Here’s the story in the local paper in the Syracuse NY area this morning…
http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1107250782277302.xml
Happy Reading!
JP
Now if he’d mentioned how many chemicals travel by truck at the same time…
I can’t fault the idea of making things safer, but is it really an issue?
The interesting part is that the burden to moderize the tank car fleet will fall on the car owners,not the RRs since all tank cars are privately owned. This is the same gang that squawked at $30/car for AEI tags. They will likely howl at this one as will the chemical shippers.
Any added cost to shipping by rail may cause shift to trucking. Would overall safety be lessened? That’s something that needs a good, hard look before anyone changes anything. Of course, the gov’t can mitigate the problem by picking up the tab. You could argue that public safety improvements should get public funding.
I would much rather have chemicals – hazardous or no – in tank cars in trains than in semi-trailers rumbling along the interstate – or worse, through my village. However, that’s just me… as we have seen before, many times, rail problems are highly visible scare the public phenomena, while road accidents (like the one which closed a major local road around here a month ago with a 5,000 gallon gasoline spill – tank truck going too fast turned over at a corner) get no notice to speak of…
This has absolutely nothing to do with transportation safety.
It’s about getting publicity for Chucky Schumer - who is another politician who “Just Wants to Help Us”.
John Q. Public doesn’t know much about rail safety - which creates a void Chucky can exploit to his own advantage. And that’s all this is about. Something for a politician (and the media - they feed off each other) to exploit.
Just anoither politician running his mouth about something he knows absolutely nothing about.
One thing politicians like better than spending taxpayer money is spending other people’s money!
Particularly if it’s a railroad’s money: the old populist anti-railroad sentiment is alive and well… take a look at property taxes, for example.
If he was interested in helping we would be hearing about money to train local emergency responders and cutting down on the number of cars shipped with valves that are not correctly tied down that become non accidental releases (NAR). For every accidental release you will see 500 or so
or so NARs.
Question: What is a location of great danger for any individual?
Between Charles Schemer and a live camera.
I think greyhounds hit this one right on the mark! Don’t limit it to just Chucky, though. He’s just the one that popped up this time. It’s a rare politician that does anything other than advance his/her own cause.
–JD
I couldn’t agree more…The accident rate for trucks is many times higher that for railroads and by utilizing the highways and byways trucks bring HAZMAT into a much closer association to major population concentrations. The realities of todays technologies is that they are all supported by a multitude of HAZMAT commodities. Do away with HAZMAT and we can do away with most all the conviences that we take for granted.
How about irrational stupid politician alerts? …Odd how they vote down or gut federalm safety programs while they think you are not looking.[V][V][V]