The Safety Management Teams (SMTs) serve as the Office of Railroad Safety’s main liaison with the senior leadership of the Nation's railroads. Each of the nine SMTs is assigned to either a Class I railroad or a group of railroads and provides safety...

FRA sponsored the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center to evaluate the efficacy of increasing the flash rate of gate-mounted flashers on driver compliance with grade crossing warning devices. This work aimed to increase safety by reducing the...

The Rail Transportation and Engineering Center (RailTEC) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) investigated methods to mitigate timber tie spike failures. This research is part of an ongoing investigation sponsored by the Federal...

This report summarizes the research conducted as part of Phase 2 of the Railroad Artificial Intelligence Intruder Learning System (RAIILS), led by a team of researchers at Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech) and sponsored by the Federal...

Railroads with Positive Train Control (PTC) are experiencing increased delays due to communication failures and outages, during which trains are compelled to move at slower speeds while operating in non-PTC fallback mode. The Federal Railroad...

The Federal Railroad Administration sponsored a research team from Duke University to study railroad dispatcher workload in association with automation under various scenarios and task demands. The team developed a computational model to help examine...

This report summarizes work performed to improve identification of high-profile grade crossings throughout the nation’s railway network. In May 2019 two rail survey vehicles operated under the FRA Office of Safety’s Automated Track Inspection Program...