. (See fig. 1.) Serious accidents resulting 

in injuries, deaths, and property damage continue to occur. 

Figure 1: Train Accident Rates, 1980 through 2006 

199

19992000

20012002200320042005

2006

8

19

1990

1991

1992

1993

19941995

19961997

89

1988

1987

1986

1985

1984

1983

1982

1981

1980

Accident rate (per million train miles)

Source: FRA.

Year

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Note: The rate for 2006 is preliminary. 

My remarks center on work we have recently completed on FRA’s overall 

safety oversight strategy. Specifically, we examined how FRA (1) focuses 

its efforts on the highest priority risks related to train accidents in 

planning its safety oversight, (2) identifies safety problems on railroad 

systems in carrying out its oversight, and (3) assesses the impact of its 

Page 1 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

oversight efforts on safety. Our findings are discussed in more detail in our 

report, which was released in January.

1

Our work was based on a review of laws, regulations, and FRA plans and 

guidance as well as discussions with FRA officials and with a range of 

external stakeholders, including railroads, unions, and state railroad safety

organizations. We reviewed FRA inspection and enforcement data for 1996

through 2005, the latest year for which complete data were available at the 

time of our review.2

 In addition, we examined risk management principles 

and safety oversight approaches used by other modal administrations 

within the Department of Transportation and other organizations that have 

similar safety missions in order to determine their possible application to

FRA. Our work focused on FRA oversight efforts to reduce the rate of 

train accidents rather than those to reduce highway-rail crossing and 

trespassing accidents because (1) the Department of Transportation’s 

Inspector General has recently assessed efforts to reduce highway-rail 

crossing accidents3

 and (2) trespassing accidents primarily involve issues 

not related to railroad safety performance. As part of our review, we 

assessed internal controls and the reliability of the data elements needed 

for this engagement and determined that the data elements were 

sufficiently reliable for our purposes. We conducted our work from 

November 2005 through January 2007 in accordance with generally 

accepted government auditing standards. 

In summary: 

• In planning its safety oversight, FRA is focusing its efforts on the highest 

priority risks related to train accidents through various initiatives aimed at

 1

See GAO, The Federal Railroad Administration Is Taking Steps to Better Target Its

Oversight, but Assessment of Results Is Needed to Determine Impact, GAO-07-149 

(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 26, 2007). 

2

In preparing for this hearing, we did not attempt to obtain 2006 inspection and 

enforcement data because we lacked the time to determine the reliability of and analyze 

these data. 

3

See U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the Inspector General, The Federal

Railroad Administration Can Improve Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety by 

Ensuring Compliance with Accident Reporting Requirements and Addressing Sight

Obstructions, MH-2007-044 (Washington, D.C.: May 3, 2007); Audit of Oversight of 

Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Accident Reporting, Investigations and Safety 

Regulations, MH-2006-016 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 28, 2005); and Report on the Audit of 

the Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety Program, MH-2004-065 (Washington, D.C.: June

16, 2004). 

Page 2 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

addressing the main causes of these accidents as well as through 

improvements in its inspection planning approach. The agency’s overall 

strategy for targeting its oversight at the greatest risks is the National Rail

Safety Action Plan, which FRA issued in May 2005. This plan provides a 

reasonable framework for guiding the agency’s efforts to improve its 

oversight. It includes initiatives to address the two main causes of train 

accidents—human factors and defective track—and FRA has pursued 

some additional initiatives to address these causes since issuing the plan.4

These initiatives—which include new regulations, research on new 

technologies and approaches for improving safety, and new vehicles for 

inspecting track—are promising. However, most of them have not yet been 

fully implemented, and their overall impact on safety will probably not be 

apparent for a number of years. Furthermore, the ability of many of these 

efforts to improve safety will depend on voluntary actions by railroads. In 

addition, the action plan announced a new approach for planning 

inspections that uses data-driven models to focus inspectors’ efforts on 

locations that are likely to have safety problems. 

