The highest priority of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is the safety of the United States railroad system, which, in the year 2000, encompassed 660 railroads, 220,000 miles of track, 20,000 freight locomotives, 8,800 passenger locomotives/coaches, 1,300,000 freight cars, and 265,000 employees. The demands on this system are continuously growing, and changing technologies provide the opportunity to improve system safety, security, effectiveness, and efficiency. The FRA addresses safety concerns in all phases of railroad operations—through research, development, and demonstrations (RD&D), development of new regulations, and enforcement activities to ensure that railroads in the United States continue to be among the world’s safest. In addition, FRA undertakes projects to stimulate and encourage the deployment of innovative and safe intermodal freight service, light rail and commuter rail services, high-speed rail service, and magnetic levitation passenger service in the United States.

This Five-Year Strategic Plan for Railroad Research, Development, and Demonstrations (“Five-Year Plan for RD&D”) was prepared at the request of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and is being published at a time of rapid changes in technology and in the structure and nature of the railroad industry.

1.1 U.S. RAILROAD INDUSTRY

The changes that occurred in the freight railroad industry over the past seven years have been as radical as any that have taken place in the 175-year history of the industry. There are now only four major freight railroads: Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific. Together they represent about 90 percent of the business in the freight railroad industry. Mid-sized railroads, such as Kansas City Southern, Guilford Rail System, Montana Rail Link, Florida East Coast, and the U.S. lines of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, serve regional markets. A large and growing number of short line railroads serving sub-regional and local markets throughout the country have come into being as the large railroads sell off unprofitable branch lines to private operators that have the ability to provide better service at lower cost. A growing number of short lines are being purchased by holding companies, but others are owned by individuals and small businesses, and some are owned by states and municipalities. The structural changes in the railroad industry are occurring as the market for railroad freight transportation continues to reach record levels. Only half of the freight car fleet is owned by railroads; the other half is owned by shippers and private car owners. Profitability of the railroad industry reached an all-time high in 1996, but has declined since the major railroads had difficulties in implementing mergers and acquisitions and as the economy slowed in late 2000 and 2001. The freight railroad industry does not appear as yet to have arrived at a stable institutional structure.

Amtrak, a quasi-public corporation, remains the sole providerof intercity rail passenger service in the contiguous 48 States. The Alaska Railroad, a state-owned corporation, operates intercity rail passenger service in Alaska and is planning to establish commuter service. There are now 19 commuter railroads subject to FRA oversight, ranging from large ones, such as the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), MetroNorth Railroad, New Jersey Transit (NJT), Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation (METRA), and Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA- Metrolink), to smaller operators such as Vermont Railway Company (Champlain Flyer), Connecticut Department of Transportation, Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation (PATH), Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, Maryland Mass Transit Administration (MARC), Virginia Railway Express, Florida’s Tri-County Commuter Rail Authority (Tri-Rail), Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART - Trinity Rail), San Diego Northern Railway (Coaster), Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (Caltrain), Altamont Commuter Express in California, and Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sounder). Public authorities own all the commuter railroads. Some of these commuter railroads operate on their own tracks and provide operating rights to freight railroads and Amtrak; others are tenants on trackage owned by freight railroads or Amtrak; and some have both arrangements. Amtrak is the contract operator of services for several of these commuter railroads, while other commuter railroads contract with freight railroads or private companies to operate their services. Long Island Railroad operates it own trains.

1.2 TRENDS IN RAILROAD OPERATIONS

Just as the structure of the railroad industry has changed, so too has the nature of railroad operations. In the years immediately following economic deregulation in 1981, the railroads sought to make more efficient use of their assets. They found themselves with excess physical plant and equipment resources and have worked over the following decade to downsize their operations to improve their profitability.

A number of converging circumstances brought the downsizing activities to an end in the mid-1990’s. The U. S. economy continued to grow during the longest peacetime expansion in history, trucking companies faced driver shortages, and highway congestion imposed higher costs on trucking companies.

The freight railroad companies have responded to the growing demand for their services by running more trains, heavier trains, and faster trains with fewer, larger locomotives. The railroad industry’s share of the ton-miles of the intercity freight market has grown from less than 38 percent in 1990 to more than 40 percent today. For the first time since World War II, some railroads have capacity constraints on certain lines. The rail lines in the Chicago terminal area in particular have become quite congested. The passage of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) has meant a significant increase in rail traffic across U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico, particularly with intermodal service, both piggyback and containers. Trucking companies, long viewed as competitors of railroads, are now among the railroads’ largest customers, contracting with railroads for the long-haul transport of containers and trailers. New and innovative types of intermodal equipment, such as RoadRailers, and roll-on roll-off trainsets for hauling trailers, are supplementing traditional piggyback and double-stack container trains (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). The trucking companies and their shippers are placing greater demands on railroads for speed and delivery reliability of these intermodal shipments. Finally, E-commerce, conducted over the Internet, is changing the way railroads deal with their customers, their suppliers, and one another.

