Draft Details

This standard is applicable to new and existing passenger rail systems in Canada and may be applied across the lifecycle of transit and rail infrastructure including: planning and design, operation and maintenance, asset management, and emergency preparedness and response.

This standard may be used by a passenger railway entity, an infrastructure manager, a safety authority, or a transit agency that wishes to implement a safety management system or to supervise a safety management system to ensure business objectives are achieved in a safe manner.

This standard is intended for a wide range of stakeholders involved in the planning, operation, and oversight of transit and passenger rail systems, including:

·    Transit agencies, authorities, and passenger rail operators

·    Infrastructure owners and asset managers

·    Municipal, provincial, and federal transportation departments

·    Engineering and planning consultants

·    Emergency management and continuity planners

·    Climate risk analysts and sustainability officers

·    Regulatory bodies and funding agencies

The point of this work is to try to minimize if not avoid risks associated with climate change and therefore, anyone in an organization who wishes to increase their climate resilience may use this standard to help achieve this goal.

1.1 Pre-planning

Pre-planning is a process that prepares the organization to undertake a climate vulnerability and risk assessment and adaptation planning. The process is relevant when an organization initiates climate change adaptation and resilience as well as when an organization reassesses or revises its climate change adaptation and resilience strategy. Pre-planning involves assessing, and where necessary establishing, the capability of the organization to undertake adaptation and resilience as well as identifying interested parties and how it engages with them.

The organization may establish, implement and maintain an adaptation policy or an adaptation component of its safety policy. Incorporating adaptation as a component of the organization’s safety policy provides a framework for setting adaptation objectives, boundaries and timescales and facilitates communication regarding adaptation within the organization and to interested parties.

Reference to adaptation within the safety policy shall be appropriate for the purpose and context of the organization, considering relevant legislation and policies or plans and the climate change impacts and vulnerabilities of the applicable transit or passenger rail systems.

1.2 Terminology

In this Standard, “shall” is used to express a requirement, i.e., a provision that the user is obliged to satisfy in order to comply with the standard; “should” is used to express a recommendation or that which is advised but not required; and “may” is used to express an option or that which is permissible within the limits of the Standard.

Notes accompanying clauses do not include requirements or alternative requirements; the purpose of a note accompanying a clause is to separate from the text explanatory or informative material.

Notes to tables and figures are considered part of the table or figure and may be written as requirements.

Annexes are designated normative (mandatory) or informative (non-mandatory) to define their application.