• In carrying out its safety oversight, FRA identifies safety problems on 

railroad systems mainly through routine inspections that determine 

whether operating practices, track, and equipment, such as signals and 

locomotives, are in compliance with minimum safety standards. However, 

FRA inspections cover only about 0.2 percent of railroads’ operations each 

year. Also, these inspections are not designed to determine how well 

railroads are managing safety risks throughout their systems that could 

lead to accidents. The American Public Transportation Association 

(APTA), the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration 

(PHMSA), and Transport Canada have implemented approaches to 

oversee the management of safety risks by U.S. commuter railroads, U.S. 

pipelines, and Canadian railroads, respectively.5

 These oversight 

approaches complement, rather than replace, traditional compliance 

inspections and, therefore, provide additional assurance of safety. 

• FRA uses a broad range of goals and measures to assess the impact of its 

oversight efforts on safety. For example, it has developed new goals to 

target its inspection and enforcement efforts at reducing various types of 

railroad accidents and related measures to track its progress. However, 

 4

Generally, human factors are behaviors that affect job performance, such as incorrectly 

setting switches. 

5

Risk management can be described as a systematic approach for identifying, analyzing, 

and controlling risks. 

Page 3 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

FRA lacks measures of the direct results of its inspection and enforcement 

programs, such as measures of the extent to which these programs have 

resulted in the correction of identified safety problems. Furthermore, FRA 

has not evaluated the effectiveness of its enforcement program in 

achieving desired results. Both performance measures and evaluations can 

provide valuable information on program results that helps hold agencies 

accountable for the performance of their programs. In our recent report, 

we recommended that FRA develop and implement measures of the direct 

results of its inspection and enforcement programs and evaluate its 

enforcement program. FRA agreed to develop such measures and will 

consider requesting the additional resources necessary to evaluate its 

enforcement program. 

On average, 437 people have been injured and 12 people have been killed 

in train accidents each year over the past decade, from 1997 through 2006,

exclusive of highway-railroad grade crossing and trespassing accidents. In 

recent years, a number of serious accidents raised concerns about the 

level of safety in the railroad industry. For example, as you are aware, in 

2005, a train collision in Graniteville, South Carolina, resulted in the 

evacuation of 5,400 people, 292 injuries, and 9 deaths. 

FRA develops and enforces regulations for the railroad industry that 

include numerous requirements related to safety, including requirements 

governing track, signal and train control systems, grade crossing warning 

device systems, mechanical equipment—such as locomotives and tank 

cars—and railroad operating practices. FRA also enforces hazardous 

materials regulations issued by PHMSA as they relate to the safe 

transportation of such materials by rail. FRA’s inspectors generally 

specialize in one of five areas, called inspection disciplines: (1) operating 

practices, (2) track, (3) hazardous materials, (4) signal and train control, 

and (5) motive power and equipment. FRA’s policy is for inspectors to 

encourage railroads to comply voluntarily. When railroads do not comply 

voluntarily or identified problems are serious, FRA may cite violations and 

take enforcement actions, most frequently civil penalties, to promote 

compliance with its regulations. FRA is authorized to negotiate civil 

penalties with railroads and exercises this authority. FRA conducts 

additional oversight of Class I railroads through the Railroad System 

Oversight program.6

 Under this program, the agency assigns an FRA 

Background 

 6

For 2006, the Surface Transportation Board defined Class I railroads as railroads earning 

adjusted annual operating revenues of $319.3 million or more.

Page 4 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

manager for each Class I railroad to cooperate with it on identifying and

resolving safety issues. 

FRA is a small agency, especially in relation to the industry it regulates. As

of July 2006, FRA had about 660 safety staff, including about 400 

inspectors in the field (in its regional, district, and local offices). In 

addition, 30 state oversight agencies, with about 160 inspectors, 

participate in a partnership program with FRA to conduct safety oversight 

activities at railroads’ operating sites. In contrast, the railroad industry 

consists of about 700 railroads with about 235,000 employees,7

 219,000 

miles of track in operation, 158,000 signals and switches, and over 1.6 

million locomotives and cars. 

