Analysis of freight train collision risk in the United States

Abstract

Rail transportation is pivotal for the national economy. Despite being rare, a train accident can potentially result in severe consequences, such as infrastructure damage costs, casualties, and environmental impacts. An understanding of accident frequency, severity, and risk is important for rail safety management. In the United States, extensive prior research has focused on risk analyses of train derailments and highway–rail grade crossing accidents. Relatively less work has been conducted regarding train collision risk. The US Federal Railroad Administration identifies various accident causes, among which the authors of this study have analyzed the major collision causes. For each major accident cause, the authors have analyzed its resultant collision frequency, severity (in terms of damage cost or casualties), and correspondingly the risk, which is the combination of the frequency and severity. The analysis was based on train collision data in the United States from 2001 to 2015. This analysis focuses on freight trains in the United States, due to their immense traffic exposure. On the temporal scale, collision rate (the number of collisions normalized by traffic exposure) has an approximately 5% annual reduction. In terms of collision cause, failures to obey signals, overspeeds, and violations of mainline operating rules accounted for more collisions than other causes. Two alternative risk measures, namely the expected consequence and conditional value at risk, were used to evaluate the freight train collision risk on main tracks, accounting for both the average and worst-case scenarios. This collision risk analysis methodology may provide the US Department of Transportation and railroad industry with information and decision support for identifying, evaluating, and implementing cost-effective risk mitigation strategies.

Comprehensive risk assessment of Pakistan railway network: A semi-quantitative risk matrix approach

“…For example, collisions involving passenger or goods trains may occur infrequently due to proper safety protocols and effective operational practices [ 64 ], and even if they do occur, they often result in limited damage or injuries due to various safety mechanisms in place [ 65 ]. Averted collisions are also considered as negligible because they cause minimal risk due to immediate response or other mitigating factors [ 66 ]. These risk assessments guide prioritization and intervention strategies for enhancing railway safety and reducing accident risks.…”

Hazardous materials facility siting optimization and ranking: A transportation risk mitigation framework

“…Train movement data available for railway crossing data was obtained from the Government of Canada-Open Data portal [64] and converted to billion train-miles. SPF for railway segments and related coefficients (α = 97.53, β = −0.05 and θ = 3.45) were used as per Eq (6) as suggested by [65,66] based on 15 years of train collision data of the United States from 2001 to 2015. The year index of 2020 was used.…”

A Category Classification Based Safety Risk Assessment Method for Railway Wagon Loading Status

“…In terms of risk assessment of rail freight transport system, some researchers take the railway freight system as the object based on statistical data, mostly focus on rail transport of hazardous material [9][10][11][12]. Turla Tejashree et al [6] proposed two alternative risk measures, namely the expected consequence and conditional value at risk were used to evaluate the freight train collision risk on main tracks, accounting for both the average and worst-case scenarios. Jiang Hui et al [7] proposed railway freight transportation measurement safety monitoring system, to collect and manage the data from detection sites, and integrate the data with the consistent information of railway transportation management information system to achieve the real-time monitoring of freight loading and alarm management.…”