Frequency of freight derailment in the NW mapped

[CHamilton]

Northwest Region Averaging Nine Freight Train Derailments Per Month

After a string of high profile derailments and explosions, communities across North America are rightly concerned about the risks of an oil train explosion. Railroad workers generally do an excellent job of moving cargo through cities without incident. Yet accidents do occasionally happen; and in an era when a derailment might lead to a deadly explosion in an urban area, it’s worth understanding the risks more thoroughly.

So to get a better sense of the threat to local areas in the Northwest, we investigated accidents reports submitted to the US Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to map every derailment in the Northwest from June 2011 (when regulators began requiring railroads to report the exact location of mishaps) through December 2013.

Our map shows 81 derailments in the first half of 2011 (yellow); 95 in 2012 (orange); and 100 in 2013 (red). You can zoom in, scan, and click on the markers to find some basic information about each of the derailments.

In all, we mapped 276 reported derailments in the region shown above. Over the 31 month period we tracked, the region saw an average of 8.9 derailments of freight trains each month—roughly one every three-and-a-half days.

Many of these derailments were relatively low-stakes affairs in switching yards or at slow speeds, but others were high profile and worrisome. For example, in the summer of 2012, a coal train derailed near the eastern Washington town of Mesa, spilling 31 carloads of coal. And in December 2013, an oil train derailed and exploded into a towering inferno near Casselton, North Dakota.

Interactive maps in the original article.

 

[oregon pioneer]

Scary. Moral of the story (for me)? Take trains, but don't hang around (or live) too near the tracks.

 

[MetraUPWest]

Interesting article. Thanks Charlie!

The freight railroads are all reaping in record profits, yet they seem to cut down on maintenence more and more. Traffic levels seem to be on the rise again, yet they aren't really investing into their infrastructure as much as they should be. That's a deadly combination if you ask me.