FRA Rail Safety Data Overview

RAIL

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FRA

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Accident, Incident, Casualty, and Operational Data

Accident, incident, casualty, operational data:

• Railroad-reported data that is publicly available.
• Approximately 830 railroads report their data monthly, annually and when incidents occur.
• FRA Guide for Preparing Accident/Incident Reports

Forms:

• 6180.54 - Rail Equipment Accident/Incident
• 6180.55 - Injury/Illness Summary
• 6180.55a - Injury/Illness Continuation Sheet
• 6180.57 - Hwy-Rail Accident/Incident
• 6180.71 - U.S. DOT Crossing Inventory Form

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Inspection Data

Inspection data:

• Federal and state rail inspector-reported data that is not publicly available.
• Approximately 70,000 annual inspections of 830 railroads and 2,000 companies/shippers
• Inspectors fall into one of six disciplines:
• Grade Crossing
• Hazardous Materials
• Operating Practices
• Signal and Train Control
• Motive Power and Equipment

Forms:

• 6180.96 – Inspection Report

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Summary Level Reports

• Accident, incident, casualty, operational data
• Homepage: https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/
• Frequently used report: 1.12  Ten Year Accident/Incident Overview
• Inspection data homepage
• Internal to FRA and state DOTs
• One-time, temporary public-facing report for High-Hazard Flammable Train Route Assessment, provided an overview of inspection activities in 2023.

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Full Datasets

Full datasets for accident, incident, casualty, operational data:

• Provides the ability to filter and sort before export; Download into csv; API functionality allows users to automatically download new data from the dataset every time the Excel or Power BI file is opened – reduces need to manually download new data each month.
• Form 54: Rail Equipment Accident/Incident Data (Form 54)
• Form 54, Unique Train Accidents: Rail Equipment Accident/Incident Data (Form 54) Subset – Unique Train Accidents (Not at Grade Crossings)
• Form 55: Injury/Illness Summary - Operational Data (Form 55)
• Form 55a: Injury/Illness Summary - Casualty Data (Form 55A)
• Form 57: Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Accident/Incident Data (Form 57)
• Form 71 Current: Crossing Inventory Data - Current (Form 71)
• Form 71 Historical: Crossing Inventory Data - Historical (Form 71)

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Full Datasets

Full datasets for accident, incident, casualty, operational data:

• Provides the original alphanumeric value, alongside the human readable text value.
• For example, Type of Accident Code column contains value “01” and Type of Accident columns contains value “Derailment.”
• Provides the ability to filter and sort before export
• Download into csv
• API functionality allows users to automatically download new data from the dataset every time the Excel or Power BI file is opened – reduces need to manually download new data each month.

Full datasets for inspection data:

• Internal to FRA and state DOTs

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Other Federal Agency Data Sources

Surface Transportation Board’s Carload Waybill Sample

• A sample dataset of carload waybills for all U.S. rail traffic submitted by those rail carriers terminating 4,500 or more revenue carloads annually.
• Confidential dataset, so access must be requested.
• For more information:
• https://www.stb.gov/reports-data/waybill/

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CONTACT US

Lindsay Peters-Dawson

Program Analyst

(202) 493-6413

Lindsay.PetersDawson@dot.gov

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Federal Railroad Administration

1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE

Washington, DC 20590

For more information visit us at

www.fra.dot.gov

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