I think that the idea is that trains that avoid Washington, DC are far less likely to be a terrorist target in the first place. Terrorists aren’t going to blow up a train full of chlorine gas out in the sticks just because that’s where the train is.
The terrorist angle is probably mostly fearmongering, but the idea of routing trains around the city is a rational response to prevent that scenario. I don’t see this as a trade-off between urban lives vs. rural lives, but rather negating a hypothetical stunning terrorist attack on the seat of government.
What railroads are these that don’t go into or near any cities? Who the hell sends stuff from one boondock location to another boondock location? By the Trainload? Am I the only one who wonders just where this remote disconected rail system is?
Every traintrack I ever saw went from one city to another city. Along the way, it passed through dozens of small towns. Now, I know that the stations in those small towns are not open for business, anymore. But the tracks still lay where they were lain, a hundred and fifty years ago. And oddly enough, the tiny towns that they passed through in the 1800’s are now cities. Who’d have thought, huh?
The shreiking for alternative routes has me confused. Where is the stuff going to end up? Where did it come from? Can terrrorists just watch the train for a few months and figure this out?
Or, perhaps they will just go out to the barren hills along old uranium tailing sites, and set off shaped charges to blow our own polution into the air. It’s not like those are being guarded. Hell, we build elementary schools on those.
Many people seem to be making the assumption that these trains can be magically rerouted through the sticks. Hello, this is the Eastern Seaboard, there isn’t much in the way of “sticks” from Richmond to Boston, especially when you look at where the train tracks are located. The train tracks were largely built to connect populated areas, and when built, attracted more development and population.
Yeah, who cares if everybody in D.C. gets killed, it’s not like anybody who lives or works there would be missed.
I don’t think we’d even notice if it happened, the country would get along just fine without 'em.
If that’s the case, then let’s spread out the risk even further. We can just ban all shipment of chlorine by rail. Put it in tanker trucks and limit the size of the truck to 2000 gallons.
Hey, I actually kind of agree with Airman Doors for once. I grew up in a rural area where the Gov. considered us expendable enough to plant Titan missles all over the place. I resented the arrogance.
Plus, highways have been rerouted to go around cities and towns. I don’t see why rails shouldn’t do the same, leaving the original tracks as spurs for city-specific deliveries. And the Government, the ones responsible for our security, should foot the bill. Maybe that would keep CSX from poor-mouthing about it.
Both sides quoted in the newspaper seem to agree that there are routes available that would go through less populated areas.
Both sides agree that shipping the chlorine via a more rural route would increase shipping costs, although they may disagree on how significant the added cost would be, and whether that should be a factor in the decision of which shipping route to utilize.
Una, sure there are bottlenecks in any transportation system. But one hopes that trains carrying chlorine are a pretty damned small fraction of the whole, and shifting them wouldn’t screw up the whole system. If I’m wrong about that, then we’ve got bigger problems.
The second-to-last bullet isn’t a non-sequitur: it’s blocking the obvious “I bet some of that is headed to D.C. anyway” rejoinder.
Last bullet point: I don’t think Quinn is saying those labels don’t have good reasons for being there. But they do have an obvious downside, if terrorists ever should get the idea of blowing up a rolling chlorine tank.
There’s this thing called mitigation of risk. If you can’t eliminate the risk of a particular event’s occurence, you’d at least like to reduce the potential consequences of that risk. One way to do this is to reduce the number of people who might be killed or injured should the event occur. It’s rough if you’re one of the 500 people in East Bumfuck if more chlorine trains are routed along their rail line, but it still makes more sense than to route the chlorine train through a city of 500,000.
That makes sense even if the event in question is a simple chlorine leak.
But, as others have pointed out, the terrorists aren’t going to try to blow up a chlorine tanker in East Bumfuck. They’re going to do it in a big city, or not at all.
Bingo. Plus, if there is a dangerous spill, people in the surrounding area will be more able, as a percentage, to get away from the affected area due to the plentiful transportation infrastructure compared with the city.