Just as the freight railroad industry is rapidly evolving, so are passenger operators. Amtrak has invested in electrification and new, electrified Acela Express trainsets, that provide 150 mile per hour service on portions of the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston (see Figure 1.3). Thirty-four States, including New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, Oregon, and California, are participating in the development of high-speed rail.

In September 1997, the FRA published its report, High-Speed Ground Transportation for America, which examined the commercial feasibility of upgraded passenger train service, new high-speed rail service, and maglev service on eight corridors around the country. The report examined whether any of these services would exhibit “partnership potential,” meaning: (1) private enterprise must be able to run the corridor—once built and paid for—as a completely self-sustaining entity, and (2) the total benefits of a corridor service must equal or exceed its total costs. The report found that upgraded passenger train service would meet this test of commercial feasibility on all eight corridors examined, that new high-speed rail service could meet it on five of the corridors, and that maglev service could meet it on four.

The most rapidly growing segment of the railroad industry (and of the transit industry) is the commuter rail market. The number of commuter rail trips has grown 27 percent over the past decade. Congestion on highways in and between some major urban areas has brought about renewed interest in commuter and intercity rail passenger services. Commuter ridership has burgeoned in the east, Midwest, and Far West. New commuter rail service is being planned in cities as varied as Burlington (Vermont), Atlanta, Kansas City, and Anchorage. Many of the new services will share rights-of-way and track with freight rail operators. Additionally, as States are looking into new high-speed corridor services to reduce pressures on highways and airports, there is a greater commingling of freight and passenger trains. Both trends bring with them a greater concern about the safety of these services sharing common tracks, as well as implications for scarce capacity.

The restructuring of the freight railroad industry is already producing major shifts in traffic flows. Individual companies now have more than one line between some major urban areas, which may enable freight and passenger traffic to be isolated on separate routes in certain corridors. On other corridors, however, the traffic shifts are resulting in greater congestion, leaving less space for intercity passenger and commuter trains.

1.3 RAILROAD SAFETY TRENDS

Over the past twenty years, the railroad industry has invested over $80 billion in track and equipment. This investment has played a key role in the industry’s drastically improved safety record. Since 1981, the frequency of accidents/incidents is down almost 74 percent and the number of accidents per train-mile is down almost 65 percent. In addition to increased infrastructure investment, the improvement is attributed to a number of factors, including application of the results of FRA’s and the railroad industry’s R&D programs, and improved safety awareness on the part of railroad employees and management.

Of the total number of reportable railroad accidents in 2000, 38 percent were attributed to human factors causes, 36 percent to track defects, 12.5 percent to equipment failures, 2.3 percent to signals, and 12 percent to “miscellaneous” as in Table 1.3.1. These percentages have varied only narrowly within each accident cause category over the past eight years. The total number of casualties decreased from 20,400 in 1993 to 12,580 in 2000. During the same period, fatalities declined from 1,279 to 937 and the number of injuries fell from 19,121 to 11,643. The majority of human factors-caused and track-caused accidents were in yards. The majority of equipment-caused, grade crossing, and “miscellaneous” accidents were on main line track.

FRA believes that there are still too many railroad accidents of all types. With a goal of significantly reducing accidents and casualties, research activities will continue focusing on addressing safety issues in each and every technical area that can reduce the probability of accidents.

Table 1.3.1 Causes of Train Accidents 1993-2000

Causes of Accidents	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000
Track	963	911	856	905	879	900	995	1,035
Human factors	865	911	944	783	855	971	1,035	1,147
Equipment	360	293	279	318	271	307	321	372
Signal	54	36	27	49	39	38	49	70
Miscellaneous	369	353	353	388	353	359	372	359
TOTAL	2,611	2,504	2,459	2,443	2,397	2,575	2,768	2,983

Source: FRA Office of Safety

1.4 FRA INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES

Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC)

Just as the railroad industry has been undergoing major changes, so has the FRA. Recognizing that a major change in its rulemaking procedures was needed, the FRA in 1996 established the Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) to assist with the new process of negotiated rulemakings. RSAC brings together representatives of the large, regional, short line, and commuter railroads as well as unions, States, suppliers, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and other groups having an interest in rail safety so that agreement on new regulations can be reached in a fair and equitable manner. The various RSAC working groups have been identifying technological areas requiring further research before agreements can be reached regarding regulations. Some of these technological areas have recently included positive train control and locomotive crashworthiness.

Not anticipated at the time of its creation was how successful the RSAC process would become and the momentum it would develop. Also not anticipated, was the substantial amount of time from the management and staff of FRA’s R&D program that would be required to support RSAC. However, R&D participation in RSAC ensures that R&D is responsive to the needs of the Office of Safety and that research results in areas covered by RSAC are applied in a timely fashion.

Safety Assurance and Compliance Program (SACP)

In order to improve its relations with the railroad industry, FRA established the Safety Assurance and Compliance Program (SACP), which brings a systems-analysis approach to safety oversight. It provides a vehicle for FRA to address safety issues outside the realm of regulation and reduces the adversarial relationship that often exists between the regulator and the regulated community.

Through SACP, railroad labor and management have engaged in collaborative partnerships with FRA to help identify and solve problems related to rail safety.

Because SACP examinations look for root causes of systemic railroad problems, they can have far reaching affects on railroad safety. For example, a site-specific inspection of a railroad signal malfunction may result in a repair order for that specific signal. A SACP multi-discipline inspection of the same situation may uncover a systemic problem that could lead to repair orders for several hundred railroad signals. This leads to a more efficient handling of safety problems.

Since its inception, SACP has evolved. When SACP was first initiated, FRA envisioned only one type of SACP examination: the audit model. In actual operation, SACP has adapted to a variety of different environments and management cultures. Over time, FRA has identified many positive aspects of the program—what works well and what needs improvement. For example, the identification and correction of the root causes that involved employee-fatigue management (a major safety concern) and internal-process changes on the largest railroads did not lend themselves to an audit-type project.

This experience resulted in gradual shifts and changes in the application of SACP. The cumulative effect was to significantly add to the depth of SACP and to the adoption of "best practices approach" to solving problems—options for correcting safety issues and program processes. The experience also helped to identify areas where changes were needed to improve the overall effectiveness of SACP.

While FRA continues to use the original "audit model" process for small railroads or specific facilities, a different kind of SACP review—the ongoing partnership—has become the norm for the larger railroads. Both types of reviews continue to provide significant input to FRA’s safety R&D program.

FRA/FTA Joint Policy Statements

In the late 1990s, FRA began receiving requests from communities for the use of mainline railroad rights-of-way for light rail commuter train operations. Because the jurisdiction of light rail operations falls to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), while intercity freight and passenger operations falls to FRA, some joint agency accommodation is required as light rail operators seek permission to use main line railroad tracks. The most important safety issues related to shared use include:

1. The potential for a catastrophic collision between light rail and conventional railroad freight and passenger equipment;
   
2. Shared use of highway-rail grade crossings;
   
3. Shared infrastructure; and
   
4. Employee safety.

The FRA/FTA joint policy statements, published July 10, 2000, discuss how the two agencies will apply safety laws in different shared use scenarios. FRA will assert jurisdiction over all light rail operations on trackage shared with conventional railroads, including compliance with its highway-rail grade crossing rules. However, FRA and FTA will coordinate oversight where there are concerns about sufficient intrusion detection between parallel operations, and where there are concerns with safety at highway-rail grade crossings, if that is the only connection between the two operators. FRA and FTA have also agreed to cooperate in the management of an R&D program to develop crashworthy commuter rail vehicles, described in Section 4.9 of this Plan.

1.5 TRENDS IN RAILROAD RESEARCH

The FRA manages the program elements described in this Five-Year RD&D Plan with a small staff of Program Managers. The actual work is carried out elsewhere. Some is carried out at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) near Pueblo, Colorado. The TTC facility is owned by FRA on land leased from the State of Colorado, and it is operated under a Care, Custody, and Control contract by Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the AAR. A portion of FRA’s RD&D program (see Chapters 4 and 5) is carried out there under contract with TTCI, and another portion is carried out there under a joint funding agreement with the AAR.

Another significant portion of FRA’s R&D program is carried out by or under the supervision of staff of the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (“Volpe Center”), a unit of USDOT’s Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet another major portion of FRA’s R&D program is carried out by technical companies working under competitively awarded task-order contracts. The remainder of the R&D program is carried out by universities, railroads, and railroad suppliers, consulting engineers, government agencies and other organizations with appropriate technical expertise through grants, cooperative agreements, interagency agreements and contracts.

The Next Generation High-Speed Rail Technology Demonstration Program enters into cooperative agreements with manufacturers and with States to execute the various demonstration projects. They are described in Chapter 5 . The cooperative approach is particularly encouraged because it leverages outside resources, thus minimizing the FRA funding requirements. It also reduces the need for demonstration or deployment funding since partners in the development effort may often also be the end product users; and it affords the FRA a better understanding of the safety needs of the railroad industry as new concepts and technologies are put into use in the railroad environment.

The cooperative approach has proven to be an effective process whereby the FRA, railroads, researchers, States, and private institutions generate the concepts, and with seed funding from the FRA, show the feasibility of an idea or approach. This in turn convinces the industry and contributors of the viability of the idea or approach, thus further securing external RD&D support from the participants.

The FRA’s RD&D activities include reviews of technical literature to identify technological opportunities applicable to railroad safety and high-speed passenger operations. This effort consists of the scanning of technical and scientific literature in all fields of transportation and other engineering fields that might have applicability to railroad issues. The goal is also to identify and establish public-public and public-private partnerships for research, development, and demonstration activities. In an era of constrained resources, it is important that research findings and technological developments from all possible sources be brought to bear on improving the safety and operational efficiency of railroads. FRA addresses these issues through an appropriate combination of study, analysis, simulation, laboratory testing, and field-testing.

Despite record traffic levels in the freight railroad industry and the creation of fewer, larger railroad companies, financial difficulties have caused the large railroads to cut back significantly on their in-house R&D programs and to reduce their jointly funded program carried out through TTCI. Furthermore, Amtrak and the commuter railroads have no surplus funds to spend on R&D. These situations underscore the importance of the FRA RD&D program.

The FRA, in an effort to ensure maximum leveraging of RD&D funds and to eliminate duplication, cooperates extensively with the AAR representing the large freight railroads, the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA) representing smaller freight railroads, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) representing the commuter railroads, Amtrak, the Railway Progress Institute (RPI) representing the railroad supply industry, individual suppliers, the FTA, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and the various States. Cooperation with the AAR occurs primarily at the TTC in the areas of track/train interaction, track safety research, bearing defect detection, braking systems, grade crossings, train control, and hazmat transportation. The ASLRRA is sharing the cost with FRA of a study of heavy axle loads. The RPI arranges for its supplier-members to provide material and equipment for the Facility for Accelerated Service Testing (FAST) track at TTC, and also participates in the hazmat transportation projects. APTA, Amtrak, and FTA cooperate with FRA on projects aimed at improving protection for railroad passengers. States and individual suppliers are providing cost sharing for the major projects being carried out under the Next Generation High-Speed Rail Technology Demonstration Program. FRA carries out cooperative activities with foreign entities as well, jointly sponsoring tank car and grade crossing research activities with Transport Canada and wheel-rail interaction work with the National Research Council of Canada, and sharing research results with the European Railway Research Institute.

The FRA representatives serve on the AAR’s Railway Technology Working Committee and on a number of other committees involved in engineering, mechanical, and signaling and communications issues. The FRA staff also actively participate in committees of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association (AREMA). Such participation ensures that duplication of effort is avoided.

Appendix B contains descriptions of FRA’s University Research Grants Program, USDOT’s Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Program, and the Ideas Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Program administered by the TRB for FRA and other USDOT modal administrations.

It is difficult to identify specific goals and outcomes for the FRA RD&D program in a five-year timeframe. Only some of the projects will be completed within five years, and not all will produce results that can or should be implemented. The rate at which project results are implemented depends in part on the benefit-cost ratios of the technologies or processes developed in the individual projects. Also, the rate depends in part on the availability of and competition for capital in the railroad industry, and in part on the rate at which FRA mandates their implementation. The recent improvements in railroad safety are the result of R&D conducted in the 1970’s and 1980’s along with the sizeable investments railroads made in infrastructure and rolling stock during the 1980’s and 1990’s. At best, implementation of the results of only a small portion of the projects described herein will have begun five years from now. Effects of the projects described in this plan will begin to show up in railroad safety and efficiency statistics in earnest about ten years from now. This plan describes an RD&D program that will have long-term effects on the U.S. railroad system.

1.6 PEER REVIEW

The National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering report, entitled Evaluating Federal Research Programs, recommended that Federal agencies use peer reviews as part of the process of establishing the direction and content of their R&D programs. At the request of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, and in accordance with the recommendations of National Academies, FRA contracted with the TRB for the establishment of a committee, initially called the Committee for an Assessment of Federal High-Speed Ground Transportation R&D, and, subsequently, the Committee for Review of the FRA R&D Program. This committee, which is made up of representatives of States, railroads, labor unions, universities, financial institutions, and research organizations, has been meeting twice annually. It was asked to address the following aspects of FRA’s R&D activities:

• The management structures and approach.
• The current direction and allocation of funds to the various program areas.
• The balance of Federal, State, and private-sector input and cost sharing.
• Directions and objectives in the Five-year R&D strategic plan.

One of the major recommendations of the Committee was that FRA develop a structured process to identify safety research areas and select specific safety R&D projects for funding. FRA took that recommendation to heart and, working with the Volpe Center, developed the process that is described in detail in Chapter 3 and applied it to structuring the safety R&D program.

Appendix C contains the most recent letter report from the Committee summarizing its work over the past three years and providing both its recommendations and the FRA responses to them.

1.7 R&D MANAGEMENT SELF-ASSESSMENT

In 1998, the Secretary of Tran