Sens. Collins and Murray introduce bill to establish shortline safety institute
By Jenifer Nunez, assistant editor | June 19, 2014
U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Patty Murray (D-WA), ranking member and chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Transportation, respectively, have introduced a bill that would authorize a new Short Line Rail Safety Institute the senators say will enhance the safety practices and culture of shortline railroads.
The legislation would authorize funding to support grants for research, development, evaluation and training efforts to support the 550 shortline railroad companies that operate more than 50,000 miles of track in the United States.
“Whether a train is carrying crude oil on a major rail line or on a short, local route through small towns across America, we need to make sure everyone is safe, both on the train and near the tracks,” Sen. Murray said. “We need to have the right policies in place to prevent accidents and respond to emergencies wherever they happen and establishing a Short Line Rail Safety Institute is a strong step in the right direction.”
The senators said the new Short Line Rail Safety Institute would assess the operations and safety programs of shortline railroads; develop best practices and work with shortlines to implement these practices; provide professional on-site safety training for shortline employees; purchase and utilize safety training assets (such as locomotive simulators); assist the Federal Railroad Administration in implementing its railroad research and development and outreach programs and tailor such programs for shortline railroad operations and help improve safety culture, including a reduction in the frequency and severity of injuries and incidents, as well as improved compliance with regulatory requirements.
The American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA) President Richard Timmons said the legislation “will do much to bring a continuous and active focus on safety with the objective of assisting individual shortlines to improve their safety performance. Sens. Collins and Murray are creating a very important tool for a very important task and the entire shortline industry will be an enthusiastic partner in this effort.”
Timmons added, “Shortlines are small businesses with far fewer employees, most of whom have multiple responsibilities. A large percentage of their revenue goes to track rehabilitation, which itself is a driver of safety. The Collins/Murray initiative will help shortlines to do much more and to do it much better.”
Government numbers on crude-oil train safety don’t add up
By Curtis Tate McClatchy Newspapers | Monday, Jun. 16, 2014
A train carrying tanker cars filled with crude oil passes through St. Paul, Minnesota, on February 27, 2013. The crude oil is loaded in at terminals in North Dakota and Canada and taken to refineries in the east. Jim Gehrz / Minneapolis Star Tribune/MCT
WASHINGTON — The State Department projects 28 more fatalities and 189 more injuries a year if crude oil moves by rail instead of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Sounds bad, but is it true?
The railroad industry and its Washington regulators boast that more than 99.99 percent of hazardous materials rail shipments reach their destinations safely.
Sounds good, but is it good enough?
The debate over moving the nation’s surging oil production by rail has generated a heated debate, and some impressive-sounding numbers that both sides have used to bolster their cases.
On closer scrutiny, however, some of those numbers don’t add up.
Earlier this month, the State Department increased its earlier projections of injuries and fatalities if Keystone XL’s 830,000 barrels a day were to move by rail. Major media organizations and pipeline supporters framed the new numbers as a downside to not building the controversial project.
But the department’s detailed explanation for its revisions shows why the numbers don’t really reveal anything about the risks of transporting crude oil by rail.
In its January Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline, the department calculated the rail impacts of the no-build scenario based on a decade of Federal Railroad Administration accident statistics. The analysis used the annual rate of injuries and fatalities per million ton-miles, a common measure of rail traffic, from 2002 to 2012.
An error report published June 6 said the original analysis underreported the potential injuries and fatalities “due to an error in search parameters used.” However, the report’s authors concede that their calculations don’t actually measure the risk of shipping crude oil. Large volumes of crude oil weren’t shipped by rail until 2011.
The 10-year injury and fatality rates were instead derived from accidents that involved trains carrying every type of cargo that moves by rail, from coal and grain to french fries and auto parts.
“Because the dataset does not distinguish petroleum or crude oil rail transportation from that of other cargo,” the department wrote, “these incident rates are not directly correlated to the type of product/commodity being transported.”
The State Department’s analysis does measure potential injuries and fatalities if more trains are put on the tracks. But that isn’t terribly useful, either, because while crude oil shipments have surged, other commodities have declined.
Changes in the economy and environmental rules mean there are considerably fewer trains of coal, long the industry’s mainstay. According to the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s leading advocacy group, railroads moved 13,000 fewer trainloads of coal in 2012 than they did in 2008.
Moving oil by rail instead of Keystone XL would add about 4,380 trains a year, only a third of the lost coal traffic.
Fred W. Frailey, a journalist who’s covered railroads for decades and is widely regarded as the dean of writers on that subject, questioned the State Department’s analysis.
“It strikes me as totally meaningless,” he said. “It doesn’t speak at all to the danger of hauling oil.”
A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment about the report.
As several derailments involving crude oil trains made headlines in the past year, the industry has repeatedly defended its safety record. But what’s on the other side of that 99.99 percent?
According to industry figures, railroads moved 400,000 carloads of crude oil in 2013, up from fewer than 10,000 five years earlier. With each tank car carrying 30,000 gallons, that’s about 12 billion gallons last year.
A McClatchy analysis of oil spill data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in January showed that about 1.2 million gallons of crude oil spilled from trains in 2013 _ more than the previous 38 years combined.