In planning its safety oversight, FRA focuses its efforts on the highest 

priority risks related to train accidents through a number of initiatives. 

FRA’s May 2005 National Rail Safety Action Plan provides a reasonable 

framework for the agency’s efforts to target its oversight at the highest 

priority risks. The plan outlines initiatives aimed at reducing the main 

types of train accidents, those caused by human factors and track defects. 

Since issuing the plan, the agency has pursued additional initiatives to 

target risks posed by these causes. However, these efforts are in varying

stages of development or implementation and, while some individual 

initiatives may start showing results in the next year or two, their overall 

impact on safety will probably not be apparent for a number of years. FRA 

has also developed a new approach for planning its inspections, based on

greater use of its accident and inspection data. While these initiatives are 

promising, it is too early to assess their impact. 

FRA Has Made 

Progress in Targeting 

Its Oversight Efforts 

on the Basis of Risk 

 7

This number does not include contractor employees hired by the railroads.

Page 5 GAO-07-841T
In 2006, 71 percent of all train accidents in the United States were 

attributable to either human factors or track defects. Human factor 

accidents result from unsafe acts of individuals, such as employee errors, 

and can occur for a number of reasons, such as employee fatigue or 

inadequate supervision or training. Recent FRA initiatives to reduce 

accidents caused by human factors include 

FRA Is Making a Number 

of Efforts to Reduce 

Accidents Caused by 

Human Factors and Track 

Defects, but Results Are 

Not Yet Clear 

• proposed regulations aimed at reducing the most common causes of these 

accidents, such as improper positioning of track switches;8

• a 5-year pilot project to establish a confidential voluntary system for 

reporting and learning from close call incidents;9

• a study to develop a fatigue model that could be used by railroads to 

improve train crew scheduling practices and prevent worker fatigue;10 and

• a proposed pilot project to establish voluntary risk reduction programs at 

participating railroad worksites to help reduce human factor accidents, as 

well as other types of accidents.11

Track defects, which can cause derailments, include rails that are uneven 

or too wide apart or rails or joint bars that are cracked or broken. Key 

recent FRA initiatives to reduce accidents caused by track defects include 

 8

FRA issued this proposed regulation in October 2006 and plans to issue a final regulation 

by the end of 2007. 

9

According to FRA, a close call represents a situation in which an ongoing sequence of 

events was stopped from developing further, preventing the occurrence of potentially 

serious safety-related consequences. 

10Railroad employees often work long hours and have unpredictable and fluctuating work

schedules. FRA and the National Transportation Safety Board have identified employee

fatigue as a significant factor in many train accidents. FRA does not have the authority to 

regulate railroad worker duty hours. However, the department recently proposed 

legislation to Congress to reauthorize FRA (S. 918 and H.R. 1516) that would give the

agency authority to do so.

11These programs will include efforts by railroads to prevent accidents through collecting 

and analyzing data on accident precursors—such as close call incidents, employee errors, 

or organizational characteristics—to better identify and correct individual and 

organizational characteristics that contribute to accidents. FRA plans to initiate this pilot 

project in fiscal year 2008, contingent upon funding. The department’s proposed legislation 

refers to this initiative as the Safety Risk Reduction Program.

Page 6 GAO-07-841T Rail Safety Oversight
Rail Safety Oversight

• two additional track inspection vehicles that can precisely measure track 

during inspections12 and 

• new regulations on inspections of rail joints in continuous welded rail 

track.13

These initiatives are in varying stages of development or implementation 

and use a variety of approaches, some quite innovative, for addressing the 

causes of human factor and track accidents. While they have the potential

to eventually reduce these types of accidents, it is too early to predict their 

outcomes. The human factor initiatives, except for the proposed 

regulations, depend on voluntary actions by railroads, and, in some cases, 

labor as well, for their success. 

FRA has developed a new approach—the National Inspection Plan—for 

using available data to target its inspections at the greatest safety risks. 

The plan provides guidance to each regional office on how its inspectors 

within each of the five inspection disciplines should divide up their work 

by railroad and state. It is based on trend analyses of accident, inspection, 

and other data that predict locations where train accidents and incidents 

are likely to occur within each region and provide the optimal allocation of 

inspection resources to prevent accidents. 

Previously, FRA had a less structured, less consistent, and less data-driven 

approach for planning inspections. According to agency officials, each

region prepared its own inspection plan, based on judgments about 

appropriate priorities and analysis of available data. However, the use of 

data was not consistent from region to region. Inspectors had greater 

discretion about where to inspect and based decisions about priorities on 

their knowledge of their inspection territories. 

FRA’s new approach for planning its inspection activity allows it to better 

target the greatest safety risks and make more effective use of its 

inspectors. However, it is not yet clear whether the new approach will lead 

FRA Has Made Progress in 

Targeting Its Inspections 

on the Basis of Risk 

 12According to FRA, these additional vehicles allow the agency to triple the miles of track 

that it is able to inspect per year, to nearly 100,000 miles. FRA also inspects track 

conditions through manual inspections conducted on foot or in on-track equipment. 

13In continuous welded rail track, rails are welded together to form one continuous rail that

may be several miles long. There may be joints in this rail for several reasons, including the

need to replace a section of defective rail. 

Page 7 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

to a prioritization of inspection levels across regions and inspection 

disciplines or improved safety. 

In carrying out its safety oversight, FRA identifies a range of safety 

problems on railroad systems mainly through routine inspections to 

determine whether operations, track, and equipment are in compliance 

with safety standards. FRA’s inspections do not attempt to determine how 

well railroads are managing safety risks throughout their systems. APTA, 

PHMSA, and Transport Canada have implemented approaches to oversee 

the management of safety risks by U.S. commuter railroads, U.S. pipelines, 

and Canadian railroads, respectively. These oversight approaches 

complement, rather than replace, traditional compliance inspections and 

therefore provide additional assurance of safety.

FRA primarily monitors railroads’ compliance through routine inspections

by individual inspectors at specific sites on railroads’ systems. Inspectors 

typically cover a range of standards within their discipline during these 

inspections. This inspection approach focuses on direct observations of 

specific components of the train, related equipment, and railroad 

property—including the track and signal systems—as well as operating 

practices to determine whether they meet FRA’s standards. (See fig. 2.) 

Inspectors also examine railroads’ inspection and maintenance records. 

The railroads have their own inspectors who are responsible for ensuring 

that railroad equipment, track, and operations meet federal rail safety 

standards. 

FRA Relies Primarily 

on Direct Inspections 

to Identify Safety 

Problems and Does 

Not Oversee 

Railroads’ 

Management of Safety 

Risks 

FRA’s Oversight Identifies 

a Range of Problems on 

Railroad Systems 

Page 8 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

Figure 2: FRA Inspector Inspecting Train Cars 

FRA also conducts more in-depth inspection efforts that generally focus 

on railroads’ compliance in a particular area, such as their inspections of 

employees’ adherence to operating rules. These efforts often involve a 

team conducting separate inspections at multiple sites, generally within 

one of FRA’s eight regions. FRA also periodically conducts in-depth 

inspections of some systemwide programs that railroads are required to 

implement, such as employee drug and alcohol testing programs. 

In 2005, federal and state inspectors conducted about 63,000 inspections. 

According to FRA, routine inspections constituted about 75 percent of the 

inspections of railroads, and in-depth inspections accounted for about 11 

percent. The remainder of these inspections (14 percent) consisted of 

other types of activities, such as investigations of accidents and 

complaints. This approach to oversight enables FRA inspectors and 

managers to identify a wide range of safety problems. Inspectors identify 

specific compliance problems—conditions that do not meet FRA’s 

standards—at sites they visit, by citing defects. Inspectors cite violations

of safety standards for those defects that they believe warrant

Page 9 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

enforcement action. They consider a number of factors in making this 

decision, including the railroad’s history of compliance at that location and 

the seriousness of the noncompliance (such as whether it is likely to cause 

accidents, injuries, or releases of hazardous materials). Inspectors in some 

disciplines cite more defects and violations than others. (See fig. 3.) 

