FRA Initiatives: Dr. Magdy El-Sibaie, Chief of FRA's Track Research Division (continued)
IJ: How
do you, as the head of rail infrastructure R&D, determine
what's important today, and what the FRA and the industry
should be looking at down stream?
El-Sibaie: We rely on a number of
inputs to determine what is needed. One of the main sources
is the industry safety record. There are regulatory requirements
for the industry to report derailments and accidents to
our Office of Safety. This data is analyzed on frequent
basis to establish various statistics and safety trends.
We look at the number of accidents in a given year and organize
the data based on the various accident categories and causes.
In order to better gauge the impact of each category, we
also determine the harm associated with each accident cause.
Harm is a measure of cost in terms of fatalities, injuries,
evacuations, environmental and property, damage, as well
as equipment and infrastructure damage. So we have a good
sense of what the safety picture looks like. For example,
we know that roughly one third of all accidents over the
past several years are track related. Another third are
due to human factors. We know that the leading cause of
all derailments is wide gauge. We know that the second leading
cause is a specific human error- improperly lined switches.
The program managers in my group are intimately familiar
with the safety record. We study it further to better understand
the detailed causes and their associated costs. We use this
information to guide our research. Knowing the size of the
problem is key to prioritizing the various research tasks.
My staff and I are also very active in relevant industry committees. We participate on the AAR Engineering Research, Vehicle/Track Interaction, and Heavy Axle Load committees. We also sit on the appropriate Mechanical committees and participate in various APTA technical committees. We participate in industry meetings and maintain contact with individuals on various railroads.
The RSAC group also provides us with input
and guidance. We also have a number of Office of Safety
specialists in the eight FRA regions who are the eyes and
ears of the agency in the field. They encounter all sorts
of issues and they communicate to us what is needed. We
also rely on the expertise, experience and judgement of
our program managers.
IJ: There has
been a lot of discussion about performance-based standards
in recent years. Are performance-based standards likely
to make their way into the rule-making process?
El-Sibaie:
If by performance-based you mean engineering standards
that are based on measurable parameters, such as the Gauge
Restraint Measurement System [GRMS], which applies a non-destructive
lateral load to detect weak spots in the track that visual
inspection may not detect, the answer is yes.
A substantial part of the R&D effort is
to guide standards and rules- not just FRA standards and
rules, but the industry's internal standards and rules,
as well- so that they are more performance-driven. The GRMS
work is that. The work we do with track geometry and track
quality index is that. The work we do in the wheel/rail
interface area is exactly that. Most if not all of what
we do is really directed toward driving the standards toward
performance-based measurements.