So,
Fewer People * Less chance of human-engineered incident * better chance of getting away = far, far fewer deaths. I applaud, however, those ubermensch who realize that only those with the True Will to Live and have the power to go out and grasp it will truly rise above the grungy proletariat of the cities, who don’t deserve life, really.
Maybe if you don’t understand hyperbole, you don’t deserve to live in a non-urbanized area.
Okay, let’s totally equalize your risk, per this statement:
Let’s assume that it’s 10 times more likely to happen in D.C. than whereever you live. Let’s also assume that it’s 10 times more likely you would be able to escape the poison cloud.
Now, if both of these totally made up numbers are true, would you not think that your area should be able to have at least 100 times as many chlorine trucks than D.C.? You’ve already wondered why chlorine shipments should go through your area, even if it’s safer. And that’s not even accounting for the population density qua density, just as a congestion issue.
Me, too. I changed my mind. I was doing pretty simple math before - it’s better that fewer people die than that more people die. But Airmain was right - it’s fine to trade city lives for country lives. If a hundred times as many people die, it doesn’t count because they live in the city.
There’s never been any dispute there. There are alternate routes to most all places.
And again, there’s never been any dispute there. My point is that the buyer will pay the costs, not the railroad. So the theory that CSX doesn’t want to re-route because of substantial economic hits, or even any economic hit, may or may not be true - but most likely, may not be true, for the reasons already explained herein.
We do have bigger problems, they just don’t make the press most people read. A 600MW coal plant with 10 days of coal supply at best because it can’t get coal is a pretty big problem. But my point, which has been missed three times now, is that this is not an easy thing to re-route in some areas. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t. It depends on which lines, which plants, which traffic, which bridges they cross…
It’s just a throwaway comment intended to either sound scary or to try to make some sense of indignation. IMO.
It sounds crass, but I don’t care. What’s the realistic alternative to clearly labeling hazardous materials in transit, exactly? Their including it was either a non-sequiter as a result of ignorance, or it was a deliberate journalistic ploy to make the article more scary-sounding.
Here’s a question: exactly how far can the chlorine be routed away from Washington, DC, before it comes too close to the next large city? Which rail line will it travel on? Rail lines aren’t spaced equidistant between large cities - at some point, someone’s going to have to say “Baltimore is less worthy than Washington” or “Philadephia is more important than Wilmington”.
My point is that this it not a simple issue, and that not only is the article in the OP not taking that into account, it has used some points that are…OK, don’t call them “non-sequiters”, what do we call them? Red herrings? Propaganda? Why are they pointing out with such emphasis the fact that chlorine cars are clearly marked? Would they rather they were all painted black with no markings? What do you think the fire departments and first responders to a derailment would rather have?
This is a serious issue which is not helped by the usual circle-jerk blog and random news report cobbled together by someone on the Washington Post bullshit. You’re right to call attention to the issue, but the source you’re using is selling the importance short IMO. An attack on the source material for the OP is not an attack on you nor the overall topic.
The article is also missing several other key points, IMO:
Chlorine is bad. What about sulfuric acid? Ammonia? There’s LOTS of nasty things shipped by rail that could kill “thousands” under the right conditions. What about home heating oil? Set a few tens of thousands of that on fire, and people won’t be happy. Concentrated fertilizer? What else needs to be shipped around Washington?
Because so many things could be hazardous, let’s attack the problem at a source: the cars. IMO the cars should be mandated to be stronger than they are now, much stronger. They also need automated leak-checking systems that sniff in the slipstream for leaks and radio for help to the engineer. They can even try building them with “reactive armour”, a concept where the there is a double-wall, with a chemical or chemicals in-between which helps to react with and neutralize the dangerous stuff inside.
Since entire trains very rarely derail, force spacing of chlorine and other cars out along the train, so in the event of an accident there is less chance of multiple cars becoming involved.
Re-routing may be the answer in many cases. It may not in others. There are other answers too, each with their own cost-benefits. Item (2) up above could be very costly from a capital standpoint, items 1 and 3 from an O&M standpoint.
Once again, just things to think about. Not everything in the Pit is meant to be a dispute.
I was responding primarily to Triskadecamus’ comment that “Every traintrack I ever saw went from one city to another city.”
