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185  Dangerous Rail Shipments
     Burden Innocent Bystander
     The Washington Post,  December 20, 1969

     "The modern industrial economy is dependent upon hazardous 
materials that are shipped throughout the country," said the task force
report on rail safety to the Secretary of Transportation.  Public 
interest was focused on the problem by the Army's abortive plan to 
ship outdated war gas across the country for dumping in the oceans.

     The chaotic state of the regulations supposed to cover these 
risks is shown by our ignorance of the actual number and cost of rail
accidents involving shipments of explosives, solvents and toxic 
chemicals, for we have no central reporting system.  In hearings before
a house subcommittee, Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.) remarked that "in the
last five years, over 50 cities and towns have had to be evacuated as
a result of accidents involving hazardous materials."  And William C.
Jennings, director of the Office of Hazardous Materials in the
Department of Transportation, guesstimated the annual cost of such
accidents to be at least $500 million.

     It is not always obvious in advance that a shipment containing
different, incompatible materials poses an extraordinary hazard.  
According to Rep. John C. Culver (D-Iowa), when a tank car of vinyl
chloride burned at Glendora, Miss., "no one even suspected that there
was a danger of phosgene gas until a chemistry professor at the 
University of Mississippi coincidentally heard about the accident."

     A patchwork of regulations covers the packing and labeling of
many hazardous materials.  More serious problems relate to the
deteriorated and uneven quality of roadbeds, rolling stock and other
equipment and ever-increasing cross traffic at unprotected grade 
crossings.  The need for uniform federal regulations is beyond dispute 
if we are to maintain the present efficient system of pooling boxcars,
and Congress will surely soon empower the Department of Transportation
to set standards for every aspect of railroad safety.

     The problem will then be how well the law is implemented, 
especially if the federal system (as the administration bill would have
it) pre-empts local regulation which may be more stringent.  Apart
from the historic, and sometimes constructive, tradition of 
cooperation between a regulatory agency and its licensees Congress has 
rarely been lavish in showering such agencies with the resources 
needed to do their jobs rigorously, especially when this might 
conflict with the economic interests of local constituents.

     None of the technical discussions on these bills has, moreover, 
touched on the fundamental point that the very  occurrence of 
accidents shows how a hazardous shipment exploits the environment in a
broad swath along railroad rights-of-way.  The private citizen, an
innocent bystander, unknowingly and unwillingly shares the risks of
such shipments.

     The present law governing civil damages protects the carrier, 
which has no liability except for provable negligence. A simple way
to assure effective self-regulation by the carriers would be to make
them pay the costs of accidents involving materials identified as 
hazardous, on the assumption that the accident itself was proof of the 
inadequacy of their precautions.

     A fully implemented safety system will increase the cost of
transportation.  But it is better to have it appear baldly on freight
bills than scattered as unrecoverable damages inflicted on the lives
and property of citizens.
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