If you’re short on time, there’s a 2.5-minute video linked in the article that decently covers its points.
If you’re short on time, there’s a 2.5-minute video linked in the article that decently covers its points.
According to interviews with current and former rail workers, union officials, and independent experts, the Hyndman derailment and others like it are the all-too-predictable result of nearly all the major freight rail companies adopting a business approach called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). Proponents of PSR say it is about leveraging modern technology to improve efficiency. But those who work on the railroads every day say it is little more than a euphemism for draconian cost-cutting in order to achieve an arbitrary metric that pleases shareholders. That metric, called an "operating ratio," must get below 60 percent, which means only 60 percent of every dollar earned goes towards actually running the railroads. The rest can go towards executive pay and shareholder dividends.
Increasingly, railroads are choosing to boost profits and pay shareholders rather than invest in safety. In interviews with Motherboard, workers said that since their respective companies adopted PSR, they barely recognize the work that they do. All of their priorities have changed. What used to be about safety is now about cutting costs.
"Railroads haul the most dangerous gases in the world," one veteran worker told Motherboard. "I do think it's a matter of time. There's going to be a freight car that hasn't been inspected in 90,000 miles that comes off the track, as it goes off the track and slams into other cars, into a tank car, and either explodes or leaks poisonous gas out. It's going to take something like that, and a lot of deaths, and then all of a sudden everybody's going to care."
That’s mentioned in the article! A train carrying oil derailed in Quebec in 2013.
If one of these trains wrecked, the possible environmental catastrophe would be enormous
That’s mentioned in the article! A train carrying oil derailed in Quebec in 2013.
This is not a mere theoretical possibility. This exact set of circumstances happened not long ago just a few miles across the U.S. border. On July 6, 2013, a Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA) Railway train carrying two million gallons of liquid petroleum in 72 tank cars crashed into the downtown area of Lac-Megantic, Quebec. 47 people died, 2,000 people were evacuated, 40 buildings were destroyed, and millions of gallons of oil seeped into the soil and nearby river. Among the causes of this tragedy, according to Canada's Transportation Safety Board's then-chairperson Wendy Tadros, was "a shortline railway running its operations at the margins" and cutting corners on maintenance and training. Three lower-level employees, including the train's engineer, were charged with criminal negligence but ultimately acquitted.
If you’re short on time, there’s a 2.5-minute video linked in the article that decently covers its points.
That’s mentioned in the article! A train carrying oil derailed in Quebec in 2013.