Hasn’t the theory long since been disproven that anybody in a supply chain can simply pass their increased costs on to the next link in the chain?
I of course have no context for judging whether 10 days’ supply is an abundance or an emergency - but when it comes to coal-fired plants, you’re the expert, and I’ll trust your expertise.
Well, sure, it’s not always going to be easy; but it seems to be possible. It seems improbable that they’re going to have to ship the stuff to Kansas City to avoid D.C., but if they have to route it through Orange, VA, or Harrisburg, PA (hi, Doors), what’s the big deal?
IYO. ISTM that somewhere in the damned article, you need to make it clear that the stuff isn’t going to or from D.C., just passing through. I really hate it when someone’s writing a piece like this, and leaves out that one fact that keeps them from closing the deal, intellectually speaking.
I agree it’s a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. But even if it’s agreed that the deep blue sea is better than the devil, the sea’s risks are still real.
If one checks the map, it’s immediately obvious that there’s not a whole lot of places you can send stuff to by rail where you’d have to choose between shipping through Baltimore or Washington. I guess there’s Annapolis, and there’s Southern Maryland, which has gone from farm country to suburban/exurban bedroom community without passing through an industrial stage. (Thanks in part to people like me moving in. :))
I’m sure it’s not a 5-minute project to solve the problem, but my point is that the logistical issues probably were amenable to a solution in under four and a half years - and so far, the main thing that seems to have been done is to eliminate chlorine shipments from the line that goes within four blocks of the Capitol Building.
Just like with ports or chemical plants or air cargo, we have an Administration that is simply not bothering to deal with basic, obvious vulnerabilities to terrorist attack, year after year after year after year after 9/11. Part of that is that they have a pronounced desire to do nothing to tread on the toes of friendly major industries; part of it seems to be that they just don’t care about policy details, so they just don’t do 'em.
I still don’t understand what your beef with Sally Quinn is in this case. Maybe she should have covered more ground than she did, and maybe she only dealt with the immediate solution of rerouting, rather than the longer-term, larger-scale solutions you’ll propose later in the post, but ISTM like focusing on one specific hazard, and one reasonably quick and non-capital-intensive solution was a reasonable editorial choice.
See above.
You may well be right, here. And like I said in the ports threads (which this is, in its way, a followup to), that’s why I expect the government to rely on experts: to figure out what the real problems are, and what the best solutions are, in one of the many areas where a smart generalist can’t become an expert overnight.
And if we’d done the sort of thoroughgoing review of our vulnerabilities, and prospective responses to them, that we should have done after 9/11, instead of Bush going, “Look! Axis of Evil!”, then the experts would have already had this discussion, and we’d probably have those stronger cars by now, if that was found to be the most efficacious solution.
But it didn’t take place, and it’s not going to take place for awhile. First, we’ve got to get a Congress that’ll insist that we do something about this stuff that we’ve been neglecting for 4.5 years (given that the GOP has had the ball but ignored these problems, maybe it’s time to give the other guys a shot), and then we’ve got to give them some time to make sure the issues have been actually studied before writing legislation, rather than passing bills reflecting no more knowledge than I have, and then somebody’s got to design the cars, build and test prototypes, and then gear up for full-scale production.
Between now and then, maybe we should still insist that chlorine and certain other hazardous chemicals be routed away from major cities to the extent practicable.
Which would also mitigate the risk of a terrorist attack, by making it harder for them to blow up multiple chemical tanker cars at once.
Una, nothing’s wrong with your points here; in fact, they’re quite good. But I just don’t see what’s wrong with Quinn’s illuminating one piece of the problem, along with the availability of a quick-fix solution.
Sure, there may be complexities to its implementation, and it may not by itself be able to get all chlorine traffic out of high-pop areas, but it would be progress.
But what’s more, the problem right now is alerting people to the reality that all this sort of stuff has been swept under the rug and still needs to be addressed, even if ‘addressing’ it, in some cases, means counting the costs of reducing the problem, and deciding we as a society would rather live with the risk than spend that sort of money. It would at least be a semi-informed decision, as opposed to no decision at all.
