Railroad transportation plays a critical role in safely and economically moving hazardousmaterials throughout North America. Effective management of the risk of hazardous materialstransportation is a high priority of both the rail industry and government. A number of strategiesand technologies have been implemented or are being developed to reduce this risk. Each riskreduction strategy has an effect on safety as well as a corresponding implementation cost.Additionally, risk reduction strategies may have interactive effects. Little prior research hasaddressed the interactive effects among different risk reduction strategies, nor how elements ofthem should be compared and/or combined to achieve the maximum risk reduction in the mostcost-effective manner. In this paper a preliminary methodology is developed to estimate thereduction of hazardous materials release risk by implementing integrated risk reduction strategies,including accident prevention, tank car safety design enhancement and changes in train operatingpractices such as train speed reduction.Analysis shows that the percentage risk reduction is affected by operating conditions, accidentcause, effectiveness of accident prevention technologies, tank car safety design, percent of tankcar fleet to upgrade, and train speed. This study represents the first step in a systematic processof quantitative risk analysis of railroad freight safety for local, regional and system-wide safetyimprovement and is intended to assist decision makers in development of an integrated cost20efficient risk reduction framework.
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