Rail Safety

Toledo Blade (Ohio, April 22) -- The public-safety benefit from routing trains hauling crude oil or ethanol to avoid heavily populated areas could be offset by the higher risk of derailments on lesser-used tracks, U. of I. civil and environmental engineering professor Christopher Barkan said during a rail safety forum on Tuesday. Higher-density railroad lines have lower derailment rates, and “traffic density tends to go to populated areas,” Barkan, the executive director of the railroad engineering program at Illinois, told the safety board’s forum on crude-oil and ethanol transport during the first of two days of panel discussions at NTSB headquarters in Washington, D.C.