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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process between Highway Agencies and Railroads. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14438.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process between Highway Agencies and Railroads. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14438.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process between Highway Agencies and Railroads. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14438.
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Suggested Citation:"Executive Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process between Highway Agencies and Railroads. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14438.
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1Executive Summary North American railroads and public highway departments interact thousands of times annually as the highway agencies conduct projects that cross over, under, or parallel to the railways. Each interaction requires a thorough review of the safety, engineering, and operating effects that the project will have on the railroad during construction and for decades thereafter. Although most of these reviews and agreements proceed smoothly, both the highway agencies and the railroads agree that delays and problems occur routinely. These delays can cause important highway projects to increase in cost, and they can consume valuable staff and engineering resources by all parties. The focus of this project is to provide recommended standard agreements, standard processes, and best practices that can help both sides reduce the time and cost of project reviews. To suc- ceed, each must understand the basic needs of the other and both must have common languages, practices, standards, and expectations. Understanding the Railroad Perspective A brief history of the railroads’ recent past can help explain their approach to public projects. Rail- roads have downsized dramatically in recent decades, which has led to a reduction in non-core staff. As a result, many have outsourced most of their engineering departments that used to focus on public projects. Although much smaller in terms of number of employees, the North American railroads today are operating at unprecedented levels of volume, efficiency, and reliability (1, 2, 3). This success has been hard-won after decades of deregulation, downsizing, consolidation, and shareholder demands for increased efficiencies and profitability. As a result, railways are more heavily traveled than ever in their history, while the railroad staffs are at their smallest. The rail- roads can tolerate no delay to their operations and they are unwilling to accept risk or constraint to their finite and ever-more-valuable rights-of-way. The railroads’ approach to public projects is dominated by several overriding factors: • Public highway projects seldom benefit the railroads. • Projects can constrain future rail capacity. • Construction activities can create great risk to workers, railway equipment, and track operations. • Railroads cannot tolerate train delays on tightly strung national corridors. • Railroads must cover all their costs, including engineering reviews and construction monitoring. Understanding the State Perspective The state and local highway agencies are the mirror image of the railroads when they approach highway–railroad projects. Highway agencies are public entities, accustomed to providing advice and reviews without cost. Highway agency personnel are trained to focus on the public’s

2expenditures and, therefore, they try to reduce the cost of their bridges and other projects when- ever possible. Highway construction projects frequently close travel lanes for months and divert traffic to redundant parallel routes. Highway agencies have long lead times for planning. They develop their projects much differently with years of analysis, as opposed to railroads, which make capital decisions on an annual basis. Although both highway agencies and railroads are driven by engineering factors to make investment decisions about linear transportation facilities, they approach their decisions from very different perspectives. Dozens of state and local highway agencies were consulted. Their commonly expressed needs from the railroads include the following: • Timely and reliable reviews; • Better internal railroad coordination; • Improved mechanisms for access to rights-of-way; • Consistent design requirements; and • A spirit of cooperation and a recognition that public agencies have limited time and resources to accommodate railroad needs. Findings The following key findings hold promise for improving the agreement process. Few Metrics Exist A common issue throughout this research is a lack of common baselines of performance. It appears that there are no widely recognized standards for performance in conducting railroad reviews, agreements, or approvals. In fact, few states could produce metrics on their own project submittals to determine how many projects fail to receive a review or an approval within an agreed-on time frame. A few states have developed master agreements that include desired review times, but those appear to be in the minority. As a result of this lack of baseline information, the reporting of best practices and the listing of recommendations have been based on the informed consensus of the practitioners, and not the empirical observation of performance. Pressures on Both Sides Will Increase Railroad traffic is projected to steadily increase because of international trade, long-term economic and population growth, and the expansion of intermodal traffic. The recession of 2008 depressed rail traffic, but as a long-term trend, rail volumes are predicted to grow. The existing and finite rail corridors will become busier, more congested, and even less tolerant of delays or encroachments. Neither side can expect a lessening of pressures to manage project reviews efficiently. Both Sides Agree on Best Practices On the positive side, however, the highway agencies and railroads have identified more than 20 best practices that expedite the review process. The productive and complementary examples illustrate practices that have been drawn from “partnering,” good project management strategies, and the type of “process improvement” efforts common in frameworks such as Six Sigma, the Baldrige process, or “environmental streamlining.” As with the streamlining best-case examples, both par- ties have enumerated their requirements and have jointly identified practices and processes that satisfy them while at the same time advancing highway renewal projects. These best practices include the following: • Early formal coordination while project concepts are still under development; • Periodic, ongoing reviews throughout the project’s development;

