Fault Tree Analysis of Adjacent Track Accidents on Shared-Use Rail Corridors

Abstract

Adjacent-track accidents (ATAs) have been identified as an important hazard on shared-use rail corridors. In these train accidents derailed railroad equipment intrudes on (fouls) an adjacent track, disrupts operations, and potentially causes a collision with trains operating on the fouled tracks. Derailments without intrusion may cause equipment and infrastructure damage, passenger casualties, and disturbances to system operation; however, an intrusion may be even more severe because of the potential involvement of multiple trains. Opportunities for ATAs have increased in recent years because of expanded passenger and transit service on freight railroad trackage, right-of-way, and corridors and because of increased multiple tracks related to capacity expansion projects. This paper presents a probabilistic risk assessment methodology for analyzing ATA risk. An event tree is created to identify scenarios for ATAs, and a fault tree analysis is performed to identify basic events that contribute to such accidents. The quantitative probability of an ATA is derived by using Boolean algebra on the basis of the results of the fault tree analysis.

Semi-Quantitative Risk Assessment of Adjacent Track Accidents on Shared-Use Rail Corridors

“…The major concern is the severe consequence resulted from the collision between derailed equipment and trains on adjacent track. Previous research shows the average casualties for passenger train collisions is higher than the average casualties for passenger train derailments (2). Because ATA may include both passenger train and freight train, the consequence of ATA includes multiple types of impact as follows:  Casualties (injuries and fatalities)  Equipment damage  Infrastructure damage  Non-railroad property damage  System disturbance and delay  Environmental impact  Economic loss Casualties refer to passenger and non-passenger fatalities or injuries, and/or casualties due to exposure to hazardous materials release in an ATA involving a freight train transporting hazardous materials.…”

“…A large number of developments of improved or expanded passenger rail service in the U.S. involve the use of existing railroad infrastructure or rights of way (1). Shared or Mixed Use Rail Corridors (SRC) refer to different types of passenger and/or freight train operations using common infrastructure in one way or another (2). Figure 1 shows three types of SRC: shared track, shared right-of-way and shared corridor, defined by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).…”

“…North America has a long history of shared-use rail corridors. There has been plenty of research addressing the safety issue of SRC in the U.S. (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). However, limited studies focused specifically on the risk of ATAs on SRC (4,5,6) during 1990s.…”

Quantitative causal analysis of mainline passenger train accidents in the United States

“…57–61 Lin et al. 62 conducted a fault tree analysis to identify major factors that could lead to an adjacent track accident on SRCs. Lin and Saat 63 developed a semi-quantitative risk assessment model to evaluate the adjacent track accident risk and identified factors that affect the train intrusion probability.…”

A Network Method for Identifying the Root Cause of High-Speed Rail Faults Based on Text Data

“…Much research has been proposed to identify the root cause, such as Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) [3], anticipatory failure determination (AFD) [4], subversion analysis [5], root conflicts analysis (RCA+) [6], etc. FTA is mainly used to construct the tree structure of accident faults and find out the cause of the accident failure.…”