Rail Safety
The Federal Railroad Administration Is Better Targeting Safety Risks, but Needs to Assess Results to Determine the Impact of Its Efforts
Gao ID: GAO-07-841T May 22, 2007
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.
GAO-07-841T, Rail Safety: The Federal Railroad Administration Is Better Targeting Safety Risks, but Needs to Assess Results to Determine the Impact of Its Efforts
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Testimony:
Before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine
Infrastructure, Safety, and Security, Committee on Commerce, Science
and Transportation, U.S. Senate:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
For Release on Delivery Expected at 10:00 a.m. EST:
Tuesday, 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:
Statement of Katherine Siggerud, Director:
Physical Infrastructure Issues:
GAO-07-841T:
GAO Highlights:
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
Why GAO Did This Study:
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.
What GAO Found:
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.
Figure: Track Inspector Examining Rail to Assess Its Safety Compliance:
[See PDF for Image]
Source: FRA.
[End of figure]
[Hyperlink, http://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.
[End of section]
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:
[See PDF for image]
Source: FRA.
Note: The rate for 2006 is preliminary.
[End of figure]
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 oversight efforts on safety. Our findings
are discussed in more detail in our report, which was released in
January.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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 accidents[Footnote 3] 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 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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, 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.
Background:
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.[Footnote 6] 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,[Footnote 7] 219,000 miles of track in operation,
158,000 signals and switches, and over 1.6 million locomotives and
cars.
FRA Has Made Progress in Targeting Its Oversight Efforts on the Basis
of Risk:
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 Is Making a Number of Efforts to Reduce Accidents Caused by Human
Factors and Track Defects, but Results Are Not Yet Clear:
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;[Footnote 8]
* a 5-year pilot project to establish a confidential voluntary system
for reporting and learning from close call incidents;[Footnote 9]
* a study to develop a fatigue model that could be used by railroads to
improve train crew scheduling practices and prevent worker
fatigue;[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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:
* two additional track inspection vehicles that can precisely measure
track during inspections[Footnote 12] and:
* new regulations on inspections of rail joints in continuous welded
rail track.[Footnote 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 Made Progress in Targeting Its Inspections on the Basis of
Risk:
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.
FRA Relies Primarily on Direct Inspections to Identify Safety Problems
and Does Not Oversee Railroads' Management of Safety Risks:
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's Oversight Identifies a Range of Problems on Railroad Systems:
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.
Figure 2: FRA Inspector Inspecting Train Cars:
[see PDF for Image]
Source: FRA.
[End of figure]
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.)
Figure 3: Inspections Conducted and Defects and Violations Cited, by
Inspection Discipline, in 2005:
[See PDF for Image]
Source: GAO analysis of FRA data.
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.
[End of figure]
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.[Footnote 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.
Several Other Organizations Have Implemented Comprehensive Approaches
for Overseeing the Management of Safety Risks in Transportation
Industries:
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
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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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
risk-based 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 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,
compliance-based 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 Measures Its Progress in Achieving a Variety of Safety Goals, but
Has Limited Information on the Direct Results of Its Oversight:
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.
FRA Has Established a Range of Safety Goals and Measures, but
Information on Direct Results Is Limited:
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 rail-related 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 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.[Footnote 19]
Figure 4: How FRA's Inspection and Enforcement Programs Contribute to
Rail Safety:
[See PDF for image]
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.
[End of figure]
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 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 follow-up 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 mid-
1990s, 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.
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.
GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgement:
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.
FOOTNOTES
[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).
[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.
[6] For 2006, the Surface Transportation Board defined Class I
railroads as railroads earning adjusted annual operating revenues of
$319.3 million or more.
[7] This number does not include contractor employees hired by the
railroads.
[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.
[10] Railroad 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.
[11] These 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.
[12] According 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.
[13] In 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.
[14] FRA 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.
[15] APTA is a nonprofit organization representing the transit
industry, including U.S. commuter rail systems.
[16] PHMSA administers the national regulatory program to ensure the
safe transportation of hazardous liquids and natural gas by pipeline.
[17] Transport Canada oversees the safety and security of Canada's
rail, marine, highway, and aviation operations.
[18] GAO, 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).
[19] FRA headquarters and regional officials also analyze defect data
in each inspection discipline to identify emerging issues and plan
inspection activity.
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