Thinking Again

"TransCanada (owner of Keystone XL) and the other pipeline proponents are going to try to use this (accident) to boost their case but it's a real double-edged sword for them. Pipelines and rail both have safety issues and both can be a hell of a lot safer than they are today."
Keith Steward, Greenpeace, Toronto

The Lac Megantic, Quebec train derailment with its dreadful toll of lives lost and catastrophic destruction of the central nerve section of an old railroad town has had wide-ranging consequences. First, the dazed, disbelieving residents of a small town of almost six thousand residents who have lost about 1% of their population through a horrible misadventure; everyone is grieving the loss of someone particular as well as their collective bereavement.

Work continues at the crash site of the train derailment and fire Tuesday, July 16, 2013 in Lac-Mégantic, Que.
(Ryan Remiorz/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Secondly, rail companies are facing a backlash from other small towns which have been built around rail tracks which at one time were necessary lifelines for the town's prosperity, employing townspeople, and serving their very direct interests in conveying them and their industrial products elsewhere within the growing dominion of Canada. Their frequency and loads have increased and they now carry potentially dangerous cargo.

Not least, the argument over whether or not trains and their increasing importance in the carriage of transporting raw materials, including chemicals and petroleum products, traversing the heart of towns and cities toward their destination represents a threat everyone should be consumed with concern about. The alternatives are trucking, proven to be an even more worrisome mode of transport, and of course, pipelines, whose safety record, though of ongoing concern, is better than the other two.

At the very least, there is growing momentum in the wake of the cataclysmic crash at Lac Megantic to have train tracks removed from their original positions crossing into towns, to bypass them. Understandably, railway companies are none too thrilled at this proposal, because of its hefty cost. But the enormous impact on towns from the increase in crude oil shipments by rail alone is incalculable in its population-disturbance value.

And, infused with a proprietary sense of their own inimitable value to industry, railroads lay claim to their services being more flexible, safer and even less expensive than pipelines. In 2008, 9,500 carloads -- according to the American Association of Railways which monitors Canadian and U.S. rail traffic -- were shipped. Crude oil shipment last year was in excess of 230,000 carloads, and the figures will only increase.

Train accidents occurring in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec have endangered lives while contaminating the natural environment, sparking the debate over preferential shipping methods for a commodity whose use is geared to rise, necessitating the ongoing and reliable use of some mode of transport. Pipeline companies and railroads each claim a superior safety record. TransCanada insists rail is ten times more accident-prone than pipelines, and creates far more pollution.

While the Association of American Railroads, tracking shipments on both sides of the border claims the exact contrary; rail, accordingly is ten times safer, if their claims are to be taken at face value. Their claim is that pipelines spill ten times the percentage of oil over railroads. But not according to a hazardous material transportation expert and former administrator of the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Brigham McCown, the man whose title that is says "rail cannot come close to matching the safety record of pipelines." U.S. federal government stats indicate pipelines to be sixteen times safer than rail and 189 times safer than commercial motor vehicles shipping crude oil in comparing freight tons shipped. Pipelines guarantee 451 times safer transport on a per-kilometre basis, he insists.

Keystone XL would have a capacity to ship 830,000 barrels a day from Alberta to Texas. Rail companies, according to Keith Steward of Greenpeace, would have to increase shipments 15-fold were Keystone not to be built. Without U.S. administration approval for Keystone XL, a huge increase in railway infrastructure and cars would have to be implemented.

"You would have to build new rail lines; you would have to build whole new rail companies to carry this. And if you think you can do that without opposition after what has happened in Quebec, you need to think again", he admonished.