New rules slow ‘higher-risk’ trains through cities

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This article was published 02/04/2020 (1482 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Transport Minister Marc Garneau is entrenching lower speed limits for trains hauling large amounts of crude oil through Winnipeg, but relaxing the criteria for trains subject to those stricter rules.

A Friday directive lowers the metro-area limit to 48 km/h for so-called “higher-risk key trains,” defined as those carrying at least 20 oil- or liquefied gas-bearing tank cars in a row, or 35 or more tank cars dispersed throughout.

In colder months — from Nov. 15 to March 15 — the top speed is further reduced to 40 km/h, well below the older limit of 64 km/h for trains carrying substantial quantities of dangerous goods.

However, those new rules exclude trains carrying other dangerous goods like fertilizer, a revision from Garneau’s short-term order issued in mid-February.

Those trains are now capped at 56 km/h in metropolitan areas.

Such trains could not move faster than 64 km/h in cities before a pair of derailments in the same Saskatchewan municipality less than two months apart.

Meanwhile, the directive raises the speed limit for trains carrying any dangerous goods in non-metropolitan areas back to 80 km/h, except in cold temperatures, after Ottawa initially halved that limit on Feb. 6.

That date was the latest derailment in Saskatchewan, which involved a spill of 1.6 million litres of crude oil, sparking a massive fire.

A year prior, an oil train derailed in St-Lazare, Manitoba in February 2019, spilling 820,000 litres of crude.

In two other Friday directives, Garneau beefed up protocols for railways to inspect the joints that link rails to bridges and crossing, as well as reducing speed on rails that haven’t yet been ultrasonically inspected.

It’s unclear if those issues contributed to the three Prairie oil-train derailments, all of which remain under investigation by the Transportation Safety Board.

Oil has been moving through Winnipeg at an unprecedented pace in the past two years, due to delays in pipeline construction.

With files from The Canadian Press

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca