Abstract
The mainline freight train derailment rate of major railroads in the United States declined 49% from 2006 to 2015. Nevertheless, derailments remain the leading cause of major railroad accidents. Identification and quantification of the types of train accidents, the trackage where they occur, and the causes having the greatest effect on train safety and risk is critical to determine the most effective strategies for further improvement. Federal Railroad Administration data were used to quantify factors contributing to the declining accident trend. Most derailment causes declined with the greatest reductions in broken rails and welds, track geometry, and other axle and journal defects. Of the few causes that increased, extreme weather was the largest. An updated statistical model of the relationship between track class, traffic density, method of operation, and derailment rate is also developed. Derailments declined uniformly with respect to all combinations of the three factors, indicating a broad general decline across the network. The new model also provides up-to-date derailment rate estimates for use in risk analysis of railroad freight and hazardous materials transportation.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available in a repository online in accordance with funder data retention policies at https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/OfficeofSafety/publicsite/on_the_fly_download.aspx. Some or all data, models, or code used during the study were provided by a third party. Direct requests for these materials may be made to the provider as indicated in the Acknowledgments. Analysis of Class I railroads, published by the Association of American Railroads, is available for purchase at https://my.aar.org/Pages/allproducts.aspx. Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request (raw, preprocessed data for the analysis; SAS code for the log-linear analysis).
Acknowledgments
Support for this research was provided by the Association of American Railroads, BNSF Railway, and the National University Rail Center, a US DOT Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R) Tier 1 University Transportation Center. This paper is solely the work of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the sponsors. The authors thank Samantha Chadwick and Chen-Yu Lin for providing insights and discussion of this study, and the reviewers for their helpful comments that helped improve the manuscript.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 146 • Issue 11 • November 2020
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© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Oct 14, 2019
Accepted: Jun 24, 2020
Published online: Aug 31, 2020
Published in print: Nov 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Jan 31, 2021
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