We made a promise to make Norfolk Southern the gold standard of safety, and we’re delivering on it. While safety has always been priority number one, we never stop looking for ways to do better — and are committed to making our safe railroad even safer.

Read more in our Midyear Safety Report.

Norfolk Southern is delivering on our promise to becoming the gold standard of safety by enhancing our safety culture in partnership with our railroaders and labor leaders. We’re investing two billion dollars in safety and infrastructure improvements each year and rolled out the Six-Point Safety Plan last year.

Safety is essential to everything we do, so we’re investing in industry-leading, advanced technology to continue to enhance safety across our network.

We appointed AtkinsRéalis US Nuclear to conduct an independent review of our safety culture. Following receipt of the initial report from AtkinsRéalis US Nuclear, we have been working diligently to incorporate these insights into our current initiatives to continue improving our safety policies.

Last year we implemented our six-point plan to enhance the safety of our operations. The initiatives are based on the preliminary findings of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) following the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment. The plan includes the following initiatives:

• Enhance the hot bearing detector network.
• Pilot next-generation hot bearing detectors.
• Work with industry on practices for hot bearing detectors.
• Deploy more acoustic bearing detectors.
• Accelerate our Digital Train Inspection program.
• Support a strong safety culture.

As part of our six-point safety plan, we promised to join the Federal Railroad Administration’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS). In keeping our promises, we’re proud to be the first Class I railroad to launch a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS) pilot program. Co-developed with the support and collaboration with two of our largest unions, this joint safety initiative will provide covered NS employees with a confidential forum to report safety issues, near misses, and close calls.

We partnered with the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS) to create an innovative new program called the Signal Safety Collaboration. This is a one-year pilot program, which was developed with input from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), to establish a collaborative process – including joint inspections, information sharing, and training – to identify further improvements and best practices that enhance signal safety for the benefit of our employees and the communities we serve. This collaborative initiative was announced in a joint letter sent to all craft employees represented by the BRS.

In line with our commitment to advancing safety and the future of railroad technology, we’ve partnered with the Georgia Tech Research Institute to develop the next innovations in Machine Vision Inspection technology. These next-generation, ultra-high-resolution camera and imaging portals are helping to further national security and economic development. We plan to deploy over a dozen portals by the end of 2024.