2012 Rail Trends - Railway Association of Canada
2012 Rail Trends - Railway Association of Canada
2012 Rail Trends - Railway Association of Canada
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Safety<br />
<strong>Rail</strong> accidents<br />
Canadian railways celebrated a banner year <strong>of</strong> reportable railway<br />
accident 1 reduction in 2011. While the sector moved a record<br />
473.3 billion gross ton-miles (BGTM) in 2011, it maintained a rate <strong>of</strong><br />
2.41 total accidents per BGTM, the lowest rate in the last 10 years. In<br />
addition, the industry recorded 1,143 total freight and passenger train<br />
accidents in 2011, the lowest total over the same period.<br />
<strong>Canada</strong>’s railways take measures to reduce technical accidents and<br />
continually enhance the safety <strong>of</strong> rail operations. Work is also being<br />
done in collaboration with Transport <strong>Canada</strong> to improve safety where the<br />
public interacts with rail activities by closing rail crossings and improving<br />
public awareness by promoting accident prevention.<br />
The data collected in order to analyze the safety performance <strong>of</strong> rail<br />
comes from the Canadian Transportation Safety Board (TSB) and the<br />
RAC. The TSB maintains a database <strong>of</strong> safety performance statistics on<br />
federally-regulated railways 2 and the RAC collects similar statistics on<br />
provincially-regulated operations.<br />
1 “Reportable railway accident” means an accident resulting directly from the operation<br />
<strong>of</strong> rolling stock, where:<br />
• (a) (i) a person sustains a serious injury or is killed as a result <strong>of</strong> being on board or<br />
getting on or <strong>of</strong>f the rolling stock, or (ii) coming into contact with any part <strong>of</strong> the<br />
rolling stock or its contents, or<br />
• (b) the rolling stock (i) is involved in a grade-crossing collision, (ii) is involved in a<br />
collision or derailment and is carrying passengers, (iii) is involved in a collision or<br />
derailment and is carrying dangerous goods, or is known to have last contained<br />
dangerous goods the residue <strong>of</strong> which has not been purged from the rolling stock,<br />
(iv) sustains damage that affects its safe operation, or (v) causes or sustains a fire or<br />
explosion, or causes damage to the railway, that poses a threat to the safety <strong>of</strong> any<br />
person, property or the environment.<br />
<strong>2012</strong><br />
15<br />
2 The database is available at http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rail/index.asp.
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