The U.S. Transportation Department issued a rule yesterday that orders railroads to extensively analyze security risks in choosing the routes on which they ship hazardous chemicals.
Railroads will be required to do a safety and security risk analysis of primary routes and any practical alternatives they might use, the department said. By September 2009, they must route trains with dangerous chemicals based on the studies. Those that do not use the safest routes could be fined up to $10,000 a day and ordered to reroute trains.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041603373_pf.html
So… what if a customer is on a route determined to be “high risk” and there is no other viable rail route to this customer. In the interest of “safety” will the chemicals be delivered by truck??? Is that less of a security risk, or more?? Is the customer going to pay more if their chemicals have to arrive by a less direct route? What if the customer takes 2 dozen carloads of “methyl-ethyl bad stuff” a week, how many trucks would it take to replace the rail shipment, and since trucks face a greater chance at being involved in an accident, would that make it less safe to have so many trucks full of chemicals moving through city streets?
I often wonder about rulings like this. On the surface it makes sense, and looks like it has “public safety” in mind. But, as with everything that the Governement mandates, the devil is in the details. After reading the article, it looks like the door is open for any community that decides it wants to have an issue with hazardous materials to say they don’t want the railroad shipping dangerous loads through their town. After all, according to the article, the railroads have to take into consideration “information provided by communities”. It looks like there is going to be some more to come out of this, as different groups get on the band wagon. My community has a case because the BNSF passes within 500 feet of a day care center, a Junior High School, and my kid’s elementary school. Heck, their school is across the street from the tracks.
As far as security risks, they would probably have to analyze the routes the chemicals travel considering the speed the train goes, accessibility to the general public, distance to “high life” type occupancies and structures (schools, apartment blocks, day care centers, hospitals, etc) distance to other heavily occupied industrial structures, high