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Senate Working to Strip Braking Safety Requirements From Oil

Senate Working to Strip Braking Safety Requirements From Oil 

As documented on DeSmog, the new oil-by-rail regulations contain major concessions to the oil and rail industries as the result of relentless lobbyingduring the rulemaking process. One logical safety measure that the rail industry failed to block from the new rules was a requirement for modern braking systems know as electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes.

However, the rail industry has a Plan B to avoid modernizing their braking systems and so far it is working quite well.

In late June, the Republican-controlled Senate Commerce Committee approved a measure to drop the ECP braking requirement and instead order years of new research, a delay tactic favored by Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF) railroad.

Of course, no research is needed to review the existing air braking systems because they were invented in the 1860s, and in the past 150 years their limitations have become well known.

Anytime you put the air on, you’re subject for something to go wrong,” explained Dana Maryott, director of locomotive and air-brake systems at the BNSF Railway.

In the above statement, the phrase “put the air on” refers to applying braking on freight trains.

We’ve had long trains where the engineer released the brake and started pulling a little bit too early, while the brakes were still set on the rear of the train,” explained Maryott, “And coming around a sharp radius, we’ve literally pulled the train off the track.”

Maryott was explaining some of the risks of air braking systems for a 2009 article for the engineering publication theIEEE Spectrum.

That article explained how ECP brakes were a modernized and superior braking system.

In a 2010 Progressive Railroading article about rail braking and safety, Larry Breeden, general manager of operating practices for Union Pacific railroad, gave his positive opinion on ECP brakes.

“The effectiveness of the brakes is advanced. It gets instantaneous braking, plus I can graduate the release. It gives better train control and reduced fuel consumption. You also get better brake shoe and wheel life.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Minority, Low-Income Communities Bear Disproportionate Share Of Risk From Oil Trains In California

People of color and low-income communities are bearing a disproportionate burden of risk from dangerous oil trains rolling through California, according to a new report by ForestEthics and Communities for a Better Environment.

Called “Crude Injustice On The Rails,” the report found that 80 percent of the 5.5 million Californians with homes in the oil train blast zone — the one-mile region around train tracks that would need to be evacuated in the event of an oil train derailment, explosion and fire — live in communities with predominantly minority, low-income or non-English speaking households.

Nine of California’s 10 largest cities that have oil train routes running through them have an even higher rate of “discriminatory impact,” the authors of the report found. In those cities, 82–100 percent of people living in the blast zone are in what they call “environmental justice communities.”

“In California you are 33 percent more likely to live in the blast zone if you live in a nonwhite, low income, or non-English speaking household,” Matt Krogh, ForestEthics extreme oil campaign director and one of the authors of the report, said in a statement.

New oil-by-rail rules inadequate

The Obama Administration released new oil-by-rail regulations in May that were heavily criticized as inadequate because the industry had too much influence over the final rules, which would not stop more incidents like the oil train derailment in North Dakota in May that led to an explosion and fire that burned for days. That was the fifth accident of its kind in theUS so far this year.

Massive fireballs and raging infernos often accompany oil train accidents because of the highly volatile Bakken crude they frequently carry. Yet, as Justin Mikulka wrote here on DeSmog, the US Department of Transportation’s new regulations are so weak as to be little more than “a guidebook for the oil and rail industries to continue doing business as usual when it comes to moving explosive Bakken crude oil by rail.”

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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