AMTRAK, Commuter train, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Positive Train Control

Most Commuter Rails Won’t Meet Deadline For Mandated Safety Systems

Repost from National Public Radio

Most Commuter Rails Won’t Meet Deadline For Mandated Safety Systems

By David Schaper, June 03, 2015 3:48 AM ET
Despite Congress mandating all railroads be equipped with a Positive Train Control system by the end of the year, Chicago's Metra system isn't expected to reach that goal until 2019. Most commuter trains won't meet the deadline.
Despite Congress mandating all railroads be equipped with a Positive Train Control system by the end of the year, Chicago’s Metra system isn’t expected to reach that goal until 2019. Most commuter trains won’t meet the deadline. M. Spencer Green/AP

Many investigators say Positive Train Control (PTC), an automated safety system, could have prevented last month’s Amtrak train derailment. Amtrak officials have said they will have PTC installed throughout the northeast corridor by the end of this year, which is the deadline mandated by Congress.

But the vast majority of other commuter railroad systems, which provided nearly 500 million rides in 2014, won’t be able to fully implement positive train control for several more years.

On the southern edge of downtown Chicago, a few dozen commuter trains idle as they prepare to take thousands of people from their jobs downtown to their homes in city neighborhoods, and suburbs both near and far. Just behind the tracks is a nondescript, two-story brick building that houses the control center for all these rail lines, and the brains of what will be Metra’s positive train control system.

“Out of this building, we control the Metra electric district, the Rock Island,” Sal Cuevas, chief dispatcher of the control facility. “Over 300, 350, maybe 400 trains out of this facility that we control.”

That’s about half of the commuter trains Metra moves into and out of Chicago each day. Cuevas is tracking their movement, their speed and any potential problems or delays they might encounter, from bad weather to maintenance crews. It’s done in coordination with the 500 freight trains that move through Chicago every day.

Getting positive train control on line won’t make his job any easier, but Cuevas says it will make the movement of all those trains safer.

“Integrating that system with our current train control system will hopefully minimize incidents,” he says.

But that won’t be happening for some time.

Positive Train Control is a system that integrates computer, satellite and radio technologies to slow down or stop a train if the engineer becomes incapacitated or makes a mistake, such as missing a stop signal or going too fast around a curve.

Seven years ago, Congress mandated all freight and passenger railroads implement positive train control by the end of this year. But Metra’s executive director Don Orseno says Chicago’s commuter trains won’t make the deadline, and it won’t even be close.

“Our expectation for Metra to be fully operational is in 2019,” he says. “There’s a lot of reasons why its taking so long. Number one: it wasn’t invented.”

Orseno says railroads have had to develop PTC from scratch and it’s a very complicated system. Information about track conditions, speed limits, the movement of other trains and all kinds of other data has to be downloaded into computers in the railroads’ control centers and in the locomotives.

Those computers have to be able to communicate with every track signal and every other train. So there’s new signaling equipment to install, new radios, new computer hardware and new software to run it all, because these positive train control systems have to be fully inter-operable between all the railroads and all their equipment.

In Chicago, the nation’s busiest rail hub, that’s 1,300 and passenger trains a day.

“We operate the most complex system in the country, there’s no question about that,” Orseno says.

He adds that in mandating positive train control and imposing the December 2015 deadline, Congress provided almost no funding for it.

“The system comes at a very expensive cost,” he says. “We’re looking anywhere from about $350 million for this system, and you’re talking about commuter rail service. There’s not that kind of money out there.”

And it’s not just Chicago’s commuter rail agency that’s struggling to build, fund and implement positive train control. Most commuter trains across the country won’t have it by the end of this year.

“About 29 percent of our systems anticipate they’ll be able to make the goal this year, about seven systems in the country,” says Michael Melaniphy, president and CEO of the American Public Transportation Association.

Melaniphy says some commuter rail agencies will need another three to five years to complete PTC installations because of the scale and complexity of the systems and the resources needed.

“There are only so many people that are experts in this area,” he says. “They can only produce so many of the radio sets that are needed and the spectrum that’s needed to run those radios in a given time.”

