(The following article by Daniel Machalaba was posted on the Wall Street Journal website on September 18.)
NEW YORK — In January 2005, a Norfolk Southern Corp. freight train passing through Graniteville, S.C., crashed into another train parked on a railroad spur, piercing a tanker car filled with chlorine. The poisonous yellow-green cloud that quickly spread over nearby houses and a fabric mill killed nine people and injured dozens. Toxic chemicals released by a spill in Arkansas last year killed one person, and train crashes in North Dakota and Texas in 2002 and 2004 killed another four people and hurt 52 others.
The deadly crashes have been a wake-up call to railroad officials, who have long insisted that tank cars throughout the U.S. were durable enough to ride the rails. In July a majority of a committee of railroads, tank-car builders, chemical makers and car-leasing companies voted to toughen design requirements for tank cars carrying some of the most hazardous materials. Final standards, expected to be issued as soon as this month, would require some steel cars to be 25% thicker than current models and extra padding for valves and tank-car ends.
On Parallel Tracks
Meanwhile, a parallel effort that includes Union Pacific Corp. and Dow Chemical Co. is focusing on a redesign that could involve coating some rail cars with bomb-resistant materials used in tanks and armored personnel carriers.
But the redesigns are fiercely opposed by some chemical companies, which see little more than a push to shift expenses and liability away from railroads.
Railroad operators say the moves, marking the most substantial redesign of tank cars in more than 30 years, are motivated by the need to improve safety and reduce the number of freight-train crashes in which chemical spills cost millions to clean up, boost insurance costs and can cause legal and public-relations nightmares.
Norfolk Southern “assumes an enormous risk” every time it transports a carload of highly hazardous materials, Charles W, Moorman, president and chief executive, told a House subcommittee in June. The Norfolk, Va., company last year took a pretax charge of $41 million to cover estimated costs of the Graniteville accident not covered by insurance settlements.
Blocking Shipments
“There is a growing realization” that the current chlorine tank car “could be improved,” adds Christopher P.L. Barkan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Strengthening tank cars could substantially reduce the likelihood of a spill in a railroad accident, he says.
Hardening or replacing about 12,000 tank cars hauling chlorine or anhydrous ammonia (a toxic gas used in crop fertilizers) also could help railroads foil efforts to block the movement of hazardous shipments through major cities such as Washington. Stronger tank cars also are needed because trains are moving at higher speeds and carrying heavier loads, according to industry officials.
The thicker, heavier cars will cost about $135,000 each, up from about $100,000 now. The overhaul could cost companies that lease or own tank cars for carrying chlorine as much as $800 million over the next decade.
“The tank cars have not failed going down the track on their own,” says Frank Reiner, vice president of transportation and emergency preparedness at the Chlorine Institute Inc. The Arlington, Va., trade group questions whether the proposed cars are significantly safer than cars currently in use and says railroads need to improve track maintenance and operations.
Human Error
William S. Schoonover, staff director of the Federal Railroad Administration’s hazardous-materials division, said in written comments to the Association of American Railroads tank-car committee that the deadly chemical spills since 2002 weren’t caused by tank failure or weakness. Human errors were to blame in South Carolina and Texas, while the North Dakota crash was linked to track defects.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the tank car punctured in Graniteville, S.C., was “among the strongest tank cars in service.” Federal officials also claim that other toxic materials hauled by trains “have greater risk potential” than chlorine and ammonia.
The criticism isn’t likely to stop the redesign overhaul, since railroads own the tracks and generally have the final say over what types of cars operate on their rail lines. “When you have this many fatal accidents this close together, you need to take some action,” says Bob Fronczak, assistant vice president of environment at the Association of American Railroads, a freight-railroad trade group.