3• Open, continuous lines of communication; • Escalation procedures to resolve conflicts; • Common, consistent, and empowered points of contact in both agencies who can make decisions and remove bottlenecks; • Regular process-review meetings, where both sides identify issues and strategies to address them; • Standard, streamlined agreements to address recurring issues such as insurance, rights-of- entry, liability, easements, safe construction practices, and ongoing maintenance; • Commonly understood design standards and construction practices agreeable to both parties; • Training for designers, construction personnel, and maintenance personnel who interact with railroads; and • Standard process manuals to follow in developing projects or conducting maintenance activ- ities near railways. Both Sides Identify Some Common Problems The highway agencies and railroads independently cite some common problems that they believe need to be addressed to everyone’s mutual interest. Some of these are the following: • Inability to reimburse engineering review costs early in the life cycle of a project, even before the project is programmed or under development; • The cost and availability of insurance; and • Right-of-way appraisal processes for railroad easements, which can be restrictive or contentious. Partnering: A Strategic Opportunity Another strategy that could be helpful to the agreement process is “partnering.” This process was first articulated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in addressing its large civil works projects. It also has been encouraged by the Federal Highway Administration, some state departments of transportation, and their associated contracting companies. In partnering, both parties • Define what a successful outcome would be; • Formally agree that each wants to assist the other in achieving this common success; • Develop a level of service agreement that spells out what each expects from the other in terms of service and timeliness; • Identify escalation paths for when problems cannot be resolved at the lowest level; • Agree to remain in constant communication to ensure that problems are identified early and to monitor whether milestones have been achieved; and • Periodically analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what can be learned for the future. Recommendations In this report, state and local highway agencies and railroads can review best practices, model processes, and model agreements. Then, they can self-assess whether any of the following recommendations can assist them in streamlining the agreement process: • Negotiate a memorandum of understanding between the highway agency and the railroad as to how they desire to conduct the review process, including periodic process-improvement efforts. • Develop draft model agreements and streamlined permitting language. • Adopt a “continuous improvement” framework to the agreement process so that both the highway agency and the railroad are tracking performance and regularly conferring on ways to improve it.

4• Participate in efforts through their professional associations to continue dialogue on ways to share best practices and perpetuate the further development of model agreements and model practices. References 1. Federal Railroad Administration. Freight Railroads Background. www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/policy/ freight2006%20final.pdf. Accessed April 30, 2008. 2. Association of American Railroads. U.S. Freight Railroad Productivity (Sept. 2009). www.aar.org/ incongress/∼/media/aar/backgroundpapers/usfreightrailroadproductivity.ashx. Accessed July 26, 2010. 3. Cambridge Systematics. Freight Demand and Logistics Bottom Line Report (Draft). American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C., Dec. 2006, pp. 3–9.

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Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process between Highway Agencies and Railroads Get This Book
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TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-R16-RR-1: Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process between Highway Agencies and Railroads examines the process by which highway agencies and railroads develop agreements for highway projects which interact with railways. The report examines the underlying causes of delay in the project-agreement process and developed model processes to address them.

Appendix C of SHRP 2 Report S2-R16-RR-1 is available online in Microsoft Word format.

An e-book version of this report is available for purchase at Google, Amazon, and iTunes.

SHRP 2 Renewal Project R16 also developed two supplemental reports, one report about establishing a collaborative forum between transportation agencies and railroads and another report about the development of tools in this project.

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