Acquiring that radio spectrum for PTC has been especially difficult for commuter railroads.

“Many of the operators will be able to obtain in some segments but maybe not along the entire corridor,” Melaniphy says. “They have to figure out who owns the spectrum in a given corridor and negotiate with them to either sell it or lease it.”

Melaniphy is hoping Congress will allow the FCC to provide commuter railroads with the radio spectrum they need for free. He’s also asking Congress to pay at least some of the estimated $3.5 billion cost of PTC, and extend the deadline to give commuter and freight railroads more time to implement a safety system they all agree they want and need to implement.

Aquifers, Injection wells, State regulation, Wastewater, Water contamination

State conservation chief quits amid tainted aquifer controversy

Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle

State conservation chief quits amid tainted aquifer controversy

By David R. Baker, Friday, June 5, 2015 7:07 pm
Mark Nechodom Director of California Department of Conservation spoke at a press conference held at One Rincon Hill, located at First and Harrison streets Wednesday May 30, 2012. Both State and Federal scientist have collaborated to install over 72 geological sensors and two and a half miles of wire throughout the 64 stories tower thatÕs home to over six hundred people in San Francisco. Scientists say that there's a 63 percent probability of a damaging earthquake magnitude 6.7 or greater in the next 30 years in the Bay Area. The data collected at One Rincon Hill South Tower could be very helpful scientifically. Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle
Mark Nechodom Director of California Department of Conservation spoke at a press conference held at One Rincon Hill, located at First and Harrison streets Wednesday May 30, 2012. Both State and Federal scientist have collaborated to install over 72 geological sensors and two and a half miles of wire throughout the 64 stories tower thatÕs home to over six hundred people in San Francisco. Scientists say that there’s a 63 percent probability of a damaging earthquake magnitude 6.7 or greater in the next 30 years in the Bay Area. The data collected at One Rincon Hill South Tower could be very helpful scientifically. Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

The head of the California Department of Conservation, Mark Nechodom, abruptly resigned Thursday following an outcry over oil companies injecting their wastewater into Central Valley aquifers that were supposed to be protected by law.

Nechodom, who had led the department for three years, announced his resignation in a brief letter to John Laird, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. The Conservation Department is part of the resources agency.

“I have appreciated being part of this team and helping to guide it through a difficult time,” Nechodom wrote.

Nechodom did not give a reason for his departure. But a division of the Conservation Department that regulates oil-field operations has come under intense criticism for letting oil companies inject wastewater into aquifers that could have been used for drinking or irrigation.

A spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Agency said she could not comment on Nechodom’s reasons for leaving, calling it a personnel issue. Jason Marshall, the Conservation Department’s chief deputy director, will lead the department while a permanent replacement is sought.

The department’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources for years improperly issued hundreds of wastewater injection permits into aquifers that should have been protected by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, a problem detailed in a Chronicle investigation in February.

By the division’s most recent count, 452 disposal wells went into aquifers whose water, if treated, could have been used for drinking or irrigation. Another 2,021 wells pumped wastewater or steam into aquifers that also contain oil, with the injections helping to squeeze more petroleum from the ground.

California oil fields typically contain large amounts of water that must be separated from the petroleum and disposed of, usually by pumping it back underground. But oil companies can inject their “produced water” only into aquifers that have been specifically approved for wastewater storage by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The division has shut down 23 injection wells deemed to pose the greatest threat and has committed to closing the rest in stages over the next two years. So far, the injections have not been found to have contaminated any wells used for drinking water.

The injections, and the division’s schedule for closing them, have prompted lawsuits, including one filed this week that named Nechodom as a defendant. That suit, filed on behalf of Central Valley farmers, alleges Nechodom, Gov. Jerry Brown and oil companies engaged in a conspiracy to circumvent the law.

Before Brown picked him to lead the Conservation Department, Nechodom had been a senior policy adviser for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He had also served as a senior climate science policy adviser to the chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

Until this year, however, he might have been best known as the husband of former California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who completed her term in 2014 after revealing that she was battling severe depression that left her unable to work on many days.

