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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 were equipped with LiDAR 3D scanner arrays...
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, understand, and predict the effects of the...
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 Administration (FRA) sponsored Decisiontek, LLC to...
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 Railroad Administration (FRA) from March 2019...
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) contracted ENSCO, Inc., to apply alternative forecasting approaches to foot-by-foot track geometry data. The research team used track geometry data collected weekly by FRA’s DOTX-225 and DOTX-226 autonomous inspection vehicles. This investigation also...
From September 2019 to May 2022, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) funded KEA Technologies Inc. to conduct a pilot study using a rail simulator to determine whether engineers can become habituated to auditory alerts while operating a locomotive. Habituation, in this case, is a behavior...
The goal of this project is to assess crew safety of existing locomotive crashworthiness requirements using existing modern freight locomotive crash data analyses and simulation techniques. This project will evaluate the impact of the crashworthiness standards defined in Subpart D of 49 CFR Part...
The Federal Railroad Administration contracted Volpe National Transportation Systems Center to conduct a process evaluation of Operation Lifesaver, Inc.’s educational activities, with a focus on activities funded through an FRA grant agreement. The team conducted the evaluation from October 2022...
FRA supported Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech), in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University Altoona (Penn State Altoona) and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), to establish a Tracks to the Future: Railroad Transportation and Engineering summer program...
This report summarizes a series of three workshops on rail decarbonization hosted by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). These internationally attended workshops laid the foundation for future decarbonization research topics, funded through FRA’s Research, Development, and Technology (RD...