Date: 23/06/2005
Source: Department of Transport
Title: Radebe: National Standards for Railway Safety
Minister of Transport's remarks on National Standards for Railway Safety Launch of SANS 3000-1, Sandton
South Africa has an extensive and highly complex railway system, covering the whole range of activities associated with modern economic life. This system has developed over more than a hundred years and in its time has been the source of tremendous innovation, both in terms of track architecture and design, as well as in signalling, wagon and locomotive components and systems.
But, as is to be expected, throughout its long history, South African rail has also witnessed some terrible accidents caused by a combination of human error, technology failure, design faults or simply recklessness. The tragedy of the Bloukrans Bridge on the railway line between Grahamstown and Port Alfred in the early part of the last century sent shockwaves through the country and indeed received world-wide attention. That accident went a long way to promoting the systems of rail safety, regulation and inspection that have become a strong feature of the railways administration of our country ever since.
New conditions however bring new challenges and frequently new technologies also bring unexpected problems or can often result in even unintended consequences. Quite often, unfortunately, shortcomings only reveal their horrific consequences when accidents occur, but, if investigated properly, such accidents can provide insights in how not to do things, or how to alter technology applications, and indeed reshape and redesign systems to prevent such accidents from happening again.
But none of this work, of investigation, assessment or redesign, can occur without a foundation based on solid, legitimate and widely accepted engineering safety and safety management regulations. My point quite simply, is that behind every incident and investigation stands a set of rules and regulations that are benchmarked against the best in the world and are themselves tested on a continuous and stringent basis by competent authorities.
It is for this basic reason that I am pleased to receive the latest in an ongoing series of documents related to the modernisation and expansion of our rail safety regulation system to meet the demands of our new era. Last July we released the Regulations for the Safety Management System for operators that cover all aspects of operational safety, reporting of occurrences, the nature of information to be supplied to the Regulator, and so on. Currently we are finalising the second set of regulations required by the National Railway Safety Regulator Act, namely those that deal with the Development of Standards, including national, industry and local standards that are influenced by geographic location and circumstances and so on. These are highly complex and have thus taken some time to finalise, but I am informed that we will probably be able to release them for public comment shortly.
The document we have before us today, as has been explained, is part of the larger project, and in essence provides much of the detail that is needed to give flesh to the Regulations released last year. They cover a range of areas, including technical aspects; track, civil and electrical engineering requirements; rolling stock; train control systems and related equipment; operational systems; intermodal interfaces; and human factors.
A lot of hard work has gone into producing the SANS 3000-1, or to give it its rather intimidating official title the South African National Standard: Railway Safety Management: Part 1: General. (SANS 3000-1: 2005/ RSR 001: 2005). I wish to extend my own and government's appreciation to everyone involved in the working group that comprised representatives of the railway industry who voluntarily gave of their time to develop this standard. They include Spoornet, Metrorail, the SARCC, the Railroad Association of South Africa, the Heritage Railway Association of South Africa, Organised Labour, and the DoT. This is not the end of the road by any means, but it is an important step none the less.
When I addressed the newly constituted National Railway Safety Regulator in August 2003 I challenged the institution to "seek a balance between what could be seen as safety engineering on the one hand and reliability engineering on the other", where "safety engineering emphasizes the introduction and use of technologies designed to prevent any possible incident, and reliability engineering depends on mathematical probabilities of the remoteness of types of incident happening and suggests the possible adoption of compromises in technology design that are usually determined by cost factors." I also indicated that we probably needed a public debate about these issues, particularly in the context we find ourselves that stresses transparency and public access to information. The rail sector impacts directly on our public life on a 24hour basis, and thus must be accessible to the public's concerns as well as to the needs of thorough, unbiased, and expert analysis and inspection.
We are well down that road, and the release of the SANS 3000-1 is a further step in that direction. I would urge, however, that we still have some debate to carry out, and for a much wider appreciation of the work of the Regulator as a whole to be developed.
I thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Transport
23 June 2005
Source: Department of Transport
Title: Radebe: National Standards for Railway Safety
Minister of Transport's remarks on National Standards for Railway Safety Launch of SANS 3000-1, Sandton
South Africa has an extensive and highly complex railway system, covering the whole range of activities associated with modern economic life. This system has developed over more than a hundred years and in its time has been the source of tremendous innovation, both in terms of track architecture and design, as well as in signalling, wagon and locomotive components and systems.
But, as is to be expected, throughout its long history, South African rail has also witnessed some terrible accidents caused by a combination of human error, technology failure, design faults or simply recklessness. The tragedy of the Bloukrans Bridge on the railway line between Grahamstown and Port Alfred in the early part of the last century sent shockwaves through the country and indeed received world-wide attention. That accident went a long way to promoting the systems of rail safety, regulation and inspection that have become a strong feature of the railways administration of our country ever since.
New conditions however bring new challenges and frequently new technologies also bring unexpected problems or can often result in even unintended consequences. Quite often, unfortunately, shortcomings only reveal their horrific consequences when accidents occur, but, if investigated properly, such accidents can provide insights in how not to do things, or how to alter technology applications, and indeed reshape and redesign systems to prevent such accidents from happening again.
But none of this work, of investigation, assessment or redesign, can occur without a foundation based on solid, legitimate and widely accepted engineering safety and safety management regulations. My point quite simply, is that behind every incident and investigation stands a set of rules and regulations that are benchmarked against the best in the world and are themselves tested on a continuous and stringent basis by competent authorities.
It is for this basic reason that I am pleased to receive the latest in an ongoing series of documents related to the modernisation and expansion of our rail safety regulation system to meet the demands of our new era. Last July we released the Regulations for the Safety Management System for operators that cover all aspects of operational safety, reporting of occurrences, the nature of information to be supplied to the Regulator, and so on. Currently we are finalising the second set of regulations required by the National Railway Safety Regulator Act, namely those that deal with the Development of Standards, including national, industry and local standards that are influenced by geographic location and circumstances and so on. These are highly complex and have thus taken some time to finalise, but I am informed that we will probably be able to release them for public comment shortly.
The document we have before us today, as has been explained, is part of the larger project, and in essence provides much of the detail that is needed to give flesh to the Regulations released last year. They cover a range of areas, including technical aspects; track, civil and electrical engineering requirements; rolling stock; train control systems and related equipment; operational systems; intermodal interfaces; and human factors.
A lot of hard work has gone into producing the SANS 3000-1, or to give it its rather intimidating official title the South African National Standard: Railway Safety Management: Part 1: General. (SANS 3000-1: 2005/ RSR 001: 2005). I wish to extend my own and government's appreciation to everyone involved in the working group that comprised representatives of the railway industry who voluntarily gave of their time to develop this standard. They include Spoornet, Metrorail, the SARCC, the Railroad Association of South Africa, the Heritage Railway Association of South Africa, Organised Labour, and the DoT. This is not the end of the road by any means, but it is an important step none the less.
When I addressed the newly constituted National Railway Safety Regulator in August 2003 I challenged the institution to "seek a balance between what could be seen as safety engineering on the one hand and reliability engineering on the other", where "safety engineering emphasizes the introduction and use of technologies designed to prevent any possible incident, and reliability engineering depends on mathematical probabilities of the remoteness of types of incident happening and suggests the possible adoption of compromises in technology design that are usually determined by cost factors." I also indicated that we probably needed a public debate about these issues, particularly in the context we find ourselves that stresses transparency and public access to information. The rail sector impacts directly on our public life on a 24hour basis, and thus must be accessible to the public's concerns as well as to the needs of thorough, unbiased, and expert analysis and inspection.
We are well down that road, and the release of the SANS 3000-1 is a further step in that direction. I would urge, however, that we still have some debate to carry out, and for a much wider appreciation of the work of the Regulator as a whole to be developed.
I thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Transport
23 June 2005
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