12-22-2021, 11:39 AM
(12-21-2021, 04:40 PM)ac3r Wrote: The risk profile is absurd because they suggest a derailment could lead to a 9/11 style catastrophe. That's just...? Nonsense. You'd almost need to literally drive a freight train full of explosively reactive chemicals right into the buildings to bring them down.
Not sure how many people here are also train foamers like I am, but there's places in the US (and elsewhere) where they regularly run freight trains underneath tall buildings within urban areas. There's also countless street running trains in smaller towns that literally run huge trains full of things like intermodal units, hazardous chemicals to coal down the middle of city streets, next to homes and businesses that shut down roads on a regular basis (like this: https://youtu.be/x9StLsUtDkw) and serious disasters are extremely rare. Hell, GEXR runs trains down from Elmira full of chemical cars that go right next to offices, the university, student apartments, condos and uptown Waterloo so they can link up with CN trains.
I’m definitely a train … fan. My house is about 30m from the Waterloo Spur and I like it that way. Actually I wish the yard where City Hall is was still there and we saw more traffic. Anyway, I know from direct experience and observation that low-speed derailments are just not that dangerous. They’re a completely different animal from high speed ones. And even high speed ones can be anticipated and planned for.
Re: the street running and other situations: I’m pretty sure some of those are grandfathered. I doubt very much that a new installation would be permitted to be built where a main line goes right down the main street of a town. But it does illustrate that railways aren’t incompatible with other nearby uses. They don’t project a magical danger field around them; there are only the dangers associated with the physics of moving objects.