Fellow railfans may not like this comment, but the safety and efficiency stats of pipelines far exceed that of rail transportation. After seeing this accident and last year's horrible Lac Megantic accident, you have to wonder.
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Nice shot of an otherwise terrible situation. It could have been a lot worse, and I'm glad nobody else what hurt.
And while I agree a fixed pipeline is more efficient, unless it is going to be a long term operation, the cost of a pipeline to be installed and maintained would probably far exceed the cost of rail operations, especially in the sensitive oil industry.
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Meant to say "was hurt", not "what hurt"
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Oil pipelines are safer but not cost effective, the problem isn't in the fact we're hauling oil by rail it's the infrastructure...if it's oil, paper, wood, or auto parts these derailments should be prevented either by safer operating practices or by R/D in the rail system itself. I know there is no easy solution but oil can be transported safely by rail. BTW-Even with pipelines oil still would have to be trucked unless you going to have pipelines to every end user of the product and truck accidents are way more probable. Just my two cents....Mike
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Gentlemen, the March 2014 issue of Trains features 14 pages outlining the pro's and con's of oil vs. pipeline. :)
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thought i would add, our drinking water is just fine. There were no explosions even though there were cars on fire. Didn't the report on the lac megantac (excuse my spelling) say that several natural gas cars caused the explosions?
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My money is on DOT-111 cars failing in the usual ways. The NTSB (NTSB/RAB-13/02, pg 9-10) has blamed many HAZMAT releases from derailments due to inadequate design of DOT-111 spec tank cars.
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