Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) last week released its annual report to Parliament, highlighting its annual statistics on reported occurrences in rail, aviation, marine and pipeline modes of transportation for fiscal-year 2017-18.

During that time, the TSB launched 54 investigations and issued 66 investigation reports, which represents a 50 percent increase in concluded investigations compared with the same period a year earlier, the agency reported in a press release.

In addition:
• The average time to complete an investigation was 503 days, down from 569 days in 2016-17 and the five-year average of 527 days. The reduction in average time reflects the agency’s efforts to streamline and modernize its processes and tools.
• The board issued 58 safety communications, including eight recommendations, one safety concern, 21 safety advisories and 28 information letters.
• TSB officials processed 139 confidential reports submitted through its SECURITAS program, including 44 in rail, 70 in aviation and 25 in marine. The program enables passengers or transportation workers to report anonymously transportation safety concerns.
• TSB investigators, managers and board members carried out 69 outreach activities across the country in all four modes to share safety messages and lessons learned from investigations.
• TSB senior officials appeared six times before parliamentary committees on matters related to advancing transportation safety in Canada.

Although progress is “still slow” on recommendations related to the TSB Watchlist, the board closed 28 recommendations across the rail, air and marine sectors, with 26 closed as “fully satisfactory,” TSB officials said.