[QUOTE=Someone]
What if I told you that:
· On average, six rail cars a week carrying 90 tons of chlorine, one of the most lethal gases in the world, pass within 20 blocks of the U.S. Capitol?
· If terrorists attacked the rail cars, escaping gas could kill or injure tens of thousands – about 100 people a second?
· Depending on the wind, a chlorine spill would be lethal to people within two to five miles and would endanger people within 14 miles?
· The chlorine passing through Washington is not for use here?
· The rail cars basically are unprotected and are emblazoned with placards announcing that they carry hazardous cargo – including the specific code for chlorine?
[/QUOTE]
What are the last two points supposed to mean, FTR? If the cars didn’t have the clear, MANDATED placards saying what was in them, would this be cast as “Bush wants to kill firefighters by keeping deadly genocidal chemicals secret?” And so what if stuff passes through a city that’s not used there - welcome to the real world, where goods are shipped to far-off markets, passing through other places. The last two points are almost complete non sequiters.
~
I’m not going to post my wild-assed speculations as “facts”, but I’m going to post some facts about rail freight in general, to show that there could be other things here that come into play.
First off, a large number of major chemical plants are captive to a single rail line - even in the East. If the chlorine is going to a captive plant, then CSX will not suffer any losses at all in re-routing its cars. They could send their cars from Boston to Richmond via Utah, and still make a profit. Why? Because if the plants are captive, then the STB will let them charge whatever the market will bear. In reality, they would trade off to a competitor and zig-back to the plant, I mean, no one would go that far out of the way - but the principle is the same. They might very well not lose a cent by re-routing.
Second, it sounds nice to say “just send it through the country”, but rail shipments don’t work like trucks. There are ordained numbers of trains, numbers of cars, and weights of cars that can travel on certain routes at certain times. Right now in the East, rail traffic is pretty freaking bad for freight - some power plants are down to less than 10 days of coal, because they can’t get the rail deliveries scheduled. There have also been coke shipment problems as well…basically, it’s not just a matter of saying “send it around the city”. There are certain key bridges and sections of track all across the country, marked in red on a map on a wall at work, where the volume and weight of rail traffic is severely limited due to poor track conditions. There are also portions marked where no hazardous materials can be shipped, due to poor traffic conditions. The two overlap quite a bit.
Third, can CSX send it around the city? Will they have to pay trackage rights to a competitor, and how much will that be? Who will compensate them for additional costs on their contracts? Sure they can, they’ll just claim “force majeure”, and send the bill to the shipper. They do it all the time with coal shipments, when anything pops up that causes a serious enough disruption. Yes, I know that force majeure is supposed to mean “acts of God”, but as far as the industry goes, the government is God. Rail lines have used force majeure successfully for bad track conditions on their own tracks. That one can be debated endlessly in board rooms, but it’s a fact of life.
In short, there are legitimate reasons why CSX wouldn’t really care that much about profits, but might care about the simple ability to get the product to where it needs to go, safely. We can also argue the point of what makes Washington so special, anyhow? Why are the lives of the people of, oh, Olathe, Kansas less special? And yet, look on a rail map - BNSF and UP both have major, key arteries through Olathe. Prevent trains with hazardous chemicals from going through Olathe, and you’ve effectively cut off whole States from easy access to hazardous freight - hazardous freight which has very legitimate uses in products we all use every single day. Seriously, take a look at a major freight rail line map anyways, and look at the East. It’s pretty scary just how few rail lines go to key locations.
Just some points people might want to consider on the issue…it’s a very complicated issue, in reality, and a summary from a news report or blogs is not really telling the whole story here. I’m not going to say that CSX can or cannot deliver chlorine safely and economically to the people that need it by routing around Washington, because I have no freaking idea. To determine that sort of thing is something I typically would pay about $75-$125k to get a complete surface transportation analysis and legal and environmental review (as well as permitting review) on. Unless there was specific study which is publically available done by an unbiased source on this issue, I wouldn’t be to quick to take a side here.
