IRJ at AusRail Plus 2011, Brisbane: AusRail was the venue for today's launch of the TrackSafe Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation aiming to reduce level crossing, trespass and suicide incidents, and industry employee trauma on Australia's rail network. Developed over two years TrackSafe aims to harness the current effort and resources of rail operators, police, emergency services, health professionals and the community to achieve this goal.

 

TrackSafe is a joint initiative of the Australasian Railway Association and UGL and is supported by QR National, Pacific National, Rio Tinto, Brookfield Rail, RailCorp, South Australian Government, Public Transport Authority of Western Australia and Metro Trains Melbourne.

The Australian rail industry has so far raised more than $A 1m to support TrackSafe. A further $A 1m is being sought to maintain the foundation's work which includes research into design and engineering controls and investigations into potential solutions to the high rate of rail trespassing in Australia. Another aim is to engage stakeholders to look at ways of coordinating and broadening the reach of current level crossing safety campaigns. There are more than 30 level crossing fatalities a year in Australia.

The foundation will work with groups such as LifeLine and BeyondBlue who assist people with mental health issues to develop suicide prevention strategies for rail in Australia. There are around 200 suicides a year on the Australian rail network. Work will also focus on alleviating or mitigating the trauma for rail employees, the ‘silent victims' of suicides or level crossing incidents.