Our Job is Never Finished: Railway Age CEO Perspectives on Safety

“CSX faced operational challenges to start the year, which contributed to first quarter results that did not meet our expectations.” –President and CEO Joe Hinrichs. CSX photo.

All of us at CSX share one value above all others—and that is doing everything we can to protect the safety of our employees and the communities where we operate. It is part of the fabric of our ONE CSX culture of teamwork and communication, and it is what drives our collective efforts to help make CSX the safest railroad in the country.

We are proud of the strides our railroaders have made in enhancing safety over the past year. In 2023, the team achieved a 12% year-over-year reduction in our Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) personal injury rate and a 1% improvement in our FRA train accident rate. Moreover, CSX has achieved record safety performance in recent years. 

While we are proud of our progress, two incidents in the summer of 2023 resulting in the deaths of two newly hired railroaders reminds us that our efforts must continue. Following these incidents, we reevaluated our safety approach. This included extensive review and enhancements to our safety programs and technologies, reaffirming our commitment to safe operations.

Training and Mentorship

We took the extraordinary step of recalling all of our conductor trainees to their home terminals for intensive half-day sessions. These sessions were designed to reinforce vital rules and equipment handling procedures, ensuring that every member of our team is equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate their roles safely and effectively.

We also partnered with the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers – Transportation Division (SMART-TD) to extend the duration of safety training for our new conductors in Atlanta. By extending initial classroom training from four weeks to five, we are providing trainees with immersive experiences in real-world scenarios, emphasizing practical field tasks crucial for safe operations. In addition, we looked at the on-the-job portion of training and added additional job starts prior to trainees graduating to a marked-up conductor.

While training is an important step in giving our employees the tools and knowledge they need, ongoing reinforcement of safety is just as important to cultivate a strong safety culture. Recognizing this, we enlisted the help of our union partners and assigned mentors throughout the system to observe, coach and guide our new hires. We also started bringing mentors in from the field to our Atlanta training facility to co-lead new hire training and provide feedback to our instructors on what they are experiencing in the field. These mentors are playing a critical role in guiding and reinforcing safety protocols. They ensure our new hires fully understand our safety best practices and help ingrain safety into the daily operations of our entire workforce.

Mentorship doesn’t end with new hires. We have also been hosting Safety Summits where senior field leaders collaborate with employees at all levels, evaluating current safety approaches and developing strategies for improvement; and conducting Management-Labor Safety Tours, with frontline managers and local labor representatives engaging in safety discussions with employees to strengthen local safety conditions. 

We brought in experts from a leading safety firm DEKRA to help develop new training to build skills for proactive hazard identification and exposure mitigation. CSX believes that we need to go beyond traditional training on operating rules in order to provide our employees, management and craft, the necessary skills to identify hazards and self-mitigate risk. This training was first rolled out to our dedicated team of mentors and senior operational field leaders. In addition, in 2023, CSX received approval of our FRA Risk Reduction Program, which aligns to our ongoing work of mitigating risk throughout the workplace. 

Proactive Safety Measures

Every incident is preventable, and our proactive safety measures empower employees to be vigilant, and to speak up when they see something that doesn’t look right. One example of this is our intended participation in the FRA’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System that allows employees to report unsafe events and conditions without fear of discipline. The system supplements the internal processes we already have in place to allow employees to anonymously report safety concerns. CSX is engaged in discussion with our union leadership and FRA to adopt a similarly structured program that exists in our industry. 

While prevention is critical, in the event of an actual emergency, a swift response can save lives. CSX held more than 60 first responder training sessions in 2023, reaching more than 6,000 individuals, preparing them to handle potential emergencies on and around railroad property.

Technology and Infrastructure Investments

Our investments in technology and infrastructure have also been important to making the job of safety easier and more efficient.

CSX has consistently increased its annual investment in core infrastructure, allocating significant resources to track, bridge, and signal projects. We have made upgrades to hot bearing detectors and acoustic bearing detectors to better facilitate early detection of potential issues; and established our third automated train inspection portal, which enables comprehensive inspections of moving trains in real-time.

Our fleet of autonomous track assessment cars gathers critical data on track conditions, allowing for timely assessments and expedited repairs when necessary. Additionally, our extensive drone safety program utilizes unmanned aerial vehicles to perform various tasks, including aerial mapping, facility inspections, and accident investigations.

A Consistent Effort

Of course, our safety progress has not been without challenges. Despite our best efforts, we lost three employees on our railroad in 2023; and in February, yet another. It’s a heart-wrenching reminder that the job of making our railroad safe for our employees, customers, and neighbors is never finished. No matter how much our safety metrics improve, we cannot get complacent.

From simple measures like field visits to robust training programs and technology initiatives, our ONE CSX team remains committed to working together at every level of our organization—and with stakeholders across the industry—to keep safety at the forefront of our operations.