Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning.
I'm Jeff Ellis, chief legal officer for Canadian Pacific. I am joined by James Clements, our vice-president for strategic planning, and Keith Shearer, our general manager of regulatory.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. In the interest of time, we will focus our remarks this morning on just two issues, LVVR and long-haul interswitching.
As one of Canada's two class I railways, we operate a 22,000-kilometre network throughout Canada and the United States. We link thousands of communities with the North American economy and with international markets. CP has made and continues to make significant levels of capital investment to improve safety and grow the capacity of our network. Since 2011 we've invested more than $7.7 billion on railway infrastructure. In 2017 we plan to invest an additional $1.25 billion. Should the changes to the maximum revenue entitlement come into effect in their current form, CP will likely make a major investment in new covered hopper cars, creating new supply chain capacity.
CP has been recognized as the safest railway in North America by the Federal Railroad Administration in the U.S. We've achieved the lowest frequency of train accidents in each of the past 11 years. That being said, safety is a journey and not a destination. One incident is too many. LVVR technology is essential if we are to materially improve railway safety in Canada, because human factors continue to be the leading cause of railway incidents. Since 2007 we've had a 50% reduction in safety incidents caused by equipment failures. Similarly, track failures are down 39%. However, human-caused incidents have seen little change over the same time period. According to data published by the TSB, 53.9% of railway incidents in 2016 were caused by human factors. It's clear that we must take action to tackle this category of rail safety incidents.
The evidence is also clear. One example is that since the implementation of DriveCam in New Jersey, New Jersey Transit saw a 68% reduction in bus collisions from 2007 through 2010. The number of passenger injuries fell 71% in the same period. Rail commuter Metrolink in California similarly saw a significant reduction in red-signal violations and station platform overruns.
It's imperative, however, that these regulations allow for safety issues to be exposed before an incident occurs. That would enable us to proactively develop effective and appropriate corrective action. It would be a mistake to amend Bill C-49 to prevent any kind of proactive use of LVVR data by railway companies. It would negate a key safety benefit of adopting the technology. CP recognizes the need to use this technology in a way that is respectful of our operating employees, in accordance with Canadian privacy laws, and we are committed to working closely with Transport Canada and our unions over the coming months to do so.
I'll now turn it over to James.