Figure 3: Inspections Conducted and Defects and Violations Cited, by Inspection 

Discipline, in 2005 

Note: These figures include inspections carried out by both federal and state inspectors. Inspectors 

are instructed to cite defects for most instances of noncompliance found, but have discretion in 

determining which instances to cite as violations warranting enforcement action. 

The motive power and equipment discipline cites almost half of all defects 

and over a third of all violations. FRA officials told us that the standards in 

this inspection discipline are the most prescriptive, making defects and 

violations easier to find. However, these types of defects cause a much 

Page 10 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

smaller proportion of accidents than human factors and track defects.14

The most frequently cited violations include those for noncompliance with 

standards for locomotives and freight cars, track conditions, 

recordkeeping on the inspection and repair of equipment and track, and

the condition of hazardous materials tank cars. 

FRA officials have noted that their approach of directly inspecting safety

conditions and targeting locations that are most likely to have compliance 

problems provides a safety net and holds railroad management 

accountable. However, because the number of FRA and state inspectors is 

small relative to the size of railroad operations, FRA inspections can cover 

only a very small proportion of railroad operations (0.2 percent). Also, 

FRA targets inspections at locations on railroads’ systems where accidents 

have occurred, among other factors, rather than overseeing whether 

railroads systematically identify and address safety risks that could lead to 

accidents. 

Risk management can help to improve systemwide safety by

systematically identifying and assessing risks associated with various 

safety hazards and prioritizing them so that resources may be allocated to 

address the highest risks first. It also can help in ensuring that the most 

appropriate alternatives to prevent or mitigate the effects of hazards are 

designed and implemented. A framework for risk management based on 

industry best practices and other criteria that we have developed divides 

risk management into five major phases: (1) setting strategic goals and 

objectives, and determining constraints; (2) assessing risks; (3) evaluating

alternatives for addressing these risks; (4) selecting the appropriate 

alternatives; and (5) implementing the alternatives and monitoring the 

progress made and results achieved.

Other transportation oversight organizations have developed and 

implemented approaches for overseeing industries’ overall management of 

safety risks. In particular, during the last 10 years, APTA, PHMSA, and 

Several Other 

Organizations Have 

Implemented 

Comprehensive 

Approaches for Overseeing 

the Management of Safety 

Risks in Transportation 

Industries 

 14FRA officials have explained that operating practices inspectors have had a limited ability 

to cite defects and violations because of the way regulations in this area are written. For 

example, as noted previously, the regulations contain general requirements about railroads’ 

programs for inspecting employees’ adherence to operating rules and do not specifically 

require that employees follow these rules. The agency expects that its proposed regulations 

on operating rules will improve its ability to enforce in this area, because the requirements 

will be more stringent than existing regulations. 

Page 11 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

Transport Canada have developed and implemented such oversight 

approaches for U.S. commuter railroads, U.S. pipelines, and Canadian 

railroads, respectively. These approaches complement, rather than 

replace, traditional compliance inspections. APTA provides guidelines to 

commuter railroads on managing the safety of their systems—including 

safety risks—and audits their plans for and implementation of this 

management approach.15 PHMSA requires that pipeline operators develop

“integrity management” programs to manage risk in areas—such as those 

that are densely populated—where leaks or ruptures could have the 

greatest impact on public safety and inspects operators’ compliance with 

these requirements.16 In Canada, the department responsible for 

overseeing railroad safety, Transport Canada, requires that railroads 

establish safety management systems that include risk management and 

assesses these systems.17 APTA, PHMSA, and Transport Canada have 

emphasized that risk management provides a higher standard of 

performance than traditional safety regulation based on compliance alone. 

