Introduction Level Crossing Risk – Approximately 30% of rail related fatalities occur as a result of motor vehicle collisions 1 – Annual estimated cost to Australian society $116,279,817 ($2010) 2 – Over 23,500 level crossings, 8,838 public (67% with passive protection) 3 Rail Level Crossing Suite of Projects – R3.122 – Affordable Level Crossings – R2.121 – Low-cost RLX Risk & Legal Evaluation – R2.119 – Baseline RLX Video Level crossing accidents in Australia. Transport Safety Bulletin, Independent Transport Safety Regulator NSW Tooth & Balmford, RISSB Railway Level Crossing Incident Costing Model Level Crossing Stocktake, Railway Industry Safety and Standards Board, Australia

R3.122 Affordable Level Crossings National Low-cost Level Crossing Trial Programme

Located on North Coast Line Narrow gauge, bi-directional track 25KV AC overhead power Preceding cutting and curve 60 km/h [70km/h Tilt-train] Freight & passenger traffic Located on North Coast Line Standard gauge, bi-directional track 115km/h freight [125km/h passenger] Freight & passenger traffic Located on Geelong-Ballarat freight corridor Broad gauge, bi-directional track Low-frequency freight traffic

Data Collection Weather monitoring stations Temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, wind direction 3G mobile communications to download logs remotely Comparative logger PLC records state changes for all inputs with timestamp 3G mobile communications to download logs remotely

R3.121 Low-Cost Rail Level Crossing Risk & Legal Evaluation

R2.119 Baseline Rail Level Crossing Video Participants

Limitations of Level Crossing Incident Analysis Number of level crossing collisions (lagging indicators) insignificant for data analysis Near-miss occurrences (leading indicators) – Occur with a frequency orders of magnitude greater than collisions – Reportable occurrences However, there are issues with current paper-based reporting – Under-reporting & inconsistencies in reporting – Subjectivity – Inaccuracies in retrospective description of events

Limitations of Level Crossing Incident Analysis Pitfalls of causal analysis on sparse data 1 – Over-interpretation – Tendency for analysts to identify causal factors representative of a category of failure rather than identifying characteristics that may distinguish it – Current near-miss reporting does not describe the “less visible influences” that may condition an incident 1 Johnson, C. (2003). Failure in Safety-Critical Systems: A Handbook of Incident and Accident Reporting. Glasgow, Scotland Glasgow University Press.

Information Gathering and Data Analysis Platform

R2.119 Baseline Rail Level Crossing Video Data Collection Infrastructure Tilt-train Forward facing video 2Tb video / fortnight / train Disk swap procedure Back-end Servers 2 sets of equipment Servers with 8 processor cores / set 100Tb storage in RAID 6 array / set

Queensland Rail – North Coast Line ≈ 1680km – Currently 3 Tilt-trains – Additional trains later in the year © Stuart Edwards BRISBANE 824 Level crossings 451 Public 248 Occupational 28 Pedestrian 97 Queensland Rail Data Collection

Distance from Rail CentrelineObject detection - car Object detection - bus Localization – to be developed Video Analytics

R2.119 Benefits for Australian Rail Industry Inform improvements to existing paper-based reporting – Better criteria and sub-categorization consistent with statutory reporting requirements – Simulator-based training for drivers to improve objectivity of reporting Improve understanding of the context of near-misses and causal factors that lead to incidents at railway level crossings – Inform countermeasures – Improve risk models used to prioritize upgrade funding Enhance the understanding of the inter-relationship between human performance and other elements of the system The Future…

R2.119 Platform Verticalization R2.119 project focused on near- misses at level crossings Platform can be verticalized to support several application domains

Questions