This is a video clip of the presentation by Benicia’s Contract Attorney Brad Hogin at the City Council meeting of March 15. This clip runs for about 26 minutes. (On the City’s longer and unindexed video, it begins at minute 1:04:27 and runs to 1:30:42. Note that the video archive of the entire meeting can be found on the City of Benicia website at ci.benicia.ca.us/agendas.)
Category Archives: Federal Regulation (U.S.)
Rail industry opposes 2-member train crews
Repost from CTV News | Associated Press
Industry opposes proposal for 2-member train crews in light of Lac-Megantic disaster
Joan Lowy, The Associated Press , March 14, 2016 3:51PM EDT
WASHINGTON — Trains would have to have a minimum of two crew members under rules proposed Monday by U.S. regulators. The move is partly in response to a deadly 2013 crash in which an unattended oil train caught fire and destroyed much of a town in Canada, killing 47 people.
The Federal Railroad Administration is also considering allowing railroads that operate with only one engineer to apply for an exception to the proposed two-person crew rule, according to a notice published in the Federal Regulator.
The proposal is opposed by the Association of American Railroads, which represents major freight railroads. Many railroads currently use two-person crews, but some industry officials have indicated they may switch to one engineer per train once technology designed to prevent many types of accidents caused by human error becomes operational.
Most railroads expect to start using the technology, called positive train control or PTC, between 2018 and 2020. It relies on GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor train positions and automatically slow or stop trains that are in danger of colliding or derailing.
A 2008 law requires PTC technology on all tracks used by passenger trains or trains that haul liquids that turn into toxic gas when exposed to air by Dec. 31, 2015. After it became clear most railroads wouldn’t make that deadline, Congress passed a bill last fall giving railroads another three to five years to complete the task.
There is “simply no safety case” for requiring two-person crews, Edward Hamberger, president of the railroad association, said in a statement. Single-person crews are widely and safely used in Europe and other parts of the world, he said.
There will be even less need for two-person crews after PTC is operational, he said. PTC “is exactly the kind of safety redundancy through technology for which the (railroad administration) has long advocated,” he said.
But Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said two-person crews are needed on trains in the same way it’s necessary to have two-pilot crews on planes.
“The cost of adding a second, skilled crewmember pales in comparison to the costs of avoidable crashes and collisions,” Blumenthal said. It’s important that the railroad administration impose what safety regulations they can now since railroads “have dragged their feet” on implementing PTC, he said.
On July 6, 2013, a 74-car freight train hauling crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota that had been left unattended came loose and rolled downhill into Lac-Megantic, a Quebec town not far from the U.S. border. The resulting explosions and fire killed 47 people and razed much the downtown area. The train had one engineer, who had gone to a hotel for the night.
Inspector General Cites Failure of Federal Railroad Administration on Oil Train Safety
Repost from The Root Word, ForestEthics Blog
[Editor: See also the earlier Associated Press story: Railroad Regulators Fail to Pursue Criminal Prosecution of Hazardous Cargo Safety Violations. – RS]
News Analysis: Inspector General Cites Failure of Federal Railroad Administration on Oil Train Safety
By Matt Krogh, March 2, 2016
In a scathing critique, the US Department of Transportation Inspector General called out the Federal Railroad Administration (which is an agency within DOT) for failing to adequately evaluate or reduce the risks of a catastrophic oil train accident to the American public. The conclusion: The FRA is failing to provide adequate oversight and policing of oil trains, and FRA fails to enforce the rules or prosecute violators when they find dangerous violations.
Oil trains are too dangerous for the rails. The Inspector General makes this point in the first sentence of the review, citing the fatal Lac Megantic oil train disaster. But we’ve heard from far too many local, county, and state officials around the country who believe the federal government is overseeing oil trains and guaranteeing public safety. It’s true that century-old railroad law puts railroads under federal control. That makes sense because a continental railroad system would grind to a halt if it was regulated by thousands of different local and state government entities. But no one should let “pre-emption” or federal-control get in the way of local permitting decisions, especially when it comes to public safety. Especially when it comes to preventing a calamity that could reduce another town to ashes.
This Inspector General report makes it clear the FRA is failing the American people with a good cop/good cop approach when it comes to mile-long oil trains carrying millions of gallons of toxic, explosive crude through US cities and towns.
Here’s some key quotes from the DOT IG report, reviewed in an excellent article by AP reporter Joan Lowy:
the Agency has no overall, national understanding of the risk environment and cannot be sure that the regions consider all appropriate risk factorsThis points to a key flaw in FRA oversight: they assume that region-based inspection systems are all that are needed, and fail to look nationally, comprehensively, at the risks of moving oil by train.
…do not take into account risk factors such as the condition of transportation infrastructure, the shippers’ compliance histories, or the proximity of transportation routes to population centers.This begs the question, what does the FRA look at in risk assessment? Track conditions, how good the individual railroads are at safety, and how close people are living to oil train routes seem pretty important.
FRA issues few violations, pursues low civil penalties, and does not refer possibly criminal violations to the office of inspector generalThe FRA turns a blind eye to criminal violations, settles for low fines, and fails to bring in the Office of Inspector General when criminal investigations are warranted. We need a bad cop, folks.
