U.S. railroad accident rates have declined substantially since the 1980s; however, further improvement in train safety remains an important objective of the railroad industry. In this paper, we describe a framework developed to assess the cost-effectiveness of railroad infrastructure improvement to reduce railroad train accidents. Higher FRA track classes have been shown to be statistically correlated with lower accident rates, thereby indicating potential safety benefits. However, such infrastructure improvement also increases both capital and operating costs for track maintenance. We use accident data from the U.S. DOT Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) accident database and cost data from several recent U.S. railroad infrastructure maintenance projects presented in an FRA report to quantitatively evaluate the safety benefits and costs associated with infrastructure improvement decisions. Our model is intended to consider the trade-off between reduced accident rates and increased costs in evaluating railroad risk reduction strategies and operational decisions. The benefit-cost analysis framework is illustrated by considering the upgrade of track class 3 to class 4 in a hypothetical case study.
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2010 Joint Rail Conference
April 27–29, 2010
Urbana, Illinois, USA
Conference Sponsors:
- Rail Transportation Division
ISBN:
978-0-7918-4906-4
PROCEEDINGS PAPER
Benefit-Cost Analysis of Infrastructure Improvement for Derailment Prevention
Xiang Liu,
Xiang Liu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
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Mohd Rapik Saat,
Mohd Rapik Saat
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
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Christopher P. L. Barkan
Christopher P. L. Barkan
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
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Xiang Liu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
Mohd Rapik Saat
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
Christopher P. L. Barkan
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
Paper No:
JRC2010-36029, pp. 399-405; 7 pages
Published Online:
October 28, 2010
Citation
Liu, X, Saat, MR, & Barkan, CPL. "Benefit-Cost Analysis of Infrastructure Improvement for Derailment Prevention." Proceedings of the 2010 Joint Rail Conference. 2010 Joint Rail Conference, Volume 1. Urbana, Illinois, USA. April 27–29, 2010. pp. 399-405. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/JRC2010-36029
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