 

Oil spill, Pipeline rupture, Pipeline transport, Truck transport, Water contamination

Exxon seeks to use trucks to haul oil after pipeline break

Repost from KSBW News, Santa Barbara CA

Exxon seeks to use trucks to haul oil after pipeline break

Associated Press, Jun 05, 2015 1:06 PM PDT
Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, KSBW

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. —An oil company wants to use tanker trucks to haul oil through Santa Barbara County while a pipeline that spilled crude into the Pacific Ocean last month is out of commission.

Exxon Mobil officials have told county officials they want to use a fleet of 5,000-gallon tankers for the job, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Kevin Drude, head of the county’s energy division, said the company proposes to have trucks use Highway 101 daily, around the clock at a rate of eight trucks an hour to get the oil moving to refineries.

Exxon Mobil normally moves crude from three offshore platforms through more than 10 miles of pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline.

The movement has been stopped since the pipe ruptured on May 19 and released up to 101,000 gallons west of Santa Barbara. Thousands of gallons flowed down a culvert under Highway 101 and into the ocean at Refugio State Beach.

The trucking proposal is seen as risky by environmentalists.

“We don’t want another disaster,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.

Glenn Russell, county planning and development director, said his staff will review the proposal and make a decision by Monday. He said he expects a similar request from another oil company, Freeport-McMoRan, which has also been affected by the pipeline shutdown.

Cleanup and investigations into corrosion that resulted in the failure of the pipe have been underway since the spill and there’s no timetable for putting the pipeline back in service.

Exxon Mobil would use the trucks until the pipeline is operational again, said company spokesman Richard Keil.

“We need to move our product by truck to serve the energy needs of Californians and the demands of the refineries we supply,” he said.

Exxon reduced oil production from 30,000 to 8,500 barrels a day and is storing the crude in tanks at Las Flores Canyon near the coast highway.

Russell said the company now has two weeks’ worth of storage space left.

Bakken Crude, Pipeline transport

MN approves Bakken oil pipeline to Lake Superior

Repost from The Capital Journal, Pierre SD

MN approves Bakken oil pipeline to Lake Superior

By Capital Staff and Wire Reports, June 5, 2015 5:08 pm

ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has approved a certificate of need for the proposed Sandpiper pipeline route through northern Minnesota as it goes from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to Superior, Wisconsin.

While the PUC agreed 5-0 Friday that the $2.6 billion, 610-mile pipeline – about 300 miles across Minnesota –  is necessary, they didn’t foreclose the possibility of more changes on its proposed path, the Associated Press reported.

The PUC said it still might reroute Enbridge’s proposed route away from environmentally sensitive lakes, streams and wetlands in northern Minnesota. Enbridge Energy will still have to go through a lengthy review of its proposed route and a proposed alternative.

Enbridge says it would like to have it operating in 2017.

The proposed route goes from the oil field near Tioga, N.D., near Williston, to Superior, Wis., where ocean-going vessels can dock just below Duluth on Lake Superior. In North Dakota it follows fairly closely to U.S. Highway 2.

The Minnesota portion would go 75 miles from Grand Forks, N.D., east to the main Enbridge junction at Clearbrook, Minn., with 24-inch pipe with a capacity of 225,000 barrels per day.

Then for a 225-mile leg,  it jogs south to Park Rapids, Minn. – which is on a line east of Fargo –  and then east to Superior with a 30-inch pipeline with a capacity of 375,000 barrels per day, according to Enbridge.

At a capacity of 375,000 barrels a day across Minnesota, the Sandpiper would carry the equivalent of about 525 rail tanker cars, each holding 714 barrels, or about five trains of crude oil, every day.

Enbridge says Sandpiper is needed to move the growing supply of North Dakota crude safely and efficiently to market.

But environmentalists and tribal groups say the risk of leaks is too high.

North Dakota regulators have already approved Sandpiper.

North Dakota produces about 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, about 13 percent of U.S. production; roughly two-thirds of it leaves the state by train.

Recent explosive derailments of oil trains have informed the debate over building new pipelines.

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