Our Safety Vision is Achievable: Railway Age CEO Perspectives on Safety

BNSF President and CEO Katie Farmer.BNSF photo.

All of us at BNSF will remember 2023 for our work together that delivered industry-leading record safety results. We had the fewest number of injuries and lowest injury frequency and severity rates in our company’s 175-year history. Our employee injury rate went down by more than 20%, and our injury severity rate decreased by nearly 35% as well, year-over-year.

Our achievements are always put in the context that our work is not done until we reach our safety vision of an accident- and incident-free workplace. That vision and path to zero starts with the elimination of fatalities and life-altering injuries, which we accomplished in 2023 in operating our railroad without loss of life.

This is a credit to our multiple teams approaching one another about safety, building strong intentional relationships and making wise decisions with safety as the foundation. These teams are proving that our safety vision is not aspirational. It is, with hard work and focus, achievable.

We believe it’s no coincidence we were able to achieve this milestone the first year after finalizing our Transportation Safety Agreement with a portion of our transportation workforce, which further strengthened collaboration and communication between management and our employees.

The first-of-its-kind agreement also includes risk identification and mitigation programs that enable our front-line supervisors to shift away from discipline events and instead have a more proactive, coaching approach with employees. 

Another ingredient in our success is BNSF’s ability to reach agreements with all our union partners, which paves the way for 100% of our union workforce to have access to work/rest agreements. That means, if employees want a schedule with rest days, they can have one. This marks an important step forward in supporting the well-being of our employees, ensuring a more balanced and efficient work environment. 

We believe supporting our people as best we can while improving work/life balance pays dividends toward the overall success of our rail operations. 

We have also continued to make progress in driving down the number of train accidents on our railroad. We know we will continue reducing accidents through our investments in training, process improvement and new technology. 

We have continued to make advancements, thanks to the development and use of wayside detectors, track and equipment inspection technologies and train control technology. The results of our efforts are reflected in our industry-leading performance over the past several years and a record start once again in 2024.

Our monumental achievement in safety is a credit to the commitment and passion for safety demonstrated by everyone at BNSF. We owe our thanks to those on the front lines serving customers every day, whose dedication to safety made our performance possible. We will build upon last year’s safety achievements in 2024 and everyone across our company remains aligned in our commitment to safety and ensuring everyone goes home safely at the end of the workday.