Opinion: Baltimore tunnel derailment points to unfinished business

In-Channel Work Press Release (The following column by Michael Dresser appeared on The Baltimore Sun Website on August 9, 2010.) Baltimore received a relatively gentle reminder last week of some unfinished business that it can ill afford to ignore. A CSX Transportation freight train derailed last Thursday in the Howard Street tunnel, the scene of the nearly disastrous July 18, 2001, derailment and fire that paralyzed much of downtown for a week. Thirteen cars of a 79-car train left the tracks - 11 of them in the tunnel under Howard Street and two outside the portal at Mount Royal Avenue.

Baltimore got lucky when
none of the hazardous materials being hauled by the train escaped, but traffic
on the line was not restored until late Friday. Freight traffic up and down the
East Coast was disrupted.

Last week’s mishap came
nowhere close to wreaking the damage the 2001 incident did, but it was a
reminder that the nearly 120-year-old tunnel still runs through the heart of Baltimore
carrying 20-25 trains a day – many of them carrying hazardous cargo through the
East Coast’s most notorious freight rail bottleneck.

Readers who were not in
Baltimore in 2001 might not realize how big a deal the derailment was at the
time, but people who were here will never forget it. Entire blocks were
evacuated and three Orioles games were called off because of the proximity of
Camden Yards to the tunnel. Water mains and power cables were broken. Passenger
train traffic and light rail service were interrupted. Freight trains had to be
diverted onto circuitous routes that took them as far west as Cleveland. For a
week, Baltimore was the focus of national coverage.

Then, less than two months
later, 9-11 effectively banished the tunnel fire from the national
consciousness. There’s no way a near-disaster can compete with the real thing. The
tunnel is still there, however, and it’s not much closer to being replaced than
the day the fire was declared to have been extinguished. As long as it is still
in use, Baltimore will never be entirely safe from a repeat of the 2001
derailment and fire – or worse. Even though the damages from that incident ran
into tens of millions of dollars, the release of toxic materials was largely
contained in the tunnel. Nobody died. That was nothing short of miraculous.

At the time, security
officials and transportation experts recognized the incident as a wake-up call
telling us that the old tunnel needed to be retired. Besides the inherent
hazard of running dangerous chemicals through a major population center, there
are compelling economic reasons to break the bottleneck. Most importantly, the
tunnel can’t handle double-stacked trains, which have become standard in the
freight rail industry.

The need for a bypass is
clear. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Transportation declared it a national
goal to "remove all through freight service from the Howard Street
Tunnel." Its report, underfunded after the freight rail industry declined
to contribute money, identified the most promising alternative: what it called the
Great Circle Freight Tunnel, looping under West Baltimore and connecting to
existing tracks north of Penn Station.

The report found no good
alternative to full replacement of the tunnel. "Further incremental repairs
to existing facilities, other than for purposes of safety and operational
continuity, will not address any of the inherent geometric problems that plague
the transit of Baltimore by rail," it said.

But five years after that
report was issued, progress is painfully slow. A second study has been under
way since 2008 – using $3.75 million in federal and Maryland money and nothing
from the railroads. Bob Kulat, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad
Administration, said a draft has been completed and its release is expected
this fall.

It’s not hard to anticipate
some of the conclusions. The report will remind us that replacement of the
tunnel is a matter of national, not local, significance. And it will put the
price tag of bypassing the bottleneck in the billions of dollars.

Maryland’s stake in the
outcome is especially urgent. Mark Montgomery, chief executive of Seagirt
Marine Terminal operator Ports America, said the lack of double-stacking
capacity in the tunnel has denied steamship lines the opportunity to move
discretionary rail cargo though Baltimore – forcing them to use other ports.

CSXT, for its part, seems
nonchalant. The most spokesman Bob Sullivan would say about it was: "It’s
still an important part of our north-south route and we’re still able to
provide very good service to our customers."

Call me cynical but that
sounds to me more like a bargaining position than a reflection of reality. CSXT
has as much to lose as anybody – except perhaps the citizens of Baltimore –
from a reprise of 2001. Every day, its trains have to crawl along the tunnel’s
single track. But showing any sense of urgency goes against its interest in
getting government to pick up most of the tab.

It would be naïve to
believe a new tunnel should already be in place. Even under the best of
circumstances, its replacement would be a decades-long effort. But Marylanders
have every reason to keep a spotlight on this project. It’s Baltimore’s downtown
and the lives of its first responders that are at risk as long as dangerous
chemicals are moving through that decrepit old cave.