Secretary Anthony Foxx

Press Conference:
DOT Announces Final Rule to Strengthen Safe Transportation of Flammable Liquids by Rail

Washington, DC • May 1, 2015

Hello, everyone – and thank you for joining us. I am honored to stand here today with Canada’s Minister of Transport, Lisa Raitt. We also are joined today by the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer; Tim Butters, Acting Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administrator; and Sarah Feinberg, Acting Federal Railroad Administrator.

My first week in this office, a train carrying crude oil derailed in Quebec. The accident killed 47 people, and it devastated the town of Lac-Megantic.

There were many lessons learned that day. But one was that, when it comes to shipping crude, there is no such thing as an American fleet, or a Canadian fleet. There is only one fleet binding us together.

We joined you in those tragic days following Lac-Megantic, and we join you today in putting in place standards to significantly improve the transport of flammable liquids, including crude and ethanol, by rail.

Our Department’s rule is a package of new interdependent regulations that all come together to improve safety.

They apply to what our rule defines as high-hazard flammable trains. They also build on the more than two-dozen actions we have already taken to enhance the safe transport of crude.

This includes issuing emergency orders and safety advisories as well as increasing our inspections and outreach efforts.

No one element of our rule can be taken in isolation. Our goal, and what we accomplished, was to create a comprehensive approach to safety that will prevent accidents from happening, mitigate the damage if they do, and support emergency response.   

The United States is extracting more oil than ever before. The growth in crude production, in 2014, was the most since recordkeeping began more than a century ago.

Not that long ago, most of this new oil simply wasn’t available to us. Much of it is coming out of shale formations in places like North Dakota and Texas. And as production has skyrocketed in these new oil fields, so has the growth in rail carloads of crude. They have increased a staggering 4,000 percent since just 2008.

Last year our nation’s rail system transported half-a-million carloads of crude. And the truth is, 99.9 percent of these shipments reached their destination safely.

The accidents involving crude and ethanol that have occurred, though, have shown us that 99.9 percent isn’t good enough. We have to strive for perfection.

Much attention has been focused on the tank car standard. I will get to that in a second.

But let me stress that this a comprehensive rule, and I want to talk about one element of it that is really important to us. 

One critical step we are taking is requiring that unit trains that are traveling faster than 30 MPH use enhanced – or ECP – braking systems.

These braking systems offer a much higher level of safety than current systems.

In Casselton, North Dakota, train operators saw there was a derailed grain car on the track ahead of them. They applied the emergency brakes, but the train was unable to stop in time to avoid a collision with the grain car.

ECP brakes can reduce how long it takes a train to stop. They can prevent cars from slamming into each other. They can decrease the number of cars that derail. They can greatly reduce the probability that tank cars will puncture.

And this is proven technology. BNSF runs ECP-equipped coal trains between the West and Southeast – a roughly 3,000-mile roundtrip. Norfolk Southern operates trains with ECP brakes on a similar route, and on routes in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The bottom line is: ECP brakes, in this context of transporting flammable liquids, can be the difference between a contained fire and a catastrophe. They’re an essential part of our mitigation efforts to protect communities.

We are putting a new standard in place for building tank cars. They’ll be required to have thicker, stronger shells and other safety features. Existing tank cars used on high-hazard flammable trains will have to either be retrofitted to meet the new standards we’ve set, or they’ll need to be phased out of service. Canada is taking the exact same steps.

I want to share with you a few more new features of our comprehensive approach. First, our rule will require railroads to determine the safest routes to move these products and to have a point of contact for sharing information with communities.

We also are setting a speed limit for all high-hazard flammable trains. And in high-threat urban areas, we’re lowering that maximum allowable speed to 40 MPH until all cars on the train meet the higher standard. Our Department has also established new standards for how flammable liquids are tested and sampled prior to being shipped.

So, as I said, this rule is comprehensive. It significantly improves current regulations and requirements. It will make transporting flammable materials by rail safer than it is today.

But our work does not end here. We will continue looking for ways we can do more to protect citizens, to protect communities, and to protect our environment.

Our department is not the only agency in the U.S. government that has been focused on this.

We have collaborated with DOE, DHS, FEMA, EPA, and the Department of Commerce on this issue. And enhancing the safety of transporting flammable liquids on our rails will be even more of an inter-agency focus as we move forward.

Before I turn it over to Transport Minister Raitt, I want to thank our Federal Railroad Administration, our Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, and our colleagues at the White House.

There are a lot of people in government who have worked really hard on this rule, and we never could have completed it without their efforts.

Thanks, everybody.