Lac-Mégantic relocating railway line
Five years after deadly rail disaster, train to route around town
MONTREAL— Five years after the deadly train derailment that scarred the town of Lac-Mégantic, Que., officials are set to begin laying new tracks that will reroute trains around the town and replace those that snake through its haunted core.
But when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives Friday to announce federal funding for the $133-million rail-relocation project many outsiders will be looking on with interest.
A number of cities and towns across the country are determined to follow Lac-Mégantic’s example and lead trains away from their communities.
Municipal leaders say they are compelled to act out of an existential fear that what occurred in eastern Quebec in July 2013 — when a runaway train carrying crude oil from the U.S. derailed and exploded, killing 47 people — might happen again in any place where residents coexist with a railway.
There are movements afoot in Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and other places that feel they are flirting with disaster.
“We’re not unique. The lines are getting older, the trains are getting bigger and the risks, I think, are increasing,” Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said.
The CN track in the popular tourist town cuts across roads at 14 different places. Trains carrying dangerous chemicals can stretch for kilometres. Speed limits cause traffic bottlenecks and block the path of emergency vehicles.
These problems and risks are exacerbated by the “regular” mechanical malfunctions, Diodati said.
“There’s only one solution,” he said. “It’s to get the dangerous cargo as far away from the people as possible and stop bisecting cities for the convenience of profits, because that’s what it is.”
A CN spokesperson declined to comment on specific cases of municipalities seeking to reroute rail tracks away from populated areas, saying only that “relocating rail lines from urban centres is a very complex and potentially very expensive undertaking.”
On top of the costs, railway industry advocates say access to customers is another reason why rail carriers prefer upgrades to existing infrastructure, such as elevated tracks, to relocation. The mayor of White Rock, B.C., Wayne Baldwin, is learning about the costs and headaches.
The Lac-Mégantic disaster prompted the coastal suburb to re-evaluate its own rail safety situation. It led to a realization that there were now 20 passenger and freight trains a day — up from four — passing on tracks that literally hug the waterline.
The freight trains carry a variety of chemical substances in addition to coal that include chlorine, hydrochloric acid, hydrous ammonia and various types of liquid fuels.
“The same Bakken crude (oil) that blew up in Lac-Mégantic has been going through here as well,” Baldwin said. “They’re like 110-car trains so they’re not small and we’ve had issues. Because of the windy, twisty route that they follow, some of the trains have uncoupled, which is apparently not a good thing.”
Part of the train route runs through an area that is prone to landslides, which have interrupted train service on several occasions, and is particularly vulnerable during the rainy spring season.
“It’s a matter of potential loss of life, quite frankly,” he said, adding that it has been a couple of decades since there was a landslide severe enough to derail a train.
“If it were a coal train that wouldn’t be good environmentally, but it wouldn’t cause any loss of life. But if it were a train carrying Bakken crude or chlorine or hydrous ammonia it would be huge.”
White Rock and neighbouring Surrey have inquired about relocating the rails, which are owned and operated by Texasbased BNSF Railway. Baldwin said the changes would result in a shorter, quicker route for passing trains, but they must first make their case in an economic feasibility study that would cost an estimated $900,000. The Manitoba government considered relocating rail lines that cut through Winnipeg, creating a literal and figurative divide in the city. The project was shut down in 2016 after a change of government.
In Saskatoon, where the government wants to relocate CP tracks to deal with the city’s traffic woes, the estimated cost is $589.7 million, according to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.
But Judy Harwood, a local reeve in a nearby town where residents would be impacted by the relocation told the paper a CP rail official told her that “CP has no designs on doing anything.” CP declined to comment to the paper.
In Niagara Falls, Mayor Diodati said that the conversation with CN officials has been cordial so far. He said company officials have confided: “We don’t want to be in the city any more than you don’t want us in the city.”
“They said, ‘show us a business plan that we can entertain’ since we are the ones pushing for this,” Diodati said.
Niagara Falls has hired consultants and advisers with experience in the rail industry to help them build the case to get the tracks out of town.
Eventually, though, the rail companies must respond.