(The following article by Sandra Tan and John F. Bonfatti was posted on the Buffalo News website on April 1.)
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Trains can be dangerous — especially here. Each year for the past decade, more train accidents have occurred in Erie County than any other county in the state.
And increasingly, those trains are carrying hazardous materials that could put whole neighborhoods at risk.
In the past five years, the Federal Railroad Administration has cataloged nearly 100 derailments, collisions or other accidents involving local trains.
More than a quarter of those trains were carrying hazardous materials. A Buffalo News analysis of the Railroad Administration data shows that 21 hazmat train cars in Erie County have been damaged in accidents over the last three years.
The potential for disaster looms large, since Erie County is the state’s largest pass-through point for national and international rail traffic.
“We are No. 2 in the entire nation for transportation of hazardous materials,” said Dean Messing, the county’s deputy commissioner of disaster preparedness.
In March, a CSX train from Buffalo derailed and exploded in a ball of fire while carrying liquid propane through Oneida in Central New York. The Thruway was closed, and neighborhoods were evacuated.
And in December, two trains derailed on back-to-back days as they were crossing overpasses in Cheektowaga and Buffalo, threatening vehicles on the street below.
Beginning in the 1850s and continuing well into the 20th century, Buffalo and Chicago vied for the title of the nation’s top rail hub.
With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, Buffalo’s rail freight traffic dipped, but it remains either in or near the top 10 rail centers in the country, according to Bob Kocsis, president of the Western New York Railway Historical Society.
“We’re still an important gateway to the Canadian railway system,” he said.
The greater Buffalo area also is a convenient place to store, repair, change and rejoin freight cars and engines. The county boasts more than 300 miles of track owned by six railways.
It’s home to four major rail yards: the Frontier Yard, which runs along Broadway at the Buffalo-Cheektowaga line; the Bison Yard, south of Broadway at Harlem Road; the SK Yard near Bailey Avenue; and the Buffalo Creek Yard, which runs from the Buffalo River to Blasdell.
Dangerous cargo
At the Frontier Yard, screeching train wheels mix with clanging bells and humming engines. At least eight sets of tracks split into twice as many side tracks, where rail cars wait to be moved.
Cars filled with construction debris, scrap metal, lumber and automobiles mingle in the yard with cars carrying potentially dangerous cargo such as liquefied petroleum gas and anhydrous ammonium. A street sign at one entrance reads: Safety Blvd.
CSX Transportation is the predominant rail operator in Western New York, operating 80 to 85 trains a day in the area. It is also responsible for up to 90 percent of all county accidents each year. Few grab public attention, however, because most occur in the region’s rail yards.
Several recent high-profile accidents involving CSX trains led the Federal Railroad Administration to conduct a fourday nationwide inspection blitz of CSX operations in January. State results released last week found 376 defects and recommended civil penalties for 13 violations.
“Despite general improvement by CSX, the railroad is still not doing enough to make safety a top priority,” said Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph H. Boardman.
A federal investigation conducted a few weeks earlier at a rail union’s request also pointed out numerous defects and seven violations for track conditions and signal deficiencies between Buffalo and Selkirk, near Albany.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, DN. Y., a frequent critic of CSX over the past two years, said the company has been “terribly deficient” in its safety efforts.
“The number of accidents and near-accidents is not a coincidence or bad luck. It’s due to CSX not putting what they should” into safety, Schumer said. “It’s pretty obvious they’ve made a calculated decision to scale back, and New Yorkers are paying the price.”
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said she was disturbed by the Railroad Administration findings and asked Boardman on Thursday to conduct a statewide investigation of all of New York’s railroad tracks, not just CSX’s.
Officials with CSX pledged to address the safety concerns, with additional precautions to be taken in New York.
“CSX has a steadily improving safety record,” said spokesman Robert Sullivan. “In 2006, CSX had a 24 percent reduction in train accidents. In 2007 so far, our reduction in train accidents has continued.”
He also stated that 99.997 percent of all hazardous materials shipped by rail arrive safely.
“It is 16 times safer to move hazardous materials by rail than by truck,” he said.
Spills not common
While the quantities of hazardous materials carried by rail have the potential to create catastrophic emergencies, hazmat spills aren’t common. Injuries resulting from such accidents are even rarer.
The last time a hazmat incident occurred locally was in March 2005, when a yard derailment led to the rupture of a tanker carrying 1,000 gallons of propylene tetramer, a highly flammable liquid used in oil additives and other products.
Among other more noteworthy train accidents in Erie County that occurred beyond rail yards just last year:
• On Dec. 10, a CSX train carrying vegetable cans derailed on an overpass in Cheektowaga, leaving one boxcar teetering on the edge of a bridge and sending a second toppling onto Union Road. The train operator was faulted for speeding.
• The next day, a motorist driving along Bailey Avenue in Buffalo narrowly escaped injury when a Canadian Pacific train derailed on an overhead bridge, sending a light standard crashing onto the street below. The accident was blamed on a shifted boxcar load. The Railroad Administration is investigating.
• On June 25, a westbound Amtrak train stopped 12 miles west of the Buffalo-Depew Station after an engine caught fire, causing $575,000 damage. Passengers were delayed four hours.
The accident data, which includes derailments, collisions and other train-track accidents, is separate from accidents that occur between trains and vehicles at highway-railroad crossings, which account for the vast majority of injuries.
There have been 16 highway- rail accidents in Erie County over the last five years, resulting in the deaths of nine people and injuries to five others.
Seeking the cause
Frank Wilner, a spokesman for the largest rail union in the country, the United Transportation Union, offered several reasons for the safety problems.
The first, he said, dates to 1999, when Norfolk Southern and CSX combined to purchase the assets of Conrail.
“Norfolk Southern was relatively cash rich; CSX was not, and they’ve been struggling severely ever since,” Wilner said.
Another factor was a move by the federal government several years ago to reduce the retirement age for many railroad workers from 62 to 60. The result, he said, was more than 10,000 new workers.
“We have a situation where it’s not uncommon that the engineer and the conductor — often the only two workers on the train — have only two years of experience between them,” Wilner said.
The union has tried to get more and better training for new hires, he said, but the railroads have not been receptive.
“These are the dice that the railroads are throwing to save money,” he said. “Whether it’s because CSX paid too much for Conrail or Wall Street pressure, we see them not spending enough on training, and we’re terribly afraid that we’ll see an accident that is so catastrophic that Congress imposes a solution that neither the railroads nor the unions want.”
The human factor cannot be overlooked. In the past few years, roughly half of all train accidents in Erie County have been attributed to mistakes by train operators.
Sullivan responded by saying that between 2001 and 2006, CSX conducted rail safety, hazmat and security training exercises for more than 800 emergency responders in the Buffalo area.
“That commitment to training continues today,” he said.
He also pointed out that in 2006, CSX replaced more than 18,500 cross ties and 28,000 feet of rail in the Buffalo area. This year, the company plans to replace 14,200 cross ties and more than 50,000 feet of rail.