Eliminating Dangerous Oil Cars and Ensuring Community Safety Act

Eliminating Dangerous Oil Cars and Ensuring Community Safety Act

This bill replaces general requirements for design standards of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for pressurized tank cars with a retrofitting requirement for certain tank cars.

No rail carrier may ship on or after a specified deadline any hazardous material (hazmat) in any tank car under DOT-111 (Department of Transportation specification for a non-pressurized rail tank car) or non-jacketed Casualty Prevention Circular (CPC)-1232 (new rail tank car standards for transporting crude oil or ethanol), unless the tank car has been retrofitted in accordance with the DOT-117 specification design established by the May 2015 final rule for the safe transportation of flammable liquids by rail.

DOT shall establish and begin enforcing a national maximum volatility standard for the transport of crude oil by rail or by barge.

The bill sets a maximum speed for any train carrying more than 10 cars, including at least one hazmat-carrying DOT-111 or unjacketed CPC-1232 tank car that has not been so retrofitted, of 40 miles per hour while traveling through a county (or county equivalent) with a population density of greater than 20 persons per square mile.

In addition to certain other required track inspections, each rail carrier shall conduct, on main line routes it owns or for which it has been assigned maintenance responsibility, and over which 1 or more high-hazard flammable trains are operated:

• 2 additional inspections for internal defects of all rail in Classes 3, 4, and 5 for every 40,000,000 gross tons transported on such lines, or annually, whichever interval is shorter; and
• 4 track geometry inspections each calendar year.

Beginning on December 1, 2018, each rail line over which tank cars carrying crude oil or ethanol travel shall be equipped with a positive train control system.

Each rail carrier that transports crude oil, petroleum, or other hazardous products by rail shall develop comprehensive oil spill response plans.

The FRA shall develop a program to audit such response plans to ensure that they include comprehensive procedures for:

• preventing or mitigating a substantial threat of a worst-case discharge of such products resulting from a rail accident or incident, and
• responding to and cleaning up such a discharge.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration shall revise specified spill response planning thresholds to require comprehensive response plans to effectively provide for a carrier's ability to respond to worst-case discharges resulting from accidents involving unit trains or blocks of tank cars transporting oil and petroleum products.

Each rail carrier shall:

• establish a system through which employees may anonymously report circumstances or incidents that endanger the safety of railroad operations, and
• provide specified information to the FRA and the county emergency management contact (or equivalent) immediately after the derailment of any high hazard flammable train the carrier operates.