In 2021, the U.S. Congress directed the Secretary of Transportation to enter into an agreement with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – Transportation Research Board (TRB) “to conduct a study on the operation of freight trains that are longer than 7,500 feet.” Railway Age has obtained an advance copy of the 105-page report, “Long Freight Trains: Ensuring Safe Operations, Mitigating Adverse Impacts – TRB Special Report 353.” Described as a “Consensus Study,”* it can be downloaded below. The Association of American Railroads has responded by saying the study “has several shortcomings.”
The report examines “safety challenges arising from the operation of longer freight trains, and particularly from the increased use of longer manifest trains that transport a mix of freight in many different types of railcars” and the “impacts of increasing freight train length on the frequency and duration of blocked highway-rail grade crossings and scheduling and efficient operations of Amtrak intercity passenger trains.”
Sponsored by the Federal Railroad Administration, the Transportation Research Board convened a 12-member committee “with experience in freight and passenger railroad operations, state rail transportation, national rail safety oversight, and freight and passenger rail research” that met 16 times (six in person) to examine impacts of long trains and invited presentations from individuals and organizations. Meetings focused on railroad technology and highway-rail grade crossings. The agenda included a trip to Chicago. The committee included:
- Debra L. Miller (Chair), Former Secretary, Kansas Department of Transportation and former Surface Transportation Board Vice Chair.
- Faye Ackermans, Board Member, Transportation Safety Board of Canada (retired).
- C. Tyler Dick, Assistant Professor, The University of Texas at Austin.
- Theresa M. Impastato, Executive Vice President and Chief Safety Officer, Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA)
- Venetta H. Keefe, 1 Program Manager, Indiana Department of Transportation Rail Program Office.
- Gary F. Knudsen, Locomotive Engineer, BNSF Railway (retired).
- Dennis S. Mogan, Rail Safety Specialist III, Indiana Commerce Commission.
- Allan Rutter, Freight Analysis Program Manager, Texas A&M Transportation Institute and former Federal Railroad Administrator.
- Dr. John M. Samuels (National Academy of Engineering), President, Revenue Variable Engineering and retired Senior Vice President Operations Planning and Budget, Norfolk Southern.
- Peter F. Swan, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management, Emeritus, The Pennsylvania State University.
- Elton E. Toma, Senior Engineer, National Research Council of Canada.
- Paul E. Vilter, Assistant Vice President Planning, Commercial Services, and Sustainability, Amtrak (retired).
The report was reviewed in draft form by individuals “chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise” to provide “candid and critical comments that will assist the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in making each published report as sound as possible and to ensure that it meets the institutional standards for quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge.” The reviewers, the report notes “provided many constructive comments and suggestions” but “were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations … nor did they see the final draft before its release.” They included:
- Abe Aronian, Senior Investigator, Transportation Safety Board of Canada and retired mechanical engineer, Canadian Pacific.
- Ken Altman, Vice President Government Affairs, Amtrak.
- Ann Begeman, Surface Transportation Board (retired).
- David Clark, University of Tennessee Knoxville.
- Matt Dietrich, Ohio Rail Development Commission.
- George Avery Grimes, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Patriot Rail Company, LLC.
- Wick Moorman (National Academy of Engineering), retired CEO, Norfolk Southern and Amtrak.
- Temple Shepard, Independent Consultant.
Executive Summary Highlights
“LONGER MANIFEST TRAINS CAN CREATE NEW AND HEIGHTENED SAFETY RISKS REQUIRING ACTIVE CONTROL: As the length of a manifest train increases, safe handling can be more challenging to manage relative to the handling of a shorter manifest train or a unit train … Manifest trains create operational challenges due to the mixture of railcar types, designs, sizes and weights … [I]n-train forces can lead to broken equipment, including drawbars and couplers, and cause [derailments] when negotiating curves. The magnitude of these forces will differ among cars that vary in size and weight, and the movement and mitigation of the forces will differ among cars having different drawbars and coupling devices with or without cushioning units.
“Railroads must therefore pay close attention during the makeup of manifest trains to the placement of cars of different types, designs, sizes, and weights to manage in-train forces, reduce risks of derailment, and preserve train integrity. In particular, they must make choices about the placement of light cars, short cars, heavy cars, and cars with and without cushioning devices to facilitate safe handling as well as efficient operations. They must also pay attention to the placement of locomotives for distributed power (DP), as these units help control in-train forces through adjustments to power and activation of brakes, or they can add to the operational challenge if poorly positioned … [A]ssembling long trains can present additional challenges and opportunities for errors in car placement due to limited yard space, insufficient track lengths, and added demands on labor. Train makeup decisions and train length must be made with ample consideration of the capabilities and performance of the crews that operate [them].
“[A] review of publicly available data on train traffic indicates that the average length of manifest trains has been increasing coincidental with an increase in the rate of derailments of interest. Absent more detailed data, the committee was not able to verify that the operational demands created by longer manifest trains are being fully controlled, and indeed the limited analyses that could be performed suggest that more targeted safety assurance measures may be needed.
