"there will have to be a significant loss of life"From......https://globalnews.ca/news/7681998/canada-us-pipeline-oil-by-rail/
It would take an oil-by-rail calamity of a scale comparable to the 2013 Lac-Megantic disaster in Quebec before Americans wake up to the dangers, U.S. rail safety analysts say.
“There’s a bullet whizzing past our head,” said Eric de Place, an energy policy expert and director at the Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank focused on sustainability issues in the U.S. Pacific Northwest."
“The only thing I can imagine is that there will have to be a significant loss of life before we get the regulatory attention that the industry deserves, in my opinion, and that’s a tragedy that’s just waiting to unfold,” de Place said."
“The thing about rail car safety is there’s a trade-off between the weight of the car and how much product you can carry — there’s a conflict between safety and profit,” he said.
“If you put on more steel to protect from puncture, that means you have to put in less product.”
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan has vowed to defend Line 5, which he called a vital source of energy and jobs in Michigan and Ohio, as well as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec.
That energy is going to get to market by any means available, all of them less reliable “and with regard to oil by rail ? far less safe” than pipelines, O’Regan told a House of Commons committee Thursday.