Maintenance Planning for Rail Asset Management—Current Practices

The occurrence of rail defects, broken rails, and broken rail derailments is consistent with the rate of development found in other studies that look at larger populations of rail defects. Likewise, the larger and more heavily used transit systems develop increased levels of defects, which is again consistent with what is seen in the railroad industry at large.

The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's TCRP Synthesis 151: Maintenance Planning for Rail Asset Management—Current Practices presents the results of a survey and the analysis of the response data in an effort to synthesize current practices.