“Heightened operational challenges and risks arising from increasing the length of manifest trains need to be recognized and addressed in a deliberate and systematic manner. Following direction from Congress for railroads to put in place safety management systems for the purpose of controlling risks deliberately and systematically, FRA required each Class I railroad to develop and implement Risk Reduction Programs (RRPs). However, the RRP rule was written to allow ‘streamlined’ safety management systems that do not obligate railroads to anticipate and account for risks arising from all major planned operational changes, including the expanded use of longer manifest trains.”
“[T]he committee recommends that the FRA should revise the RRP rule to require railroads to address all major operational changes in their RRPs in an explicit and comprehensive manner … [RRP rule revisions] should be written in such a way as to make it clear to railroads that an operational change that is known to increase and add new train integrity and handling challenges, as lengthening manifest trains can do, constitutes an operational change that should be addressed .. FRA should seek from Congress the resources required to hire and train a team of auditors skilled in reviewing safety management systems to regularly and critically assess the completeness and quality of each railroad’s RRP and its key components … To aid railroads in development of increasingly effective measures for reducing risks associated with long trains and to aid auditors in obtaining the requisite knowledge for critically assessing a railroad’s risk reduction measures and their justifications, the FRA should survey and synthesize industry protocols and best practices on train makeup, crew training, and communications capabilities pertinent to addressing the operational and handling challenges arising from increases in train length under different operating and environmental conditions …
“FRA should stand up separate working groups under the Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) that are tasked with evaluating and providing advice on … methods and technologies that can be implemented to improve the capabilities, competencies and training that train crews and other railroad employees require for the safe operation, assembly, and inspection of trains as they become longer; and the technological means and performance standards for ensuring that train crew members have the capability to communicate, including while inspecting and riding equipment, in a manner that can be continuously maintained and does not create personal safety hazards.
“COMMUNITIES EXPERIENCING CHRONIC BLOCKED HIGHWAY-RAIL GRADE CROSSINGS NEED REAL SOLUTIONS: Apart from the logical inference that a long train will take more time than a short train to transit a grade crossing simply because of its added length, the evidence to suggest that long trains block grade crossings more often, whether idle or moving, is largely anecdotal … Such problems are … reported on a regular basis by the media and in a database maintained by FRA for the public to report blocked crossings. While state and local laws once gave communities leverage with railroads in seeking remedies to chronic blocked crossings, federal preemption, upheld in the courts based on the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause, has eliminated this leverage. Today, there are no federal laws or regulations pertaining to blocked crossings to replace the vacated state and local laws. Accordingly, FRA and the Federal Highway Administration, as well as state and local jurisdictions, do not possess direct means to compel railroads to limit the frequency and duration of blocked crossings … The absence of network-level data from grade-crossing monitoring systems and reliance on anecdotal reports makes it difficult to assess trends in blocked crossings … [T]he committee cannot confirm whether a trend toward long trains is positively or negatively impacting the frequency and duration of blocked grade crossings. However, what is clear is that operating long trains is not necessarily a solution for resolving chronic blocked crossings and may be making the problem worse in some locations.
“[T]he committee recommends that Congress should authorize and direct the FRA to obtain data on an ongoing basis from railroads on blocked highway-rail grade crossings. The railroads should be obligated to deploy automated means for efficiently collecting and reporting the data on a regular and expeditious basis. Data collection should focus first on crossings with gates and other active warning devices that are indicative of higher traffic locations where blockages are likely to be the most disruptive; then … should expand to more public highway-rail grade crossings. Individual blockage incidents that exceed defined thresholds of duration should be prioritized for reporting, such as when a crossing is occupied for more than 10 minutes.
“The FRA should use these grade crossing reports to gain a better understanding of the incidence, magnitud, and scope of the blockage problem [and] should make the reports available to states and their transportation agencies, regional and metropolitan planning organizations, local communities, and the public through means such as portals and other self-service data retrieval tools … FRA should negotiate with the railroads individually and collectively to find solutions to the most problematic blockage sites, reduce the incidence and severity of the problem generally, and determine whether the trend toward increasing train length is creating special problems … Congress should give the FRA authority to impose financial penalties on railroads for problematic blocked crossings. The penalties should be sufficient in magnitude to prompt good faith negotiations to resolve problematic crossing blockages.
