Keywords: railways, hazard management, quantitative risk assessment, risk tolerability, Canadian railway system, safety.

Railway operations across Canada are exposed to a wide range of physical and climatic conditions. Steep mountain crossings through the Western Canadian Cordillera and mountain ranges in the East, contrast with the flat terrain of the prairies, partially overlain with soft clay deposits and highly compressible organic material. Air temperature ranges between less than -20 C and over 30 C are common, and large precipitation events occur as rain storms and snow blizzards. These conditions pose a number of hazards to railway operations. Canadian railways proactively address these hazards through monitoring, inspections and regular maintenance. Tools are being developed to enhance the current hazard management strategies that consider the risk levels associated with these hazards and their tolerability. The tools aim to satisfy risk tolerability thresholds, provide flexibility of operations, and be practical for regular use. This paper presents a framework under development where detail analyses of hazard and risk levels are used to develop practical operational tools to maximize the fluidity and safety of operations, constraining the hazards and risks within tolerable levels. This framework is then illustrated with three case studies in Canada.

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