Accident-Cause-Specific Risk Analysis of Rail Transport of Hazardous Materials

Abstract

Rail plays a key role in the transportation of hazardous materials (hazmat). Improving railroad hazmat transportation safety is a high priority for both industry and government. Many severe railroad hazmat release incidents occur because of train accidents. The Federal Railroad Administration identifies over 300 accident causes, including infrastructure defects, rolling stock failures, human factors, and other causes. Understanding how hazmat transportation risk varies with accident cause is a key step in identifying, developing, evaluating, and prioritizing cost-justified accident prevention strategies, thereby mitigating hazmat transportation risk. The objective of this paper is to develop an integrated, generalized risk analysis methodology that can estimate accident-cause-specific hazmat transportation risk, accounting for various train and track characteristics, such as train length, speed, point of derailment, the number and placement of tank cars in a train, tank car safety design, and population density along rail lines. Using the two major causes of accidents on freight railroads—broken rails and track geometry defects—as an example, this paper demonstrates a step-by-step analytical procedure and decision support tool to assess how accident frequency, severity, and hazmat transportation risk vary by accident cause. The research method can be adapted for risk analysis at corridor- or network-level accounting for other accident causes.

Risk Management in Railway During Operation and Maintenance Period: A Literature Review

“…Many incidents of deterioration of dangerous materials caused by train accidents, mainly due to derailment of trains. Slippage accounts for more than 72% of all types of accidents on freight trains [8]. Damaged rails or welds pose a greater risk than other causes in each class of lanes, therefore detection and prevention of damaged rails is a high priority safety activity for the U.S. railroad.…”

“…The risk of slipping on average for all track related causes is about double that of related causes of equipment [1]. In addition, especially for derailments of freight trains in Class I can be categorized into ten groups of causes, namely Broken rail or weld, Track geometry defects, Bearing failure (carriages), Broken wheels (carriages), Train handling (not including brakes), Barriers, flexed track, Wide gauge, Track-train interactions, other Axles or daily defects [8].…”

Quantitative Risk Analysis on Rail Transportation of Hazardous Materials

“…Rail transport is an effective mode for transporting materials, with an estimate of about a million shipments conducted annually in the USA [1]. Statistical data show that 10% of all materials were transported via a railway network in 2014 in Iran [2].…”

Design of a Network Optimization Platform for the Multivehicle Transportation of Hazardous Materials

“…Many flammables, explosive, poisonous, and corrosive hazardous materials are transported along road networks, thus representing potential "time bombs" that threaten the lives and property of people that live near the transportation route. Although the rate of transportation accidents involving hazardous materials on roads is relatively low [4,5], this issue has attracted attention from all sectors of society, due to the large transportation volume, numerous risk factors, and complicated and variable transportation environments [6].…”