The Folly of Rerouting Oil Trains

[schlimm]

If there are routes that can accept an oil train to run at 40 mph to bypass a metro area completely or in part, then that would be a desirable option.  Working out the details about tariff, etc. should not be reason to not attempt.   The EJ&E/CN would accomplish that in part in metro Chicago.

[daveklepper]

Rerouting to avoid populaton centers seems highly impractical as a hard and fast rule.  It may make sense only when two alternatives are equal in all other respects.  But operating practices regarding speed and meets can reduce the chances for an incident and reduce the severity of any incidents that might happen.

[edblysard]

Odd little side note…they barge LPG, natural gas and oil up the Hudson river, right through New York City, and no one ever thinks to be worried there are floating bombs in Manhattan?

[BaltACD]

daveklepper

OK   You are correct about container shipments in general.  But the point about meets remains valid.

Freight carriers expect and require that Shipper's load their loads (all commodities) in accordance with the applicable loading requirements when they are offered for shipment as specified in the Bill of Lading.

[Euclid]

schlimm

Euclid

How this public safety crisis develops moving forward hinges almost entirely on the random event.  In that sense, the probability and odds of oil train accidents are meaningless for all practical purposes.  And yet rerouting oil trains to relatively safer areas is focused exclusively on managing probabilities and risk in the most subjective terms. 

You do not understand probabilities or you would not make such a statement.  Try going back and reading what Frailey and klepper wrote and ask Dave. K. if you still do not get it

I understand the point about probabilities just fine.  If my statement indicates to you that I do not, perhaps it is because you do not understand my statement. 

My point is that dealing with this snowballing public relations problem by splitting hairs about the probabilities of killing more or less people here or there is tone deaf.  It is missing the forest by looking at the trees. 

Routing oil trains away from densely populated areas sounds beneficial on the surface.  Probabilities are simple if you just ask whether a person is better off farther from a fireball rather than closer to it. 

But rerouting means choosing between two alternate routes of considerable distance.  The choice will be far from clear because each route will have a bewildering mix of pros and cons when it comes to public vulnerability. The pros and cons will also include all of the economic, operational, and logistical issues including distance, type of track, labor agreements, traffic patterns, etc.

The choice of route will require the weighing of an enormous number of competing risk and safety factors.  The results of these calculations will be hard to quantify and interpret.  They will vary widely between different approaches to the calculation. 

But in the larger perspective, once you accept the premise that oil trains can kill people at any moment; and thus try to distance the trains from people, there will be no satisfactory solution to be found.  Every life will be important.  Forcing the need to choose the least deadly location will simply highlight and promote the menace of oil trains.   

There will also be intense resistance to placing oil trains in new areas with the explanation that they are deemed too dangerous to people where the trains previously ran.  Talk about an issue for NIMBYS!

[dehusman]

There are whole lot of legal issues here.  Lets say railroad A's route goes through Metropolis while railroad B's  route goes through Smallville.  Someone decides that the route through Smallville is the "best' route and requires all the crude oil to operate on railroad B. 

 

If I was railroad B I would be suing somebody because whoever made that decision has now shifted 100% of the liability for an accident to my company.  If the government or some other entity is going to force a railroad to accept liability by artificially requiring a particular routing, will that entity cover the risk that the entity has forced railroad B to assume.

 

If I have a fertilizer dealership 100 ft from a school and you have a business 1000 ft from the school  would you be ok if the city required you to house my ammonium nitrate and anhydrous ammonia on your property  because its "safer" for the school?

 

If you had a detached garage and everybody else has an attached garage, would you be OK with everybody in your neighborhood storing their gasoline for their yard equipment in your garage?  Would your insurance company be OK with that arrangement?

 

Highways or public property.  If a truck drives on Highway 91 it has the same liability if it drives on Highway 93.  Railroads are private property.  If you shift the traffic you change the risk to private companies.

[csxns]

chutton01

"Product moves from  three to eight miles per hour depending upon line size, pressure, and other factors such as the density and viscosity of the liquid being transported. At these rates

Thanks.

[chutton01]

csxns

Modelcar

speed" of oil traveling thru pipe lines.

Now you said it just how fast can oil  travel thru the pipe I thought of this before but never asked but all ways wondered.

Association of Oil Pipelines:
"Product moves from  three to eight miles per hour depending upon line size, pressure, and other factors such as the density and viscosity of the liquid being transported. At these rates, it takes from 14 to 22 days to move liquids from Houston, Texas to New York City"

But:
"It is difficult to say without knowing other properties like velocity or pressure difference, but with estimated velocity of 1 m/s it is about 200.000 gph or 4,8 mil gallons per day."

[schlimm]

Euclid

How this public safety crisis develops moving forward hinges almost entirely on the random event.  In that sense, the probability and odds of oil train accidents are meaningless for all practical purposes.  And yet rerouting oil trains to relatively safer areas is focused exclusively on managing probabilities and risk in the most subjective terms. 

You do not understand probabilities or you would not make such a statement.  Try going back and reading what Frailey and klepper wrote and ask Dave. K. if you still do not get it

[Mookie]

Just a musing:  you re-route anything and within 10 years, people will move there. 

I don't think that will be the answer to the problem.

[daveklepper]

OK   You are correct about container shipments in general.  But the point about meets remains valid.

[csxns]

Modelcar

speed" of oil traveling thru pipe lines.

Now you said it just how fast can oil  travel thru the pipe I thought of this before but never asked but all ways wondered.

[cp8905]

Modelcar

Route oil trains on good well kept rail lines, and reduce the speed....Some experts from the industry should be able to determine, "what speed", and perhaps whatever speed will be decided, will beat the "speed" of oil traveling thru pipe lines.

I agree completely, and would add: with sufficient crews to operate safely, to keep the train moving without stopping in places that lack yard crews and supervision, run between places with 24-hour monitoring (i.e., major terminals), sufficient on-train personnel to do things like tie the train down if necessary in an emergency (not have the one person aboard leave the engine to tie down cars in the dark a la MM&A). I would NOT run these trains down shortlines just to avoid large cities. All this can be done safely at a profit on the major railroads, this isn't low margin stuff.

[Modelcar]

Route oil trains on good well kept rail lines, and reduce the speed....Some experts from the industry should be able to determine, "what speed", and perhaps whatever speed will be decided, will beat the "speed" of oil traveling thru pipe lines.

[dehusman]

daveklepper

On this question of meets.   Note that the railroad industry is the only transportation medium where some cases do not involve any transportation people in the loading process, only the shipper's people.

 

It is the only medium as long as you don't count USPS, UPS, FedEx, barge lines, any shipping in containers by rail, ship or truck, and drayage truck lines.  In all of those someone other than the company providing the transportation service loads the "container" to be shipped. 

[daveklepper]

Yes, but following Fred Frailey's`suggestions (with my modifications and additions?) will definitely reduce the chances of accidents happening.   The lower the speed, the lower the chance for an accident and the lower the chance that any accident will be very serious.  The only exception is on lines where directional sharing of parallel routtes exists, and the fleet speed is the least dangerous, since it reduces occasioins for meets.

On this question of meets.   Note that the railroad industry is the only transportation medium where some cases do not involve any transportation people in the loading process, only the shipper's people.

[Euclid]

How this public safety crisis develops moving forward hinges almost entirely on the random event.  In that sense, the probability and odds of oil train accidents are meaningless for all practical purposes.  And yet rerouting oil trains to relatively safer areas is focused exclusively on managing probabilities and risk in the most subjective terms. 

The proponents of rerouting will tell us how many lives they are saving, but there will be no way to verify that sort of claim.  The only way to validate the rerouting will be to promote it to the public as something that is being done about the problem.

But at the same time, there will be the unintended consequence of promoting the danger of oil trains to the public precisely due to the message that oil trains must be kept away from the public.  That is worst possible message to be sending when trying to manage a crisis based almost entirely on the perception of danger. 

Therefore, in my opinion, this rerouting plan is as wrongheaded as can be.  It will hurt rather than help.  It is the fumbling bureaucratic solution to a problem that is nearly unsolvable.