In the wake of the derailment of a Puyuma Express train in Yilan County that killed 18 passengers in October, the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) yesterday established a 36-member operational safety department to manage all safety issues regarding the agency’s operations.
The agency used to have a transportation safety committee to investigate the causes of railway incidents, TRA Director-General Chang Chen-yuan (張政源) said at a ceremony yesterday.
“The committee was an ad hoc team formed by members of different departments and was mainly responsible for investigating the causes of incidents. However, the lessons we learned from different accidents did not translate to safety regulations that TRA workers must abide by daily. The new department is formed of skilled professionals from different departments at the administration and is to be specifically in charge of handling transportation safety issues,” Chang said.
Accidents are to be divided into three categories and the new department would be in charge of level-one accidents, or minor events, he said.
Level-two accidents would be handled by the Railway Bureau, he said.
Level-three accidents like the derailment of the Puyuma Express in October would be handled by the national transportation safety board, which is to be established next year, Chang said.
“The establishment of this new department is to show the agency’s determination to thoroughly implement safety guidelines in our daily operations, which is key in preventing accidents from happening,” he said, adding that he is confident that the agency would achieve its goal of having no major accidents.
Department Director Chen Shih-chi (陳仕其) said the department would be implementing a safety management system, which has been common practice in Europe, Japan and the US for many years.
In addition to the TRA, the Aviation Safety Council — which investigates aircraft crashes and other aviation incidents — also uses the same system, although it has only four criteria for safety management evaluations, he said.
For the TRA, the Institute of Transportation — a Ministry of Transportation and Communications think tank — has designated 12 criteria to evaluate the agency’s safety mechanism, Chen said, adding that he is also confident that the new department would reach its goal of reducing the number of minor incidents and eliminating major accidents.
In addition to conducting investigations, the department would also convene a safety management meeting every month to review all the safety issues, which would be attended by officials from the TRA, the Railway Bureau and the Institute of Transportation, as well as transportation experts, Chen said.
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