Officials, Experts Differ on Train Rerouting Rule

U.S. lawmakers and counterterrorism experts are questioning new rules that requires train companies to consider routes that would move shipments of ammonia, chlorine and other dangerous substances away from the 60 largest U.S. cities, USA Today reported today (see GSN, July 30, 2007).

Beginning this spring, rail firms must examine whether they can increase safety by rerouting trains carrying toxic chemicals away from major urban areas.  However, observers are already saying they believe the companies would use cost as a justification against making the actual shifts.

“Every day tank cars pass through our urban centers carrying enough chlorine to kill or injure 100,000 people in half an hour,” said U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who said he would continue working to prevent hazardous substances from being shipped through cities.

A spokesman for the U.S. Transportation Department agency that authored the new rule defended the flexibility it offers to train companies.  “We're not interested in just shifting the risk from a big city to a medium-sized city,” said Federal Railroad Administration representative Steve Kulm.

Meanwhile, train companies have voluntarily agreed to reduce the amount of time that toxic chemical shipments are allowed to wait in rail yards for pickup, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said earlier this month.

Chertoff did not say how long such shipments are usually left unattended, but the Transportation Security Administration and the Association of American Railroads said that time has been cut by 40 percent in the last year.

Such efforts have led to “a significant reduction” to threats posed by 110,000 annual rail shipments of toxic chemicals, said TSA Assistant Administrator John Sammon.

Rail security expert Fred Millar called the security of chemical rail shipments “an ongoing horrendous risk” that can be resolved only by rerouting trains.

“Only if Secretary Chertoff thinks terrorists are terminally stupid and slow on the draw could he maintain that they cannot hit 90-ton, unarmored, slow-moving rail cars, clearly marked and so astonishingly accessible that they are often tagged with graffiti,” he said (Mimi Hall, USA Today, March 14).

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