RUNAWAY TRAIN – PART 1
By Gareth van Onselen
Introduction
Quietly and without any fanfare – save, perhaps, a statement from the Democratic Alliance – two weeks ago, the Railway Safety Regulator tabled a report on the ‘State of Railway Safety in South Africa 2005/06’.
It is an astounding report, containing a series of statistics which suggest that railway safety in South Africa is deteriorating at a rapid rate. Yet it has gone almost unnoticed.
Quite why the press have not made anything of it is difficult to understand.
In this, the first part of a two-part series on the report, I will set out its broad, overall findings, before focusing on some of the more specific details and insights one can infer from the report, in the second part of the series.
The State of Safety Report
According to the Railway Safety Regulator’s website: “The State of Railway Safety Report is produced in compliance with section 20 of the National Railway Safety Regulator Act, 2002 (Act No. 16 of 2002).”
Later, the site states that: “As the country prepares itself to host the world’s largest sporting event in 2010, the FIFA Soccer World Cup, railway safety as an integral part of our transport system becomes critical. This report therefore presents a concise and critical assessment of the state of the country’s railway safety, and is intended to guide interventions by both the Regulator and the operators.”
The report itself states in its foreword that it “represents the first State of Safety report for South Africa which provides a broad overview of safety performance by railway operators. Notwithstanding the shortcomings highlighted in the compilation of the report, it is useful in providing broad indications on the state of safety in railways.”
How the report works
The report focuses on the two largest operators in the country: Spoornet and Metrorail.
For those not in the know, Spoornet is a subsidiary of the parastatal Transnet and is responsible for the movement of freight (materials and goods) on South Africans railways (Spoornet will soon be changing its name to Transnet Freight Rail).
Metrorail – also a subsidiary of Transnet – is a passenger service: South Africa’s primary source of public transport for rail commuters.
Between the two, then, they comprise the two largest South African railway services and the report argues that “it can safely be assumed that the frequency rates of reportable occurrences (accidents) of those two operators are representative of more than 80% of the reportable occurrences of the rest of the railway industry.”
The report then analyses the number of accidents - what it terms “railway occurrences” - captured and reported to the Railway Safety Regulator. It identifies 12 different kinds of accidents, which it lists from A to L. Each type is specifically defined.
Here is a brief summary:
• A: Collisions and derailments during the movement of rolling stock, including derailments and collisions between or involving rolling stock on a running line or with an obstruction on a running line (level crossing collisions with people not included).
• B: Unauthorized movements.
• C: Level crossing incidents, including collisions between a train and a road vehicle, other rolling stock, bicycles, animal drawn vehicles and people.
• D: Persons struck during train movements or shunting, including a person, employee being struck by a train or object protrud
| Posted on 17/8/2007
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