Outcome

This measures the extent to which regulation is contributing to effective safe rail operation. Inappropriate management of rail operational safety contributes to serious rail accidents that result in the destruction of infrastructure and sometimes cause serious injury or death with costs that will be borne by the community.

A key element in the provision of a safe transport system is the development and implementation by all Australian States of a consistent approach to rail safety regulation under the umbrella of an Inter-governmental Agreement on National Rail Safety.

This is achieved through accreditation and performance monitoring including compliance audits, review of accident/incident investigations and change management.

Serious accidents are defined in the Rail Safety Regulations and Appendix C of AS4292.1 as Category ‘A’ occurrences and are recorded by all accredited railway owners and operators in Australia. Over time this measure will show the performance of train operation safety.

The data above relates to Category ‘A’ occurrences that are accidents involving deaths, serious injury, running line derailments, running line collisions, and level crossing accidents. Data for 1998-99 and 1999-2000 has been adjusted retrospectively to accurately reflect results for those years due to delays in accident reports being submitted and double counting.

This measure is calculated by dividing the total number of Category ‘A’ occurrences by the total number of train kilometres travelled by trains managed by accredited operators in Western Australia.

The measure will become a key national benchmarking statistic. A downward trend will give some indication of improvement in the management of rail safety regulation and the effectiveness of co-regulation.

Data collection for the year 1998-99 was on a voluntary basis by the industry as the Rail Safety Act was not in place. The upward trend in data from 1998-99 to 2000-01 can be attributed to more effective reporting rather than a deterioration in performance.

In 2003 more precise definitions were adopted of categories of railway occurrences (agreed nationally) where those events not directly attributed to rail operations are omitted.

The measure provides information to assess rail safety performance of rail operations over time and relates also to the economic impact on the community.

Trend analysis over subsequent years is necessary to understand suitably the significance of the indicator.

The Department is committed to providing fair access to a reasonable level of transport services for all individuals, businesses and communities.

There are three measures that monitor progress towards making the public transport system in Perth more accessible to all sections of the community, including people with special needs, and thereby promoting social sustainability.

While the affordability measure shows that the cost of access to public transport continues to decline for people on the single pension, the related measures show that an increasing proportion of service kilometres is being provided by wheelchair-accessible vehicles, and that many train stations have been made wheelchair-accessible.

Furthermore, as shown in the Quality and Timeliness Output Measures (under Output 2 in Report on Operations), users’ level of satisfaction with Transperth services has shown an improvement over the previous year, and bus and train services are operating at levels that exceed specified performance targets.