Dont reverse rule on oil train brakes
In its zeal to roll back regulations — especially those established during President Obama’s eight years in office — the Trump administration decision to reverse a rail industry requirement has the potential to endanger the environment and the lives of those living and working near the trains carrying crude oil and other volatile materials.
These are the trains that pass through our communities, from Edmonds to Stanwood, Index to Everett, and along shorelines and over rivers and estuaries.
Recently, the federal Department of Transportation announced that it was rolling back rules — established just two years before — that all trains carrying flammable liquids be equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes by 2021, rather than the air brakes that have been the industry standard for more than a century.
This regulation and others followed a steady march of rail disasters — many where the failure of air brakes were a factor — including the 2013 disaster in Lac Megantic, Quebec, that killed at least 47 people when an unattended train with 74 cars carrying Bakken crude oil rolled down a grade and into town, derailed and exploded with a blast radius of more than half a mile.
More recently, a Union Pacific train of 96 cars, also carrying the highly volatile Bakken crude, derailed in the Columbia River Gorge near Mosier, Oregon, in June 2016. Sixteen of its cars derailed when a failure of its emergency braking system caused the brakes to engage. Several cars caught fire. Had the derailment occurred elsewhere, the leaking cars could have landed in the Columbia River or near populated areas.
Nearly two decades of study elsewhere have found that the electronically controlled brakes can reduce the number of cars derailed, thus reducing the chance for disasters involving spills, fires or explosions.
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-dont-reverse-rule-on-oil-train-brakes/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=c05cb9e373-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-c05cb9e373-228635337
= new reply since forum marked as read
