{"id":12914,"date":"2015-10-02T07:12:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T12:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12914"},"modified":"2015-10-02T07:12:08","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T12:12:08","slug":"oil-by-rail-giant-bnsf-threatens-shutdown-over-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12914","title":{"rendered":"Oil-by-Rail Giant BNSF Threatens Shutdown Over Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Oil-by-Rail Giant BNSF Threatens Shutdown Over Safety<\/a><\/h3>\n

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In June of 2014, a representative of oil-by-rail giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF<\/span>) attended a meeting with regulators where the American Association of Railroads (AAR<\/span>) lobbied\u00a0against any speed limits for oil trains<\/a>. One of the slides from that presentation \u2013 titled \u201cFar Reaching Economic Impacts\u201d (image below) \u2014 predicted dire consequences to the American economy if speed limits were put in\u00a0place.<\/p>\n

There was no mention of the safety benefits of such a speed limit in the\u00a0presentation.<\/p>\n

And now\u00a0BNSF<\/span>\u00a0is back at it, informing regulators that if a congressionally mandated requirement from 2008 that requires all railroads to implement positive train control (PTC<\/span>) by the end of 2015 isn\u2019t extended, they may just\u00a0shut down\u00a0BNSF<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

No trains will run. Because\u00a0BNSF<\/span>\u00a0apparently is so concerned about safety that the company would rather not operate if it can\u2019t do it in the safest manner\u00a0possible.<\/p>\n

Aside from those speed limits it is against. And the\u00a0modern braking systems<\/a>\u00a0it opposes. And its efforts to move to a\u00a0single person crew<\/a>\u00a0for oil\u00a0trains.<\/p>\n

The rail industry is great at publicity stunts. Earlier this year, Hunter Harrison,\u00a0CEO<\/span>\u00a0of Canadian Pacific Railway (CP<\/span>) also threatened to\u00a0get out of the oil-by-rail business<\/a>\u00a0citing safety risks to \u201cthe public.\u201d Meanwhile, as noted\u00a0on DeSmog,<\/a>\u00a0two days after that threat,\u00a0CP<\/span>\u2019s vice president of safety was in\u00a0D.C.<\/span>\u00a0lobbying against modern braking systems for oil\u00a0trains.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0BNSF<\/span>\u00a0has pulled off some good public relations stunts in its efforts to shape the narrative on oil-by-rail safety. In early 2014, after a string of oil-by-rail accidents,\u00a0BNSF<\/span>\u00a0announced that it would not wait for regulators and would be investing in 5,000 new rail tank cars that exceeded all existing safety\u00a0requirements.<\/p>\n

As documented\u00a0by DeSmog<\/a>, these cars never existed anywhere other than on a press\u00a0release.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oil-by-Rail Giant BNSF Threatens Shutdown Over Safety In June of 2014, a representative of oil-by-rail giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) attended a meeting with regulators where the American Association of Railroads (AAR) lobbied\u00a0against any speed limits for oil trains. One of the slides from that presentation \u2013 titled \u201cFar Reaching Economic Impacts\u201d (image below) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9506,9507,9504,9505,9510,9509,5317,9508,2466,3646],"class_list":["post-12914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-aar","tag-american-association-of-railroads","tag-bnsf","tag-burlington-northern-santa-fe","tag-canadian-pacific-railway","tag-cp","tag-desmog-blog","tag-modern-braking-system","tag-oil-by-rail","tag-oil-trains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12915,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12914\/revisions\/12915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}