DELAWARE RIVER VALLEY & BEYOND —  The chorus for calls to improve the overall safety of the rail transportation of hazardous materials have intensified, ever since the February 3 train derailment near Palestine, OH. 

Two major players associated with railroad safety and the handling of hazardous materials (hazmat) across the country and within the Upper Delaware River corridor, recently addressed the complex issues with statistics to put the hazard level in perspective, along with recommended actions to the industry. 

The Federal Railroad Administration

A statement recently released by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on the topic of hazmat safety stated that railroads “take a holistic approach to safety to minimize the risk of rail accidents and to safeguard communities... efforts that have helped reduce hazmat accidents rates by 78 percent since 2000.” 

Noteworthy statistics calculated per million train miles used in data released in March 2023, and include several key points: 

• the derailment rate is down 31 percent since 2000, but despite that longer-term positive trend, it was up five percent year-over-year; 
• track-caused accidents are down 55 percent since 2000, and are at their lowest-ever rate across the entire rail industry;
• equipment-caused accidents were down 21 percent since 2000, but increased by 15 percent compared to 2021. Per carload, the hazmat accident rate is down 78 percent since 2000, the lowest-ever base on preliminary Bureau of Explosives data.

For information about the FRA, which is part of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT), email it at railroads.dot.gov.

The American Association of Railroads

On March 8, the Association of American Railroads (AAR), which bills itself as the “world’s leading railroad policy, research and technology organization focusing on safety and productivity of rail carriers,” weighed in on the recent derailments with several suggestions for the industry, geared toward restoring trust in the nation’s rail carriers.

The list includes seven key components for Class I railroads: 

• increasing the number of hot-bearing detectors (HBDs); 
• a new action temperature threshold to stop trains and inspect bearings; 
• sharing trending analysis for HBD; 
• joining the FRA’s voluntary Confidential Close Call Reporting System (C3RS), a confidential reporting system which allows rail employees to alert the DOT to close calls and unsafe conditions. “Employees receive protection from discipline and FRA enforcement,” the DOT notes; 
• training 2,000 first responders at the Security and Emergency Response Training Center, a member of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium; 
• expanding access to the AskRail app, which “provides real-time information about the contents of every car in a train and the safe handling of those contents [in the event of an accident] into the hands of every first responder”; and 
• following a safety advisory from the National Transportation Safety Board, improving certain tank cars used to transport flammable liquids. 

In the March 8 press release, the AAR stated in part, “The industry believes that the February 3 derailment and its aftermath require railroads and freight shippers alike to lead with actions... Policy actions taken reflexively that are not likely to achieve meaningful safety benefits could have a wide range of unintended economic and environmental consequences and a negative impact on the safe movement of all goods, including hazmat.”

For information about the ARR, contact it at www.aar.org.