Aren’t most factories that are in need of chlorine gas located inside cities anyway? Why wouldn’t terrorists just wait until the train enters a city to make a delivery before blowing it up? It doesn’t matter where you reroute the thing if it eventually has to enter a city to make a delivery anyway.
Another angle from which to view the argument is: which locale is best capable of expeditiously managing an incident? Breach a tank car in the District, Baltimore City, or other urban area, and a career department responds along with technicians trained for hazardous materials.
Breach the same car in West Podunk, and even if one or two members of the local fire department are certified HM technicians, they will not have access to the same toolbox containing diking, damming, plugging, patching, or CAMEO that their city brothers and sisters have available.
That said, the same incident in a rural locale may continue for a much longer period of time before being controlled, and with some substances will thereby result in significant insult to the environment.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the uses of chlorine, besides water purification:
Can’t tell you where most of these things are made, but paper mills tend to be in smaller towns and in the boonies. Because they stink to high heaven.
(a) That may be true, but we don’t know that. (b) Some cities are more likely terrorist targets than others. (Minneapolis-St.Paul, you guys are probably pretty safe.) D.C. is one of those cities, for obvious reasons. And according to the article, the chlorine isn’t being shipped to D.C., just through it. (c) There’s really no point in exposing any more people to a given hazard than necessary.
There’s two ways to minimize the effects of a potential disaster: reduce the likelihood of its occurence, and reduce the impact it has if it occurs. Minimizing the extent to which chlorine and other hazardous chemicals are shipped through densely populated areas would be a standard application of the second approach.
I can’t argue with any of that. But if the terrorists blow up a rolling tank of chlorine gas, the main threat will apparently be that of people inhaling harmful or fatal quantities of it even before a response team can do anything to contain it. (How do you contain clouds of a toxic heavier-than-air gas, anyway?) The first mitigation activity after a chlorine tank rupture would presumably be to get people well out of the area as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t this be a lot easier to do if the area isn’t densely populated?
Kim, don’t you ever get tired of this? Your pit postings follow a predictable pattern, unless they are aimed at a post from the boards. You come in, full of piss and vinigar because some blog or op-ed piece has told you that you are supposed to be outraged at this or that and post your indignant OP, making sure to blame George W. Bush for whatever it is you’ve been told to be indignant about, because we all know that everything is George W. Bush’s fault. Everything. Inevitably, a poster who knows what is really going on, in this case Una, comes in and gently bends you over a table, lubes you up and procedes to vigourously fuck you up the ass with actual facts. Instead of enjoying the fucking for what it is and thanking people who actually know what is going on for taking the time to educate your ignorant ass, you puff up and bluster and pevecate and do whatever you can to avoid admitting that, once again, your knee jerked into your head and you posted yet another steaming load of diarrhea onto the SDMB. Just because the motto of these boards is “fighting ignorance”, that doesn’t mean you have a mission to post ignorance, there is enogh of it out there as it is.
Cites?
Well, there’s this thread right here, and this one where Sam Stone points out the obvious that your refuse to see, and this one where a whole bunch of posters use you like a glory hole at a porn shop. There’s more, but I didn’t feel like searching back further than the last 2 weeks or so. In each case, there are a cadre of loyal Bush bashers who jump in to say “W00t, WTG! OMGG, you are teh r0xx0r, Shrub sux!”, but the lack of actual, you know, facts is striking. Is that the only reason you post anymore Kim? To get the attaboys and good wishes from the anti-Bush syncopants? Cuz I gotta tell you, I was posting 5, 6, 7 years ago, and I remember your posts back then actualy being intelegent and based upon knowledge and even some common sense. Nowadays? You got nuthin. Nuthin but a big blow hole spewing whatever anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-American screed you’ve been told to regurgitate today. It’s been a pathetic transformation to watch.
BTW, I love your cites. Your first link is to the “227,000 Quality Iraqi Troops” thread, because, you know, the Iraqi security forces are doing such a bang-up job right now, all 227,000 of them. Guess Sam showed me! And the second, oddly enough, contains my answer to your bullshit “anti-American” claim: