Keolis Commuter Services, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and union leaders from the American Train Dispatchers Association, Transportation Communications Union, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and SMART Transportation Division on May 8, 2015 signed a memorandum of understanding to implement the FRA’s voluntary Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS).
The final spec for the now-official DOT-117 (TC-117 in Canada) non-pressurized tank car adopts the most demanding of the technical requirements first offered for comment in the notice of rulemaking: jacketed and thermally insulated shells of 9/16-inch steel, full-height half-inch-thick head shields, sturdier, re-closeable pressure relief valves and rollover protection for top fittings.
How crude oil sloshing inside moving tank cars affects train stability was under close scrutiny by the Federal Railroad Administration, the regulator’s Acting Administrator told reporters back on March 13. That was after a string of mid-winter oil train disasters exposed the prevailing focus on tank car thickness to be essentially pointless in the quest to prevent oil train derailments and explosions.
Union Pacific’s grade crossing safety rate, which measures the total number of Federal Railroad Administration-reportable grade crossing accidents per million train-miles, improved to 1.88 in 2015’s first quarter, compared to first-quarter 2014’s 2.39, a 27% improvement.
The Federal Railroad Administration has awarded eight grants totaling more than $21.2 million for projects involving grade crossing safety, Positive Train Control implementation and passenger rail.