We have reviewed PHMSA’s gas transmission pipeline integrity 

management oversight approach and have recently concluded that it 

enhances public safety.18 Operators told us that the primary benefit of the 

program is the comprehensive knowledge they acquire about the condition

of their pipelines. APTA and Transport Canada officials have told us that 

their oversight approaches have not been formally evaluated to determine 

their effectiveness. 

FRA has taken some steps in a limited number of areas to oversee and 

encourage risk management in the railroad industry. For example, the 

agency has several regulations in place that require railroads to use a riskbased approach for managing safety in some specific areas, such as the 

operation of high-speed passenger trains. In addition, as noted earlier, FRA 

has proposed establishing pilot risk reduction programs at participating 

 15APTA is a nonprofit organization representing the transit industry, including U.S.

commuter rail systems. 

16PHMSA administers the national regulatory program to ensure the safe transportation of

hazardous liquids and natural gas by pipeline. 

17Transport Canada oversees the safety and security of Canada’s rail, marine, highway, and 

aviation operations. 

18GAO, Natural Gas Pipeline Safety: Integrity Management Benefits Public Safety, but 

Consistency of Performance Measures Should Be Improved, GAO-06-946 (Washington, 

D.C.: Sept. 8, 2006). 

Page 12 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

worksites. Agency officials have told us that this pilot effort will allow the 

agency to examine how a risk management approach could be used 

voluntarily in the railroad industry to reduce human factor and other types 

of accidents. 

Oversight of railroads’ overall approach for managing safety risks on their 

systems, in addition to FRA’s existing discipline-specific, compliancebased oversight, has the potential to provide additional assurance of 

safety. However, developing and implementing such a new oversight 

approach would be a major undertaking for the agency, and FRA’s current 

initiatives to reduce train accidents need time to mature to demonstrate 

their effects. As a result, we did not recommend in our recent report that 

FRA adopt an approach for overseeing railroads’ management of safety 

risks. 

FRA has a broad range of goals and measures that it uses to provide 

direction to and track the performance of its safety oversight activities. 

However, its ability to make informed decisions about its inspection and 

enforcement programs is limited because it lacks measures of the 

intermediate outcomes, or direct results, of these programs that would 

show how they are contributing toward the end outcomes, or ultimate 

safety improvements, that the agency seeks to achieve. Furthermore, FRA 

has not evaluated the effectiveness of its enforcement approach. Both 

performance measures and evaluations can provide valuable information 

on program results that helps hold agencies accountable for their 

programs’ performance. 

To its credit, FRA has adopted a range of useful safety performance goals

and related measures. These goals help the agency target its oversight 

efforts to achieve the department’s goals of reducing (1) the rate of railrelated accidents and incidents and (2) the number of serious hazardous 

materials releases. For example, FRA has recently established new 

agencywide safety goals that are aligned with its five inspection disciplines 

and its grade-crossing efforts. These include goals to reduce the rates of 

various types of train accidents—including those caused by human 

factors, track defects, and equipment failure—as well as hazardous 

materials releases and grade-crossing incidents. These departmental and 

agency goals represent the key end outcomes, or ultimate results, FRA 

seeks to achieve through its oversight efforts. FRA has also established 

related measures that help the agency determine and demonstrate its 

progress in meeting the desired goals. In addition, it has established 

FRA Measures Its 

Progress in Achieving 

a Variety of Safety 

Goals, but Has 

Limited Information 

on the Direct Results 

of Its Oversight 

FRA Has Established a 

Range of Safety Goals and 

Measures, but Information 

on Direct Results Is 

Limited 

Page 13 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

similar goals and measures for each of its eight regional offices. FRA also 

uses various other measures to manage its oversight efforts, such as 

numbers of inspections performed and enforcement actions taken. 

While FRA has developed a range of goals and measures related to its 

oversight of railroad safety, it lacks measures of the desired intermediate 

outcomes, or direct results, of its inspection and enforcement efforts—the 

correction of identified safety problems and improvements in compliance. 

