This derailment near Ponton, Man., was one of 1,170 major accidents on Canadian railways in 2018, according to Transportation Safety Board data.HO, Transportation Safety Board of Canada
The number of derailments, deaths and other safety lapses on Canada’s railways rose by 7 per cent in 2018, outpacing a 4-per-cent surge in freight hauled by Canada’s two big carriers.
There were 1,170 major accidents on Canadian railways last year, a 13-per-cent rise over the five-year average, the Transportation Safety Board said in its preliminary annual summary of rail, aviation, pipeline and marine occurrences released on Wednesday.
The number of railway deaths fell to 57 from 76, led by a drop in the number of trespassers killed by trains. Nineteen people were killed at railway crossings, unchanged from 2017.
“It’s kind of mixed results,” Kirby Jang, the TSB’s director of investigations for rail and pipeline sectors, said of the rail industry’s safety record. “There are numbers that are improving and some that are not.”
The report released on Wednesday is preliminary and will be followed in the spring by the final report, which includes greater analysis.
In the marine transportation industry, the number of vessel collisions, sinkings and groundings rose to 283 from 279, nearing the five-year average of 287. The number of fatalities doubled to 22. “Clearly, more needs to be done to improve safety in this industry,” the TSB said.
For air transportation, the TSB found “encouraging trends” in 2018. Aviation accidents fell in number to 201, from 240 in 2017. A decline in flight-training accidents contributed to the drop, the TSB said. The number of deaths rose by four to 38.
Pipelines experienced 110 spills and other mishaps, compared to 127 in 2017. The five-year average is 119.
Mr. Jang said much of the rise in rail incidents is due to a spike in non-main-track derailments of five or fewer cars, which generally occur in rail yards at slow speeds and cause less damage than others. Main-track derailments of three or more cars also rose.
The 2018 report includes the deaths of three railway employees. In September, a Hudson Bay Railway train operator was killed when his train derailed in northern Manitoba; a Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. conductor was struck and killed by equipment on an adjacent track while he was outside his train in Calgary in November, and a Canadian National Railway Co. employee died at a rail yard in Edmunston, N.B., in December.
“There is risk in any railway operation,” Mr. Kirby said. “Some of these occurred within yards during switching operations and at least in a main-track derailment.”
The rise in derailments and other occurrences topped the increase in freight traffic, according to TSB and company reports. Canada’s two major freight carriers, CN and CP, each posted a 4-per-cent rise in carloads and double-digit jumps in revenue in 2018 amid a surge in demand for rail transportation.
The TSB said rail accidents per million miles travelled rose to 13.44 in 2018, from 13.215. The five-year average is 12.84 accidents per million miles.
There were 15 incidents of runaway trains or cars in 2018, compared with 14 in 2017.
Last month, a runaway CP train sped down a mountain in British Columbia and crashed, killing all three crew members. Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, the union that represents train operators at CN, CP and other carriers, says the latest fatalities bring the number of rail worker deaths in just over a year to eight.