One critical need for monitoring and improving transportation rail safety is early-stage pre-catastrophic-failure detection of rail breakage, or emerging faults under trains. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 36: Onboard High-Bandwidth Fiber-Optic Sensing System for Broken Rail Detection details the development of an innovative onboard real-time broken rail and defect monitoring and detection system based on fiber-optic sensing technology th...

Safety is of principal concern of the railway industry, and track alignment irregularities can pose risks to the safe operation of trains. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 41: Vibration-based Longitudinal Rail Stress Estimation Exploiting Acoustic Measurement and Machine Learning explores an innovative approach for stress state prediction of continuous welded rail using contactless acoustic sensing and machine learning methods. An impulse-b...

Although researchers have developed instrumentation for scour detection around bridge piers, the current state-of-the-art practice relies upon visual inspection by divers. As a potential alternative to the traditional methods, this research explored the possibilities of using non-contact and remote sensing-based laser ranging technique for scour mapping and monitoring. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA 39: Non-Contact Scour Monitoring System for Railroad...

With the advent and increasing prevalence of driverless train operation, dispatch centers are becoming more central to reliable and safe transportation worldwide. Dispatchers are, however, highly susceptible to the detrimental effects of sleepiness and related impairment of work performance. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 40: Using Light to Reduce Fatigue and Improve Alertness in Railway Operations finds that red light in combination with...

LED signal lights may get too cold on the signal lens to deice or melt snow and could cause accidents in snowy conditions. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 29: Self- Deicing LED Signal for Railroads and Highway Intersections aims to develop and demonstrate a new type of self-deicing LED signals for highway and railroad intersections as a replacement for the existing LED signal lights.

A new prestressing system, named Adaptive Prestressing System, has been proven in this study to be an innovative technique that holds great promise as a transformative, more efficient, and safer prestressing method for concrete crossties in railway systems. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 33: Adaptive Prestressing System for Concrete Crossties details this system, which utilizes a unique characteristic of a class of smart materials known a...

Ballast is an important part of railroad infrastructure. It is used as a support base for bearing the load from the track, as well as facilitating drainage of water from the track. Hence, the ballast layer serves an important role in track performance. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 30: Ballast Real-time Information System details the development and validation of an integrated system – Ballast Real-time information System (BRIS) – o...

TRB's Rail Safety Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Safety Project 35: Non-contact Deflection Monitoring System for Timber Railroad Bridges summarizes a project that explored the feasiblity of the methodology. Considering the abundance of timber railroad bridges in the nation that have exceeded their design life, a cost-effective and safe deflection monitoring system would be helpful for their regular maintenance.

TRB's Rail Safety Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Safety Project 34: Prototype System for Managing and Analyzing Enterprise Rail Transport Risks of Hazardous Materials summarizes a project that resulted in a web-based prototype system designed to support railroads with new risk data visualization and decision-making capabilities. The prototype system addresses the following: • determination and prioritization of high-risk network areas by considering comprehensive hazmat movements acros...

TRB's Rail Safety Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Program has released its final report for Project 31: Modeling and Validation of Standards for a Sleeping Compartment on Accessible Passenger Rail Vehicles. This report explored designs for accessible sleeping compartments on single level and bi-level intercity trains that accommodate up to four passengers traveling together including two passengers who may have reduced mobility. Digital modeling of a passenger rail accessible restroom i...