Editorial: Divert trains carrying hazmat

(The following editorial appeared in the Fort Worth, Texas, Star Telegram.) America's railroads have a good track record when it comes to hauling toxic inhalants. Accidents are extremely rare even though volume is extremely high -- trains hauled 72,000 tank cars of such dangerous cargo in 2008.

One source told
Star-Telegram reporter Gordon Dickson for a story published Friday that about
1,300 chlorine-filled tank cars a week go though Union Pacific’s Davidson Yard
south and southwest of downtown Fort Worth. Even at that pace, the yard’s
safety record with those shipments is strong.

Tarrant County is at the
intersection of major rail corridors. Union Pacific’s tracks run east-west
through the heart of the county and Fort Worth. Running north-south through
that same heart are the lines of Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway, also with a
good safety record on tank cars loaded with toxic inhalants.

Still, good safety records
don’t mean mishaps can’t occur, and even one accident could be catastrophic in
such a congested urban area. Add the threat of a terrorist attack involving one
of those rail cars and there is reason to worry. Dickson cited a Homeland
Security report that said a cloud of chlorine gas could kill up to 17,500
people and injure 100,000 others within miles.

Why take the chance —
especially when an alternative is available and has even been approved by
voters?

In 2005, Texans approved a
constitutional amendment creating the Rail Relocation and Improvement Fund and
authorizing grants to help finance the relocation, rehabilitation and expansion
of rail facilities. The vote wasn’t even close, 53.8 percent to 46.2 percent.
In Tarrant County, the measure passed by 59.5 percent to 40.5 percent.

The fund would help pay to
move the county’s busiest rail lines outside major population areas. Urban
lines would still be here for delivery of goods (and for use by commuter
trains), but a lot of traffic could be routed around the city.

Since 2007, federal law has
required railroads to move hazardous cargo around, rather than through, major
U.S. cities. No such bypass is available in Tarrant County, although it could
be. Why hasn’t it happened? Money, of course. Such a project would cost
millions if not billions.

Although the Rail
Relocation and Improvement Fund exists, so far it’s still an empty shell. In a
maddening twist, it could have money available for needed projects but doesn’t.

State Sen. Wendy Davis of
Fort Worth and Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon and Sen. Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio
pointed out in a Sunday Star-Telegram commentary that the Legislature last year
budgeted $182 million for the fund. But the Texas Department of Transportation
has laid claim to that money for highways, because it says the wording of the
appropriation allows it to do so.

Davis, Jones McClendon and
Wentworth want the Transportation Department to release the money for rail
projects.

Texas Attorney General Greg
Abbott has been asked to settle the dispute. Let’s hope he does so soon.

Tarrant County’s history
was shaped by railroads, and they’ll be an essential and vibrant part of the
urban area’s economic life for the foreseeable future. But that does not mean
all freight traffic must move through the area’s most densely populated and
busiest parts. Finding another way was the reason the Rail Relocation and
Improvement Fund was created.

This is not a time for
profligate spending by any level of government, but it is still a time for planning
things that clearly will be needed. Money from the fund could and should be
used to begin planning major freight rail routes around Tarrant County cities.