Lakeville-Middleboro Commuter Rail: Stop exploding trains

If you've taken the Lakeville-Middleboro Commuter Rail, you've seen the tank cars parked on the rail sidings, near residential neighborhoods.

Please join with others and send an email of support to DOT to improve the safety of the RAIL CARS!

Thanks for all you do!

The information below is from Sierra Club:

Deadly Train Derailment in Moscow Traps Passengers

Are you one of the 25 million Americans living in the blast zone of explosive oil trains?¹

You've probably heard about many of the recent fiery oil train accidents, but most people have no idea that huge shipments of volatile crude oil are rolling through their communities -- near their homes, their schools and the places they work -- with increasing frequency.

Lynchburg, Virginia

After a record-breaking year of oil train derailments, spills and explosions, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has called these dangerous oil trains an "imminent hazard" to the public.²

North Dakota

That's why they've proposed new standards to make these shipments safer.
But oil and rail companies don't want to pay more to make oil trains safer. Take a moment to make sure the DOT is listening to the people, not Big Oil, by urging them to protect your community from explosive oil trains!

Experts have known about these safety hazards for years. Recently, former head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Deborah Hersman warned "We are very clear that this issue needs to be acted on very quickly. There is a very high risk here that hasn't been addressed. ... They aren't moving fast enough. We don't need a higher body count before they move forward."³

It took more than a year since the tragic Lac-Mégantic disaster that killed 47 for the Department of Transportation to propose these new protections. Yet some of the most important measures -- like getting the notoriously unsafe DOT-111 tankers off the rails -- won't even go into effect until 2020! We can't wait that long to protect our communities from exploding oil trains -- not when the number of accidents is soaring around the country.

Take action now to urge the Department of Transportation to do more to improve oil train safety NOW -- not six years from now.

The danger is only going to grow as Big Oil tries to pack more and more volatile crude oil onto our railways. The only way to limit the reckless expansion of oil trains and to improve rail safety is to use people power to demand change.

Oil spill near La Salle, Colorado

Thank you for protecting our communities,

Kate Colarulli
Sierra Club Beyond Oil Associate Campaign Director

P.S. After you take action, be sure to forward this alert to your friends and colleagues! You can also help spread the word on your social networks with the links below:

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[1] Spencer Chumbley, Do You Live In A "Bomb Train" Blast Zone?, Vice News, July 28, 2014
[2] Jad Mouawad, U.S. Issues Safety Alert for Oil Trains, The New York Times, May 7, 2014
[3] Joan Lowy, Transportation Safety Head Calls For End To 'Tombstone Mentality', Huffington Post, April 23, 2014


Sierra Club | 85 2nd St San Francisco, CA 94105

Take action to protect your community from exploding oil trains

Trains carrying dangerous, highly explosive fuels travel through countless communities every day. You may be one of the 25 million Americans living in the blast zone of explosive oil trains without even knowing it.

After a record-breaking year of oil train derailments, spills and explosions, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has called these dangerous oil trains an "imminent hazard" to the public. That's why they've proposed new standards to make these shipments safer.

But oil and rail companies don't want to pay more to make oil trains safer. Take a moment to make sure the DOT is listening to the people, not Big Oil, by urging them to protect your community from explosive oil trains!




U.S. Department of Transportation
Docket No. PHMSA-2012-0082 (HM-251)

I applaud the Department of Transportation's efforts to address the increasing risk of crude by rail transport through its proposed rule, however the DOT's final rules must go further to ensure our communities are safe.

In particular, the slow phase-out of the notoriously unsafe DOT-111 tankers will do nothing to protect Americans from explosions and spills resulting from derailments until as late as 2020. I urge you to put in place an immediate ban on transporting flammable materials in these dangerous tankers.

High hazard flammable trains -- trains carrying 20 or more tankers of volatile oil -- should also be banned to protect our communities.

The DOT must also ensure that the final rail safety rule implements, at a minimum, all of the tank car safety standards proposed by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. I ask that the DOT takes a hard look at whether it can go further to ensure risks to public health, safety, property and environment are minimized.

I also urge the DOT to ensure that both the public and first responders are notified of dangerous crude-by-rail shipments through their communities, and that the required threshold for these public notices should be less than the current one million gallons of oil. People have a right to know when they are being put at risk by the transportation of hazardous materials.

Please finalize these important rules as quickly as possible, and keep the implementation phase-in period as short as possible. As shipments of crude-by-rail soar around the country, we cannot wait years for new safety standards to take effect.

Not only is my community as risk because of TANKERS parked near residential neighborhoods, but riding the commuter train into Boston reveals many more parked on sidings threatening others.