Article is “Deadly cargo to roll on”. (I could not post the exact link for some reason, but you’ll find it)
The Sun reporter interviews some Baltimore residents (who apparently just moved near tracks) and they want CSX to bypass the city with hazardous materials. Accuse the railroad of not complying with federal law. Be sure to read the blogs that follow the story, too.
In another post, we have been discussing the fact that the media and the public doesn’t know beans about railroads and I think this pretty much seals the matter.
This appears to be another case of the federal government closing off the local governments efforts to regulate safety. By making it part of the FRA, who then basically give responsibility to the railroads, there is no effective oversight. Unfortunately, the public has no way to accurately assess the danger except through serious incidents involving hazardous materials Since these occur too frequently, rerouting appears to be the only safe choice.
The telling part was when the railroads suspended shipments while the president was at the football game. Personally given the dangers, I would try to live and work at least a couple of miles from any track. But for many people that’s not am option.
How frequently do they happen? I’ve lived next to the BNSF since back when it was the Frisco and they operated black and gold diesels, 45 years to be exact. There has been precisely one wreck, and that was about 30 years ago. I remember a RR employee riding on the flatcar in front of the “Big Hook” inviting my kids and I to ride down about half a mile and watch them put the cars back up on the track. We did and had a great time. I remember it was coal cars and one boxcar full of LCL.
My daughter lived in Hampstead MD next to the WM tracks for 10 years. We used to sit on her front porch and watch the trains go by.
Should we have been afraid?
As to the President’s safety, the 2003 “Classic Trains” told about Harry Truman actually spending some time at the throttle of a moving B&O train. What’s to fear?
Isn’t it in the best interest of the federal government, to regulate interstate commerce? If you let each state,county, city and municipality start making and enforcing it’s own rules, what would you have? If you let Baltimore limit what can be shipped there, what stops a state line Iowa, for example, from prohibiting shipment of certain items through it’s state?
Wouldn’t you guess that a majority of the people in the US live or work within a couple of miles of a railroad track? Wouldn’t you also want to live a couple of miles away from an airport, a highway, a navigatable river, a pipeline, a port, etc…?
Seems like it might be easier, to just make sure the railroads are as safe as possible.
[soapbox]Why is it that so many little TV reporters and beat journalists think they are competent to do our thinking for us? Some of these folks need to go back to school and learn how to write an unbiased story – they might be surprised at how many of their remarks are “editorial” (opinion).
I do understand that most newspapers have been “featurized” since the 1960s, but there are ways to do that that are journalisticallly honest, and some not. I mean, Walter Lippman certainly had opinions, but his readership could distinguish them from fact – and he is best known today as a writer of editorials or what today we’d call “op ed.”
Thsnk you for letting me get that off my chest. [sigh]
Well, Paul, maybe old age has blunted my fears. I went through the era when the A-bomb was going to detroy civilization, when the Bolskeviks were going to take over the world, when anything you ate was poison, when there were satanist cults out to kidnap your children and Lord knows what else.
Now I’m a bit fatalistic and the BNSF hauls mostly coal. You’re probably right, but I’m not going to worry about it.
Ah, but are they? or is the federal gov’t letting them off the hook? Is this like lead poisoning from China where the federal gov’t said we had enough inspectors but really didn’t? Like the beef fiasco. And on and on… the federal gov’t doesn’t have a good track record recently on prot
You bring up an interesting thought. How, exactly, would/could we force the government to do a better job in the transportation industry, whether it’s the FRA, FAA,NHSS ((?) National Highway Safety Something or other)?
I read the article, and the reporter seemed mostly to stick to the facts. I have no sympathy for Mr. Peterson. He knew, or he must have seen that the tracks were there before he bought his house. Then to make his point he had the Baltimore Sun’s photographer take a picture of him while he was standing on the CSX’s tracks; it’s too bad a CSX police officer, or any police officer, didn’t come by and arrest him for trespassing.
The point is there is not much that can be done to reroute hazardous materials to different railroads to totally prevent them from being transported through populous cities. For example if you ship a toxic chemical from the “Chemical Coast” of New Jersey to Columbia, SC, to the best of my knowledge there is no routing on a single railroad to ship it and totally avoid heavily populated cities.
The comments that appeared after the article seemed to be reasonable, and the people who posted them seemed to be very well informed.
Exactly the point several people made in the comments to that article. Were the trains “rolling by and rattling the windows” when he looked at the property? Did he see the railroad tracks that close to the home he was about to buy? Sounds more like he’s trying to blame the railroad for his own poor judgment.
When Air Force One lands at a commercial airport, all takeoff and landings by other aircraft are suspended until the aircraft is taxied to a safe spot. Under your reasoning, all landing and takeoffs should stop around any city of size, since they are too “dangerous” to do around the president.
Even better, I would like to see someone here come up with a route between the NJ chemical coast and Columbia SC, with the following criteria:
It can use more then one RR, as it seems that the people opposed use the argumant that the RR’s simply don’t want to share the traffic. 2) it needs to avoid as many populated areas as possible, also give an estimate of the number of people it will effect on the new route and what cities. 3) it needs to stay on “quality track”, not 10 and 20 MPH branch lines (safety, you know) 4) calculate the mileage of your route compared to that of the CSX and NS for the direct single line route.
Let’s see what a route would look like- and in my opinion how un-reasonable it will be. In other words what people in towns get increased risk so other people and towns get reduced risk. Lacking a RR atlas, alas, I can’t do it myself.
Sat on the runway for over 2 hours last year in PHL waiting on Bush to take off so we could go- (an extra 2 hours on top of a 10 hour flight) the whole airport was shut down- were people steamed. Stupid.
Sorry to contribute to this getting further off topic, but if memory serves me well, Bill Clinton was on a runway or taxiway somewhere getting a haircut on Air Force 1 and it shut the whole airport down.
The harder (read “more expensive”) the FRA makes it for the RRs to handle hazardous stuff the more:
Traffic will shift to truck where it will be
a) in closer contact with even more people
b) more likely to be involved in a disaster
Expensive goods made from the chemicals will be
Time spent on trains will increase - increasing the risk of disaster.
The answer is to get the chemical industry to stop shipping hazardous stuff as much as possible. Most of this junk is intermediate-step-in-some-process goo. Better they go all the way from raw materials to final product in one place instead of shipping stuff all over creation.
IMHO opinion the routing and speed limit regs (30 mph dark, 50 mph signalled) proposed by the FRA are borderline stupid. The tank car strength rule isn’t too bad as long as it’s matched by similar requirements on other modes.
We’ve shifted from the era when people wanted the railroad “downtown” to where they want it anyplace but. So many towns owe their very existance to the railroad. The station was the literal center of town.
As is usually the case, however, those calling for change don’t offer any solution other than “somewhere else.”