The Federal Transit Administration's Strategic Plan includes a goal to foster production of better transit vehicles and components. To assist in accomplishing this goal, the Strategic Plan encourages the transit industry to develop standard specifications for new railcars. Currently, significant features of almost every order for passenger-rail rolling-stock equipment are unique. This occurs not only with orders for different transit systems, but also for orders within the same agency. System and subsystem differences have contributed to increased costs for rail cars and replacement parts, and excessively large inventories of maintenance parts to support unique fleets. Most previous attempts at standardization have failed because they focused on the whole vehicle. This effort focused on the development of standards (e.g., physical, logical, and electrical) for system and subsystem interfaces.

The objective of this research was to design a process for developing consensus standards (e.g., physical, logical, and electrical) for system and subsystem interfaces for elements of electric rail passenger vehicles (light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail vehicles). This was accomplished by (1) identifying and defining system and subsystem interfaces that are potential candidates for the development of standards; (2) defining an industry-consensus process that would be used to develop the standards for the identified interfaces; and (3) developing standards for one or more of the candidate interfaces. Guidance in defining industry consensus was drawn from American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Procedures for the Development and Coordination of American National Standards, approved September 1993.

Status: An Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Rail Transit Vehicle Interface Standards Committee was formed to undertake the standards-development process. The Committee formed eight working groups to prepare draft standards for specific interfaces. In addition, an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Committee was formed to develop mechanical standards for railcars. This ASME Committee is focusing initially on the structural strength and crashworthiness of light rail cars. Funding to continue TCRP Project G-4 was approved in November 1996. This additional funding was designated as TCRP Project G-4A. TCRP Project G-4 has been completed, and the continuation of the standards-development process is being funded through TCRP Project G-4A.

The results from this project and Project G-4A have been summarized in TCRP Research Results Digest 44