Investigating Driver/ATC Performance Impacting Railway Train Operation Safety and Delays: A Field Study on Egyptian National Railways

Document Type : Research articles

Authors

1 Civil Engineering Department, Benha University, Faculty of Engineering at Shoubra, Egypt

2 Egyptian National Railways

Abstract

. Signalling passed at danger (SPAD) accidents are studied in this paper to find out the main causes as well as their negative impact. Although, ATC (Automatic Train Control) devices are installed to minimize the human factor in operation of the trains, they did not work properly due to cancelling their activity on some lines by the drivers or bad maintenance. The direct relation between SPADs and disordering of activeness of the devices are discussed; where the safety performance of two main lines on the network of Egyptian National Railways (ENR); during the period from year 2015 to year 2019 that have severe impacts have been collected, recorded, studied and analysed. The case of ENR has been taken as an application on the driver/ATC performance that impacting trains operation safety and train delays. It is found that signal passed at danger is a major cause of many severe and fatal accidents during that study period. Also, results of the analysis and lessons that have been learnt are concluded and recommended. 

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