I wonder if all this negative publicity will end up getting the Keystone XL pipeline approved.
Which makes one wonder if maybe there isn’t someone behind this report, pushing an agenda.
Direct link to the FRA Report for which the article is based:
Region Eight (8) Hazardous Materials Team Inspection,
Bakken Formation, North Dakota
SUMMARY NORTH DAKOTA -THE NEXT HAZARDOUS MATERIAL FRONTIER
Lots of excuses, but little action in the 30 years since the DOT 111 cars were first identified as dangerous. The PHMSA has to rule, but it has stalled for several years. And the rail industry resists retrofits.
So obviously the answer is cars that would be more secure. That ain’t gonna happen overnight and the cost of retrofitting cars may not be practical as many of them may be nearing the end of their service life.
With few exceptions, the rail industry does not own the cars. And they have shown a lot of concern about carrying hazmat. I don’t see how you can say that they resist retrofits. If anyone is to blame, it is the petroleum and chemical industry and, perhaps, the leasing companies.
John Timm
The rail industry is not resisting retrofits!
The car owners (who are really financial types - not railroaders) are the ones resisting retrofitting the cars.
Yet another oil train thread by Schlimm.
Sigh.
[#dots]
So Schlimm - what do we do next? What should the railroads do, the shippers do, the governments do?
What should they do right now to satisfy you?
You really don’t get it, do you?
It’s not about me, what I want , satisfying me. And it isn’t about you. It’s about doing all that can be done to minimize the probability that the next accident isn’t 40 tank cars overfilled with Bakken crude exploding in a metro area. It’s what the public wants.
Schlimm,
I want your opinion.
What do you ( a member of the public) think should be done (since you are well-read in the subject, judging from your posts).
I will answer as i wish, not as you rudely demand. I am not a technical expert. So I do not have a solution and neither do you, since you are not a technical expert either. One thing seems clear. There is a danger which has been known about the DOT 111 cars for 30 years. There has been a lot of buck-passing (RRs, leasing companies, handling shippers, oil companies, AAR, NTSB, FRA, PHMSA) and there is a lot of money involved since Bakken took off four years ago. Too bad the various industries didn’t do something earlier, but that would have cut short the 40 year life of the tank cars in question. Some have said it will take 5-10 years to replace the DOT 111’s, which coincidentally (?) would correspond with their normal retirement time. All the regulatory agencies, rails and oil-related companies need to sit down quickly in the DOT and arrive at a series of measures to address the problem
Dave Klepper (a retired industrial engineer) offered a suggestion based on Fred Frailey’s column. Both he and Frailey were dismissed as outsiders. At least one rail CEO sees this as a crisis. But it is apparent that many on this forum to see this is a tempest in a teapot and hope it just goes away in the short news cycles. Maybe it will. Maybe not. I believe the public is tired of excuses and stalling, because it is pretty clear that has been happening for many years already.
So basically, you don’t have even the slightest suggestion?
Interesting.
Sorry if I came off as rude.
Nah… I’m not really sorry, to be honest.
Other than the Lac Megantic accident I don’t believe there has been any major outcry from the general public regarding this. Sure the sensationalism media is playing it up, but I’ve not heard a single soul in my neighborhood even raise the matter.
Our modern society entails risks. There’s no way around that. What the public wants is something that doesn’t exist. Namely all the modern gadgets and conveniences with no risks and no pollution of any kind. I’m not saying things can’t be made safer, but the goal advertised to the public by those with their own agendas (and everyone on every side of any issue has their own agenda) often are unrealistic and unachievable. That is unless everyone is willing to give up much of their modern lifestyles. That last part is never told to the public. Probably because those pushing the agendas know the public wouldn’t be as willing to follow then.
No new design of construction or upgrade for existing tank cars will be ever be good enough for some. They will say they are still dangerous and liable to leak or burn or whatever. And because nothing that man builds can be made perfect, eventually a new safer tank car will be involved in a derailment and something bad will happen. But then I think the real goal for many isn’t so much a safer way to transport petroleum products, but the abandonment of petroleum and all other fossil fuels. They just use the excuse of the former to try to sell the latter.&nbs
Don’t let the facts get in the way of your rant there dude…
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303559504579196303848431002
“Railroads Seek Tighter Tank-Car Safety Rules”
While I would agree that there are some who would like to see a movement away from fossil/carbon-based fuels (and that is a significant issue), to attempt to create a straw man argument in regard to a specific issue of reasonable attention to safety is invalid. The suggestion that this is about trying to achieve some impossible level of perfection is almost silly. Questioning the seriousness of the players involved in getting improvements in cars whose unsafe design has been known for 30 years is pretty reasonable. The slowness in getting action is pretty lame. One could speculate as to the motives, but that does not advance a solution. What the public wants is some answers and action to address the problem, not miracles.
If they really want that so much, why don’t they “aggressively” be proactive instead of hiding behind regulations, rules, agencies, etc. Instead words: “Mommy, can you stop using those nasty DOT-111 tank cars? Please? Pretty please?” that cost nothing and get nothing done, two months and one more major accident later.
One may be somewhat justified in being skeptical of railroad industry commitment to promptly finding the safest possible manner in which to handle CBR. Take a look at this post on trainorders.com today:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,3292600,3292615#3292615
The idea that a few new ties may suffice for safety is risible.
The risk profile of crude by rail (CBR) for all transactional parties (producers, traders, railroads, tank car companies, refineries, et al) is now paramount, obviously, and the general public’s valid concerns (see the recent WSJ article) only amplify the magnitude of this issue.
One can only speculate about the actual or implicit risk profiles measured or assumed by the transactional parties, and up until the dramatic incidents of recent months it is safe to assume that the general public had no meaningful view of the risks generated by the rapidly increasing volumes of CBR passing through their vicinities.
The one somewhat relevant statistic perhaps most widely publicized came from the Association of American Railroads. In a recent AAR paper on the transportation of hazardous materials it was stated that: “Railroads have a strong record for safely moving hazardous materials (hazmat), with 99.9977 percent of all shipments reaching their destination without a release caused by an accident.”
The initial simple visual impression of this statistic is, to my eyes and perhaps those of many in the general public, of a vanishingly small risk to be attached to growing volumes of CBR. And yet … The AAR estimates that in 2013 approximately 400,000 loads of CBR moved. &nbs
Blaming the railroads for cars owned by the shippers is almost silly. Repeatedly blaming the railroads is pretty lame. Why isn’t the public demanding answers and action from the owners of the cars, and not ignorantly blaming the railroads?
And the beat goes on…[8]