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. Under this program, the agency assigns an FRA 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, 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. 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 proposed regulations aimed at reducing the most common causes of these accidents, such as improper positioning of track switches; a 5-year pilot project to establish a confidential voluntary system for reporting and learning from close call incidents; a study to develop a fatigue model that could be used by railroads to improve train crew scheduling practices and prevent worker fatigue; 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. 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 two additional track inspection vehicles that can precisely measure track during inspections and new regulations on inspections of rail joints in continuous welded rail track. 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 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 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 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.) 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 smaller proportion of accidents than human factors and track defects. 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.