Driving sustainable rail infrastructure with RSSB

Background

The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) commissioned BRE and the Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE) to undertake research to inform the development of new overarching rail industry guidance and technical notes for sustainable design. Our research focused on the current status of standards, guidance and policies for sustainable design relevant to the UK rail industry. The research covered the full scope of topics set out in the Sustainable Rail Blueprint, which introduces 11 sustainable rail topics, across emissions, nature, environmental and social sustainability.

Challenges

Current standards for the UK rail industry are numerious and complex. Given the wide scope of 11 topic areas to review as part of this reaserch, there were a large number of source materials to examine over a short timescale for the first phase of the project. We also had to manage multiple workshops attended by UK railway sector participants, with a wide range of sustainable rail design topic areas to cover, and detailed feedback to summarise.

Solutions

The project team conducted a methodical, efficient, rapid evidence review of guidance, standards, and policies affecting sustainable design of UK railways across the 11 sustainable rail topics, compiling evidence into a matrix. The team found many relevant sustainable design practices, but also a number of gaps potentially requiring new guidance or standards to be created.

BRE also led workshops with stakeholders from across the UK railway sector, taking participants through a series of exercises to understand their knowledge and opinions on the application of sustainable design in the UK railway sector. We summarised and consolidated feedback from these workshops, combining it with our research findings.

It’s been great to work together on this project which I think will make a really significant positive impact on the industry, as the guiding resource for integrating sustainability across rail infrastructure design. Thank you all for your efforts on this, the level of industry engagement, and your prompt response to all feedback provided.

– Thom Rawson (RSSB)

Benefits

The output of the project was a guidance note on sustainable design of rail infrastructure. This document provides multiple references against key sustainability outcomes, in a way that designers and planners could refer to when they are in the process of designing new rail infrastructure.

Read the summary of our research