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 Railroadsï¿½ 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.
			  
			  FRAï¿½s 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.

(542107)

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www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-390T .

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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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