Rail Safety: The Federal Railroad Administration Is Better
Targeting Its Oversight, but Needs to Assess the Impact of Its
Efforts (30-JAN-07, GAO-07-390T).
Although the overall safety record of the railroad industry, as
measured by the number of train accidents per million miles
traveled, has improved markedly since 1980, there has been little
or no overall improvement over the past decade. Serious accidents
resulting in injuries and deaths continue to occur, such as one
in Graniteville, South Carolina, 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 reviewing a
draft of that report, the Department of Transportation did not
provide overall views on its contents or its recommendations. The
statement is based on GAO's recent report.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-07-390T
ACCNO: A65386
TITLE: Rail Safety: The Federal Railroad Administration Is
Better Targeting Its Oversight, but Needs to Assess the Impact of
Its Efforts
DATE: 01/30/2007
SUBJECT: Accident prevention
Accidents
Agency evaluation
Inspection
Performance measures
Policy evaluation
Railroad accidents
Railroad industry
Railroad regulation
Railroad safety
Risk management
Safety regulation
Safety standards
Strategic planning
Transportation
Government agency oversight
Policies and procedures
FRA National Rail Safety Action Plan
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GAO-07-390T
* [1]Background
* [2]FRA Has Made Progress in Targeting Its Oversight Efforts on
* [3]FRA Is Making a Number of Efforts to Reduce Accidents Caused
* [4]FRA Has Made Progress in Targeting Its Inspections on the Ba
* [5]FRA Relies Primarily on Direct Inspections to Identify Safet
* [6]FRA's Oversight Identifies a Range of Problems on Railroad S
* [7]Several Other Organizations Have Implemented Comprehensive A
* [8]FRA Measures Its Progress in Achieving a Variety of Safety G
* [9]FRA Has Established a Range of Safety Goals and Measures, bu
* [10]FRA Has Made Changes in Response to Evaluations but Has Not
* [11]GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgement
* [12]Order by Mail or Phone
Testimony
Before the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives
United States Government Accountability Office
GAO
For Release on Delivery Expected at 2:00 p.m. EST
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
RAIL SAFETY
The Federal Railroad Administration Is Better Targeting Its Oversight, but
Needs to Assess the Impact of Its Efforts
Statement of Katherine Siggerud
Physical Infrastructure Issues
GAO-07-390T
Madam Chairwoman and Members of the Subcommittee:
We appreciate the opportunity to participate in this hearing today to
discuss the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) 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 or no overall
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 2005
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 last week.^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. 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^2 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:
o 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.^3 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.
o 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.^4 These
oversight approaches complement, rather than replace, traditional
compliance inspections and, therefore, provide additional
assurance of safety.
o 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 reviewed a draft of our report but
did not comment on our recommendations.
Background
On average, about 450 people have been injured and 14 people have
been killed in train accidents each year over the past decade,
from 1996 through 2005, 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.^5
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,^6
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 2005, 72 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
o proposed regulations aimed at reducing the most common causes of
these accidents, such as improper positioning of track switches;^7
o a 5-year pilot project to establish a confidential voluntary
system for reporting and learning from close call incidents;^8
o a study to develop a fatigue model that could be used by
railroads to improve train crew scheduling practices and prevent
worker fatigue;^9 and
o a proposed 5-year pilot project that would use risk management
to help reduce human factor accidents, as well as other types of
accidents, at selected railroad worksites.
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
o two additional track inspection vehicles that can precisely
measure track during inspections;^10 and
o new regulations on inspections of rail joints in continuous
welded rail track and plans to develop additional regulations to
improve railroads' management of this type of track.^11
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
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
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.
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.^12 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.^13 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.^14 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.^15 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.^16 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, FRA is considering establishing a pilot
project 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 also 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.^17
1See GAO, The Federal Railroad Administration Is Taking Steps to Better
Target Its Oversight, but Assessment of Results Is Needed to Determine
Impact, [13]GAO-07-149 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 26, 2007).
^2See U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the Inspector General,
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).
^3Generally, human factors are behaviors that affect job performance, such
as incorrectly setting switches.
^4Risk management can be described as a systematic approach for
identifying, analyzing, and controlling risks.
^5For 2005, the Surface Transportation Board has defined Class I railroads
as railroads earning adjusted annual operating revenues of $319.3 million
or more.
^6This number does not include contractor employees hired by the
railroads.
^7FRA issued this proposed regulation in October 2006 and plans to issue a
final regulation by the end of 2007.
^8According 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.
^9Railroad 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.
^10According to FRA, these additional vehicles will 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.
^11In 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.
^12FRA 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.
^13APTA is a nonprofit organization representing the transit industry,
including U.S. commuter rail systems.
^14PHMSA administers the national regulatory program to ensure the safe
transportation of hazardous liquids and natural gas by pipeline.
^15Transport Canada oversees the safety and security of Canada's rail,
marine, highway, and aviation operations.
^16GAO, Natural Gas Pipeline Safety: Integrity Management Benefits Public
Safety, but Consistency of Performance Measures Should Be Improved.
[14]GAO-06-946 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 8, 2006).
Figure 4: How FRA's Inspection and Enforcement Programs Contribute to Rail
Safety
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.
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.
^17FRA headquarters and regional officials also analyze defect data in
each inspection discipline to identify emerging issues and plan inspection
activity.
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 last week, 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. FRA did not express a view on these
recommendations when it commented on our draft report. As part of our
normal recommendation follow-up activity, we will work toward FRA's
adoption of our recommendations.
Madam Chairwoman, 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 [email protected] . Individuals making
key contributions to this testimony were Judy Guilliams-Tapia, Bonnie
Pignatiello Leer, and James Ratzenberger.
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Highlights of [23]GAO-07-390T , a testimony before the Subcommittee on
Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, Committee on Transportation
and Infrastructure, House of Representatives
January 30, 2007
RAIL SAFETY
The Federal Railroad Administration Is Better Targeting Its Oversight, but
Needs to Assess the Impact of Its Efforts
Although the overall safety record of the railroad industry, as measured
by the number of train accidents per million miles traveled, has improved
markedly since 1980, there has been little or no overall improvement over
the past decade. Serious accidents resulting in injuries and deaths
continue to occur, such as one in Graniteville, South Carolina, 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 reviewing a draft of that report, the
Department of Transportation did not provide overall views on its contents
or its recommendations.
The 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 themwill 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.
Track Inspector Examining Rail to Assess Its Safety Compliance
References
Visible links
13. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-149
14. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-946
23. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-390T
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