One inspector noted that the Office of Chief Counsel has effectively “numbed” a large portion of inspectors into not writing violations and stated that some inspectors have preconceived notions that violations will not get through the process.It’s true that the FRA does have inspectors — but the FRA’s buddy culture with the railroads means that hard-working inspectors on the ground have lost faith in the agency’s willingness and ability to regulate railroads.
respondents just smile and cut the checkBy respondents the Inspector General means railroads. They don’t argue with miniscule fines, but then why should they? They are happy to pay small fines as a normal operating expense, and get back to moving vast quantities of explosive, toxic crude oil through America’s population centers.
While the specific circumstances of all of these violations may not have warranted maximum penalties, FRA settled for 5.1 percent of the roughly $105.6 million dollars in penalties it could have levied…No, seriously, the fines are miniscule. FRA is only issuing 5% of the fines they could levy under the law. Wouldn’t it be nice if the highway patrol took the same approach to speeding tickets? It would, but then, the Wild West of our highways would be littered with the smoking wreckage of souped-up Camaros.
By applying the same penalty to all violations of a regulation, FRA is distancing its enforcement actions from the context of the behaviors they are meant to rectify, thus weakening penalties’ deterrent effect. Furthermore, by bundling violations, FRA’s settlement process removes penalty enforcement from the context of each violation and low penalties diminish the potential deterrent effect of the penalties set in the guidelines and the regulatory maximums.And there you have it: it doesn’t matter the scale or the number of fines you get, you can talk your way out of it in the settlement process.
The Inspector General audit of the Federal Railroad Administration found an agency that fails to understand and regulate the severe threat to 25 million Americans living in the blast zone. When it comes to oil trains the FRA seems to work for the railroad and oil industry, and not the American people. Local and state officials faced with permitting decisions need to recognize their responsibility to protect the public, just as the FRA now needs to do their job when it comes to deadly oil trains.
Positive Train Control, Critical Rail Safety Improvement, Delayed for Decades
Repost from DeSmog Blog
Positive Train Control, Critical Rail Safety Improvement, Delayed for Decades
By Justin Mikulka, February 16, 2016 – 03:58
In the recent New York Times article “The Wreck of Amtrak 188” Federal Railroad Administration leader Sarah Feinberg explained the advantages of the rail safety technology known as positive train control (PTC).
“I’ll describe it to you this way,” Feinberg said. “If a train is traveling in an area where P.T.C. isn’t in place and working as a backstop, you’ve got a situation where an engineer has to execute everything perfectly every hour, every day, every week. All the time. Because the slightest, smallest lapse can mean disaster.”
The general consensus is that the Amtrak 188 train crash — which caused eight fatalities — would have been avoided if positive train control was in place. The system would have slowed the train automatically so that it didn’t head into a hard curve going much too fast.
But despite the fact PTC was first recommended as a safety measure by the National Transportation Safety Board in 1970, the railroads have failed to install positive train control. So the smallest lapse can mean disaster.
In 2008, after decades of making no progress in getting the railroads to install PTC, Congress mandated that the rail industry implement positive train control by the end of 2015.
However, after having seven years to install PTC, the rail companies threatened to shut down at the end of 2015, claiming the mandated timeline was impossible. So Congress granted a three-year extension.
At the time, Sarah Feinberg made it clear that the Federal Railroad Administration intended to “aggressively enforce” the new deadline for installation of positive train control.
Despite this tough talk, only a couple of months later several rail companies have now asked for an additional two years to implement PTC. This coalition pushing for the status quo includes two major oil-by-rail shippers — CSX and Norfolk Southern.
In response, Feinberg stated that, “We remain concerned that several other freight and passenger railroads are aiming for 2020.”
So we have moved from “aggressive enforcement” to “concern” and more delays.
As reported by the Associated Press, Feinberg’s efforts are limited because “the industry’s allies responded by quietly slipping a provision into a transportation bill in November that limits her ability to deny waivers.”
So while Feinberg promised to aggressively enforce the three-year extension, “industry allies” in Congress took away that option.
Just as they used the same transportation bill to potentially remove the new regulations requiring oil trains to install modern braking systems by 2021.
This is just one more instance making it clear that regulators in Washington really aren’t the ones calling the shots. That helps explain why a safety technology first recommended in 1970 won’t be in place until 2020 at the earliest.
A recent report on rail safety by the Association of American Railroads comments on the status of positive train control:
“The additional time afforded by Congress is critical, because when it is up and running, PTC must operate flawlessly. If it does not, it has the potential to bring freight rail operations to a halt. At present, there is much work to do to iron out the kinks.”
Of course it mentions that there is the potential to shut down the railroads. This is the industry’s standard trump card when it wants to delay or deny responsibility for common-sense safety improvements.
Don’t be surprised to see the industry play this trump card again in 2018.
And how about those “kinks” that need to be ironed out?
This technology was first recommended almost 50 years ago. Shouldn’t the kinks have been addressed by now?
While it looks like we can forget about “aggressive enforcement” when it comes to rail safety, we all probably should “remain concerned.”
Especially as crude oil “bomb trains” continue to roll through communities and cities with inadequate safety measures in place to stop another Lac Megantic-scale disaster.