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Amtrak's Northeast Corridor Long Term Trends

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Information regarding the condition of the nation’s railroad bridges is difficult to come by.  I found a GAO Report to Congress dated August 2007 that contains some insights.  The data for the report was collected, it appears, in 2006, which makes it more than eight years old or older.  Whether it is still relevant is not known. The GAO found that there is little public information regarding the condition of the nation’s railroad bridges and tunnels and their impact on rail congestion.  The railroads consider their bridge and tunnel information proprietary and only share it with the federal government selectively.  The Class I railroads maintained detailed inspection and maintenance information regarding their bridges and tunnels.  The Class II and Class III railroads do so to a lesser extent. The Federal Railroad Administration has a limited role in overseeing the safety of railroad bridges and tunnels.  It believes that the railroads have a vested interest in seeing that its bridges and tunnels are maintained properly to ensure safety of operations and to reduce congestion.  The FRA has issued bridge management guidelines, makes structural observations, and may take action to address any structural issues. According to the FRA, from 1998 through 2006, there were 22 train accidents that could be attributed to bridge failure.  No one was killed and one person was injured.  No one has been killed in a train accident attributable to a bridge failure since 1957.  Considering that the Class I railroads owned and maintained over 61,000 bridges in 2006, whilst the Class II and III railroads owned and maintained more than 15,000 bridges, the accident rate attributable to bridge problems does not suggest that the nation’s railroad bridges are in disrepair.  The report does not mention Amtrak's bridges, other than to say that the investigators talked with Amtrak.  Moreover, I did not read the entire report; it is 71 pages long.
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