Railway safety regulations receive renewed attention after Colorado train derailment
BNSF Railway began cleanup Monday night of a freight train derailment just north of Pueblo that left a 60-year-old Compton, California truck driver dead. The Denver-based BNSF owns and operated the train.
The driver was in a truck that was crushed when 30 cars of a 124-car coal train derailed late Sunday afternoon, taking down part of a bridge over Interstate 25. It is likely to take days to reopen the highway, which remained closed Monday night.
The incident left rail cars on the highway as well as tons of coal.
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"That many rail cars and coal all over the road it's a pretty big deal," said the Colorado Department of Transportation's Amber Shipley.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators were on site Monday to attempt to establish what went wrong. Early indications appear to indicate the train derailed before the bridge came down. The bridge over the highway is 65 years old. BNSF released a scant statement on the crash, including noting that no crew members were hurt and that the cause is under investigation.
"It's a tragedy," said Nick Hinrichsen, a state senator in Pueblo County, whose district includes the area of the derailment. "Regardless of what specifically happened here there is a trend nationwide of increasing derailments and increasing severity."
The state of Colorado has been looking at creating additional regulations to enhance safety on its rail lines.
At least a dozen states around the country have initiated efforts to tighten regulations after Congress, amid pressure against changes by railroads, has declined to pass any changes, which have been advocated by the Federal Railroad Administration after a major derailment in February of this year in East Palestine, Ohio.
That derailment containing hazardous chemicals was allowed to burn for days, bringing anger from local residents over what some viewed as lax regulation. Among the states to create regulatory change is Kansas, which now requires two operators on trains.
"Train derailments have become somewhat more frequent and there's been somewhat of an increase in the severity of the accidents when they do derail," said Hinrichsen.
The Colorado Senate's Transportation Legislative Review Committee has voted to approve legislation for the upcoming legislative session that will include several safety requirements in Colorado. Those include limits on train length to 8,500 feet. Hirichsen notes some now exceed 2 miles in length.
The legislation under consideration would also include the requirement of bearing heat sensors that could indicate a problem. The data, says Hinrichsen, would go not only to command centers possibly hundreds of thousands of miles away, but to the train's engineers.
Colorado would also look at limiting the amount of time trains could be parked at highway crossings. Emergency vehicles have had to go around some trains parked for extended periods. Among additional concerns for Colorado lawmakers is the potential of the Uinta Basin Railway Project which is proposed to connect oil drilling sites in Utah with rail networks that would allow the shipment of crude oil through track along the Colorado River.
That project has been put on hold by a federal judge after the idea was approved by the federal Surface Transportation Board.
"That's going to be a significant amount of hazardous materials," said Hinrichsen. "The safety statistics are blinking red," he said. "So it's important that we get this right now. because the potential for health impacts, for ecological impacts for community-wide damage, is a lot more significant."
