The federal government on Friday issued an emergency order imposing a 40 mph speed limit on trains that transport large amounts of flammable crude oil through highly populated areas like Chicago.
Previously, railroads had agreed to follow a voluntary speed limit, and in heavily congested areas like Chicago, trains often travel much slower. The directive to slow down was among several steps to improve safety announced by the Department of Transportation.
The Federal Railroad Administration, meanwhile, announced that a preliminary investigation shows that a broken tank car wheel may have caused the fiery derailment of a crude oil train March 5 near Galena, Ill. It was the first official word on the cause of the incident involving a 103-car BNSF Railway train loaded with volatile Bakken crude oil.
The train was headed from North Dakota to a refinery in Philadelphia, according to the FRA. Although the BNSF has not confirmed the route, rail industry experts say the train was almost certainly due to pass through Chicago, the nation’s busiest rail hub.
The latest federal data, reported April 4 by the Tribune, shows some 437,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil being shipped daily from North Dakota to East Coast refineries. That is equivalent to as many as 42 mile-long tank car “unit trains” passing through Chicago and the suburbs each week.
Concerns about the Bakken crude oil shipments have mounted in Chicago and across the U.S. after a series of fiery oil train explosions in the U.S. and Canada in recent years, including one in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.
So far this year there have been four oil train derailments resulting in huge fireballs — two in the U.S. and two in Canada. All involved newer tank cars known as DOT CPC-1232 cars.
No one was injured in the derailment near Galena, but officials said it was fortunate that the incident occurred in a sparsely populated spot rather than in the Chicago area.
In citing the Galena derailment, the FRA also issued an advisory to railroads to strengthen its procedures for checking for flaws in train wheels that can cause a crash.
Some members of Congress have been critical of the Obama administration for a delay in announcing new more comprehensive regulations concerning stronger tank cars and oil train safety. Those rules are not expected until May.
The FRA also wants inspectors with the highest qualifications to conduct brake and mechanical inspections before trains carrying oil and other hazardous liquids depart.
Railroads were also asked to put a system in place to quickly provide investigators with key information on trains and their contents in the event of an accident.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said Friday the FRA’s actions were “steps in the right direction, but they are not enough. We have to move to a new generation of tank cars that bring a new generation of safety.”
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