(See fig. 4.) According to FRA officials, inspectors review reports on 

corrective actions provided by railroads and always follow up on serious 

identified problems to ensure that they are corrected. However, the agency

does not measure the extent to which the identified safety problems have

been corrected. FRA also lacks overall measures of railroads’ compliance. 

Officials have emphasized that the agency relies on inspectors’ day-to-day 

oversight of and interaction with railroads to track compliance.19

Figure 4: How FRA’s Inspection and Enforcement Programs Contribute to Rail Safety 

Program outputs

Enforcement actions for

violations found 

Cooperation with railroads, 

such as discussions to 

remedy safety problems

Intermediate outcomes

Correct safety problems

Achieve compliance

End outcomes

Reduce railroad

accidents and incidents

Reduce releases of

hazardous materials

Source: GAO analysis of FRA information.

Note: The program outputs and intermediate outcomes included in this figure are examples of the 

outputs and intended direct results of FRA’s inspection and enforcement programs. We identified 

these as outputs and intermediate outcomes based on discussions with FRA officials; FRA itself has 

not identified them as such. 

Without measures of intermediate outcomes, the extent to which FRA’s 

inspection and enforcement programs are achieving direct results and 

contributing to desired end outcomes is not clear. We recognize that 

developing such measures would be difficult and that it is challenging for 

regulatory agencies to develop such measures. Nevertheless, some other 

 19FRA headquarters and regional officials also analyze defect data in each inspection 

discipline to identify emerging issues and plan inspection activity. 

Page 14 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

regulatory agencies in the Department of Transportation have done so. For 

example, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration measures the 

percentage of truck companies that improve their performance in a followup inspection. 

FRA Has Made Changes in 

Response to Evaluations 

but Has Not Evaluated Its 

Enforcement Approach 

By examining a broader range of information than is feasible to monitor 

on an ongoing basis through performance measures, evaluation studies 

can explore the benefits of a program as well as ways to improve program 

performance. They can also be used to develop or improve agencies’

measures of program performance and help ensure agencies’ 

accountability for program results. Although FRA has modified several 

aspects of its safety oversight in response to external and internal 

evaluations, it has not evaluated the extent to which its enforcement is 

achieving desired results. 

Under FRA’s current “focused enforcement” policy, developed in the mid1990s, inspectors cite a small percentage of identified defects (about 3 

percent in 2005) as violations that they recommend for enforcement 

action, generally civil penalties. While this policy relies to a great extent on

cooperation with railroads to achieve compliance and is intended to focus 

FRA’s enforcement efforts on those instances of noncompliance that pose 

the greatest safety hazards, it is not clear whether the number of civil 

penalties issued, or their amounts, are having the desired effect of 

improving compliance. Without an evaluation of its enforcement program, 

FRA is missing an opportunity to obtain valuable information on the 

performance of this program and on any need for adjustments to improve 

this performance. 

In the report we issued in January, we recommended that FRA (1) develop

and implement measures of the direct results of its inspection and 

enforcement programs and (2) evaluate the agency’s enforcement program 

to provide further information on its results, the need for additional data 

to measure and assess these results, and the need for any changes in this

program to improve performance. In its response, the department 

concurred with the first recommendation but said that, because FRA 

needs to develop appropriate data, the agency would not be able to 

implement new measures before the end of 2008. The department stated 

that FRA lacks the resources to carry out our second recommendation but

will consider requesting such resources for fiscal year 2009. As part of our 

normal recommendation follow-up activity, we will work toward FRA’s 

adoption of our recommendations. 

Page 15 GAO-07-841T
Rail Safety Oversight

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased

to respond to any questions that you or other Members of the 

Subcommittee might have. 

For further information on this statement, please contact Katherine 

Siggerud at (202) 512-2834 or siggerudk@gao.gov. Individuals making key 

contributions to this testimony were Judy Guilliams-Tapia and James 

Ratzenberger. 

Page 16 GAO-07-841T

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