If only 1.2 million of the 12 billion gallons spilled, that’s a safety record of 99.99 percent.
The country experienced two major crude-oil derailments last year. A derailment near Aliceville, Ala., in November released 748,000 gallons into a wetland. Another just after Christmas spilled 475,000 gallons near Casselton, N.D.
But the total excludes spills outside U.S. borders, even if the cargo originated domestically. More than 1.5 million gallons of North Dakota crude oil spilled in last July’s catastrophic and deadly derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The fiery accident killed 47 people and leveled much of the center of the lakeside resort town.
At the end of a two-day National Transportation Safety Board rail-safety forum in April, board member Robert Sumwalt, who spent 24 years in aviation, told the rail industry that its much-touted safety record was nothing to brag about.
“You’re in a business where that’s not good enough,” Sumwalt said.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/06/16/6487565/government-numbers-on-crude-oil.html#storylink
Derailed train cars dangle over Youghiogheny River
Jun 8, 2014
PITTSBURGH (AP) – A couple train cars are hanging partly off a suburban Pittsburgh trestle above the Youghiogheny River after derailing, scaring people below who thought the train was ready to plunge into the river.
CSX said about 12 cars of a train derailed around 11 p.m. Saturday in McKeesport while heading from New Castle to Connellsville.
It said the 88-car train was carrying mixed freight, including carrying scrap metal and “light petroleum.”
CSX spokesman Gary Sease says the petroleum didn’t leak. No injuries were reported.
The McKeesport Marina was evacuated and McKeesport Deputy Fire Chief Don Sabol said there’s a lot of damage to the tracks. CSX said it’s not sure yet what caused the derailment.
Paul Chiasson, AP – FILE – In this July 6, 2013 photo, smoke rises from flaming railway cars that were carrying crude oil after it a train derailed in downtown Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada. A large swath of the town was destroyed after the derailment, sparking several explosions and fires that claimed 47 lives. John Giles, top executive of Central Maine and Quebec Railway, that purchased the railroad responsible for the derailment, said Friday, May 16, 2014 that they plan to resume oil shipments after track safety improvements are made.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The company buying the assets of a railroad responsible for a fiery oil train derailment that claimed 47 lives in Quebec plans to resume oil shipments once track safety improvements are made, its top executive said Friday.
John Giles, CEO of Central Maine and Quebec Railway, said he hopes to have an agreement with officials in Lac Megantic, Quebec, within 10 days that would allow the railroad to ship nonhazardous goods, restoring the vital link between the railroad’s operations to the east and west of the community.
The company plans to spend $10 million on rail improvements in Canada over the next two years with a goal of resuming oil shipments in 18 months, he said.
“In the interest of safety, and I think being sensitive toward a social contract with Lac Megantic, we have chosen not to handle crude oil and dangerous goods through the city until we’ve got the railroad infrastructure improved and made more reliable,” he told The Associated Press.
The oil industry is relying heavily on trains to transport crude in part because of oil booms in North Dakota’s Bakken region and Alberta’s oil sands.
In July, a train transporting Bakken oil was left unattended by its lone crew member while parked near Lac Megantic. The train began rolling and sped downhill into the town, where more than 60 tank cars derailed and several exploded. The accident killed 47 people and destroyed much of the town. Three workers were charged this week in Canada with criminal negligence.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants the railroad and Lac Megantic residents to work together on a final plan.
“Any plan the company has should take into account the tragedy the people of Lac Megantic have gone through and should be done in collaboration with the administration of the city,” said Carl Vallee, a spokesman for the prime minister.
Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt said only that she was monitoring the situation.
Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche, who had no comment on Friday, previously told the new operator that she wanted the railroad to be re-routed around the downtown.
News that the new railroad is already talking about resuming operations upset Yannick Gagne, owner of the cafe-bar that was at ground zero of the tragedy.
“People are still in distress, in pain, facing financial problems, and we’re talking about the train company starting up,” the Musi-Cafe owner said.
Giles said he intends to move slowly and understands the community’s concerns. He said he hopes to convince the people of Lac Megantic that the rail is safe enough for shipments of dangerous goods by this fall. He said he wouldn’t press for crude oil shipments until later.
“I want to get the railroad in position that by January 2016 that I can at least begin to compete for potential crude business moving east-west,” Giles said.
What business may be available at that point is unclear, the company said.
New York-based Fortress Investment Group was the winning bidder for the assets of Hermon, Maine-based Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, which declared bankruptcy after the disaster. Central Maine and Quebec Railway closed on the sale of U.S. assets on Thursday and is expected to close of the Canadian assets in a couple of weeks.
Giles made his comments Friday in a telephone interview from Bangor, where his company had called former Montreal, Maine and Atlantic workers for a two-day meeting to talk about safety and operations.
He said the rail is in rough shape, with speeds reduced to 10 mph in many sections in Canada. He said the goal is to improve the track to safely increase train speeds to 25 mph. He also said he has no plans to operate trains with a single crew member.
With repairs, the company can transport crude safely, Giles said.
“The railway is important to the community, people, jobs and commerce,” he said. “We believe and we’ve proven … that we can handle every type of commodity safely and efficiently.”
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Associated Press writer Rob Gillies contributed to this report from Toronto.
