As the Wheel Turns, Part Two

A Radio Story in Search of a Point

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 5:25 PM EST

I’ve just finished listening to a feature story on National Public Radio's afternoon news program “All Things Considered.” It was about the boom in new oil traffic on America's railroads.

I enjoy and support public radio. It is an oasis in the desert that passes for contemporary broadcasting. But I found the story “Pipeline on Wheels: Trains are Winning Big Off U.S. Oil” deeply troubling. It offers an example of how we — as an informed community of railroad supporters — can be heard in useful ways.

Please listen to the radio segment before you figure out that I am royally mad. Try to listen with an open mind.

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/04/248816818/pipeline-on-wheels-trains-are-winning-big-off-u-s-oil 

I wondered how soon the radio feature would mention the Lac Megantic disaster. That has become shorthand for a horrible railroad accident, in the same way as the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster. In 1876, a badly designed bridge on Vanderbilt's Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad collapsed under a passenger train, crushing and incinerating at least 92 people. “Ashtabula” signified callous and irresponsible railroad management for a half a century afterward. “Lac Megantic” is an equally loaded term today. 

We are hard wired to understand the world — both forward and backward in time — in terms of stories, impressions, and snippets. We use them as shorthand to shape opinions and negotiate our increasingly complex lives. Think of  “honest politician” or “Used car salesman.”

“Pearl Harbor,” “9/11,” and “Sandy Hook Elementary” are keywords signifying complex (but often, subconscious) understandings and emotions. “Lac Megantic” and “Chatsworth” are now cultural shorthand for prominent railroad disasters. We can probably add “Spuyten Duyvil” to the list.

NPR's “Pipeline on Wheels” was a cleverly edited radio piece. It began in North Dakota, and then moved to the Tehachapi Loop as an example of “the scale and reach of the oil boom in the middle of the country.” That was a fine set up, and conveyed railroading’s ability to transport oil over long distances, and to refineries not served by existing pipelines.

For its first few minutes, the NPR story seemed neutral and accurate. It mentioned the oil boom in North Dakota, the leap in railroad crude oil traffic, and the shortage of tank cars to handle the business. The reporter spoke with railroad professionals who offered thoughtful comments. Railroads seemed to be agile in their ability to move oil. Pipelines take time to locate and build.

The reporter then cited Bakersfield, Calif., as an example of trains bringing oil to an existing refinery. It had pipeline connections to Los Angeles and the Bay Area, suggesting an efficient use of existing infrastructure. The NPR reporter was doing a good job of connecting a few dots.

Most reasonable people would understand the transportation of oil by rail as an effective response to our goal of energy independence, and the rapid shifts in our baseline energy sources and uses. Oil by rail is an excellent example of how our technologies and economy are supposed to work. Safety and risk management are deeply engrained in those calculations — as are the costs and risks of oil transportation by pipeline and truck.

But the reporter didn't go there. In the final third of the piece, the segment resorted to cheap shots.

The scene shifted back to the Tehachapi route, with mention of its twists, turns, and descent of 4,000 feet to the valley floor. A no-doubt sincere “environmentalist” had the final words, wondering “Are they going to start pushing this crude coming in before they get everything as safe as it needs to be?

“Are they going to wait for a big accident before they change how they do things on that rail line?” In today's media environment, those are loaded and toxic words.

So let me ask my own rhetorical questions:

Did I miss something? Are an “environmentalist” and a general-subject NPR reporter qualified to make those kinds of assertions in a national broadcast? 

Do Union Pacific and BNSF Railway need to change “how they do things on that rail line” for reasons we should know? Aren't they already pretty good at running safe and efficient railroads? 

Isn't the Tehachapi route one of the most closely scrutinized and rigorously maintained main lines in the entire world?

Is it legitimate to hint that Lac Megantic equals Tehachapi Loop, sooner or later? Just whom does NPR think they are to make that association? That is equivalent to suggesting that a major U.S. air carrier will crash a plane based on the flight practices of a third-world bush airline. It could happen — but the odds are rather long.

I look at this from several perspectives, once my Irish half calms down.

First, it is an example of “lazy reporting.” Someone had an interesting idea, but NPR didn't invest the resources to make it a coherent or well-researched piece. It may have seemed convenient to conclude with a vague sense of peril — “oil by rail ... grind around corner after corner ... descend almost 4,000 feet to the valley floor ... killed more than 40 people....”

It is a classic “bait and switch.” The segment begins by addressing one aspect of a complex subject, and then spins off to a different ending. Railroads “love” the oil boom. “But the growth doesn't come without resistance,” the piece warns. “A few sparks, and you can have a major disaster,” it concludes. What starts as a radio segment reporting on the boom in oil transported by rail ends with the hint of another Lac Megantic disaster.

There is a context for this kind of reporting, which NPR ignored. We accept risks from dangerous commodities and complex technologies. The Deepwater Horizon well failure, the explosion of a fertilizer plant at West, Texas, or the 2010 natural gas line blast outside San Francisco that killed 8 people and destroyed 38 homes are examples. Oil moving by pipeline also entails risk, and there have been multiple serious pipeline incidents in the last few years.

NPR’s “Pipeline on Wheels” is a crude and intellectually dishonest piece. I am certain NPR did not intend that. I have faith that if approached in a collegial fashion, its reporter, producer, and editors would understand why listeners might take exception to its expressed and implied conclusions.

So, what? 

This is not the time to simply unload on NPR. Please listen to the piece as ordinary, non-railroad folks might understand it. But also keep a few thoughts in mind:

Is it coherent and consistent? Is it fair? Does it make a reasoned conclusion?

Does the segment end up where its beginning suggests it might? Or does it seem to veer to a different ending?

Does there seem to be an ulterior motive or hidden agenda?

Does it leave a “reasonable man” with the mental image of oil cars careening 4,000 feet down the curving track to the valley floor, where a spark might create another Lac Megantic-like catastrophe?

Is there a shred of evidence presented to support the possibility that operations on Tehachapi are not safe and under the full control of railroads, which have operated in that territory for 140 years?

Why would anyone imagine that oil transported over Tehachapi presents an undue risk? Are we missing something?

In a short segment like this, should NPR have kept the discussion focused on the central point: that oil traffic on American and Canadian railroads is greatly increasing?

Once you have formed an opinion, please craft a calm, reasoned, common-sense response to National Public Radio and your local NPR affiliate. Do not be angry, hostile, partisan, or snarky. Disappointment and puzzlement are powerful responses.

Thirty or forty cordial, carefully-reasoned responses from us — the railroad interest community —would get NPR's attention, and invite them to pay more heed to the reality of railroading. This is the kind of situation in which we can be helpful. 

No shouting. No overt hostility. No agenda, except for common sense and fairness regarding a railroad industry doing exactly what we expect it to do. The railroad industry can't respond to the NPR piece without seeming overtly corporate, overbearing, or self-interested. 

Please share your notes to NPR in the Train of Thought comments section below. 

And again, before you respond, please listen for yourselves--with a critical, honest, realistic open mind.

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/04/248816818/pipeline-on-wheels-trains-are-winning-big-off-u-s-oil