“FREIGHT RAILROADS SHOULD BE DETERRED FROM USING LONG TRAINS WHERE THEY WILL IMPEDE AMTRAK TRAINS: Amtrak maintains and has marshaled evidence that it incurs lengthy service delays when its passenger trains meet or follow freight trains that are too long to pass using available sidings on main line single-track route segments. A host railroad that is aware of a mismatch between the length of freight trains being operated and the infrastructure available on the route to accommodate the passenger trains operated by Amtrak would seem to conflict with the latter’s statutory right to run ahead of freight trains … [T]he committee recommends [that] Congress should direct and empower the FRA to enforce the performance of host freight railroads in giving preference to Amtrak passenger trains on single-track route segments where there is a mismatch between the length of freight trains being operated and the infrastructure available on the route segment to accommodate them without delaying Amtrak trains. Under these circumstances, when an Amtrak train experiences delays because of an inability to meet or pass a freight train, the host railroad should be subject to financial penalties. The penalties should be substantial and certain enough to deter this practice and to motivate solutions, including the rightsizing of freight trains to sidings and investments by host railroads in longer sidings. This FRA function would need to be allied with the STB’s jurisdiction over railroad practices and service.
“Finally, the report considers, but does not make policy recommendations about, certain impacts from longer trains, including their effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the operational fluidity of freight trains. GHG emissions are a major public policy concern, but on a national scale freight trains are not intense emitters of these pollutants (emphasis Railway Age). Estimating the marginal emissions impacts from longer trains would require many uncertain assumptions about whether and by how much longer freight trains are replacing shorter trains or diverting freight to or from trucks and other modes. With regard to freight train operational fluidity, some of the operational impacts from using longer trains are described, such as on rail car cycle times; however, the railroads must account directly for the choices they make about when and how to use long trains, including impacts on their paying customers.”
AAR Statement
The Association of American Railroads issued a statement shortly after the study’s release. “Despite the extensive review, the TRB study has several shortcomings,” AAR said. ”First, it arbitrarily focuses on trains exceeding 7,500 feet, despite acknowledging a lack of consensus on the appropriate definition of a ‘long‘ train. The study followed a Congressionally defined threshold without uniform agreement on its appropriateness. Additionally, the report notes the committee was unable to draw conclusions about potential community impacts of emission reductions or from occupied crossings by longer trains. Ultimately, the TRB study does not demonstrate data supporting any claims that manifest trains exceeding 7,500 feet pose additional operational safety risks. Any effort to impose a prescriptive train length limit would be both irresponsible and unfounded. An arbitrary limit on train length would risk disrupting the nation’s supply chain through increased network congestion and undermining environmental priorities. For example, AAR analysis found that restricting train length to 7,500 feet would increase U.S. main line freight train fuel consumption by 13% or an additional 423 million gallons of fuel annually. This would be the equivalent to the annual emissions from about 930,000 cars.”
“During the past 80 years, railroads have safely managed trains of [7,500 feet] and beyond,” AAR noted. At the same time, the industry’s safety record has dramatically improved, with the latest data showing the Class I main line accident rate down 42% since 2000.
“All railroads consider several factors including commodity mix, track conditions and terrain when determining train makeup and length on every train across the 140,000-mile rail network, though processes may differ slightly across carriers. Many railroads rely on advanced “train builder” algorithms that analyze various operational factors, guiding car placement and ensuring trains are operating as safely as possible. Improvements to train building best practices have delivered even stronger safety results in recent years and will continue to be an area of intense focus for the industry.
“Railroads also strategically deploy locomotives at key points throughout the train using a method known as distributed power. This common practice helps manage in-train forces to reduce operational risk. In distributed power train consists, locomotives are connected by closed communications systems that maintain constant connection to the lead locomotive and its highly qualified engineer.
“Training is a priority, equipping engineers with the tools and experience to effectively and safely execute their jobs. This is why railroads offer simulator-based and on-the-job training for locomotive engineers for the most demanding class or type of service that the person will be permitted to perform. This comprehensive training ensures engineers are both adept with in-cab technologies like distributed power and familiar with the specifics of their unique territory. To confirm their readiness for real-world demands, the FRA requires engineers to undergo annual evaluations of their territory as well as conducts unannounced observations while they are at work.
“As operations change, so do infrastructure needs. To accommodate longer trains, railroads continue invest more than $23 billion annually into infrastructure, including adding and extending sidings. These improvements increase the fluidity of rail traffic and reduce the impact on local communities.
“Maintaining network safety is a continual process that requires railroads to regularly review and adapt their operations. To support the TRB’s thorough review of train length issues, railroads provided substantial amounts of data, delivered numerous presentations to the committee and provided constructive feedback on the findings.”
“Safety is at the center of every decision on the railroad, and train length is no different,” said AAR President and CEO Ian Jefferies. “As operations continue to evolve, railroads are pulling on three key levers—technology, training and infrastructure—to further enhance safety and reliability. The railroads’ goal will always be delivering for our employees, communities and the economy—and to do it safely every day.”
*According Allan Rutter, “Consensus Study is a term of art at the National Academies—it does not purport to represent a consensus of the rail industry, rather it is a study conducted by NAS/TRB staff with the guidance and contributions of an expert panel. The report represents the consensus of panel members. This is different from other TRB work conducted for USDOT/state supported cooperative research programs, which are conducted by consultant/academic teams working with project panels guided by TRB staff.”
