Tank car regs timing surprised ex-PHMSA chief

OREANDA-NEWS. New US tank car specifications and other rules governing transport of flammable materials generally hewed to what former Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) chief Cynthia Quarterman expected, but the timetable is a bit longer, she told Argus.

"That was the biggest surprise, by far," Quarterman said in an interview. "The push-back for five years for most things, I thought it was a substantial push-back in terms of dates."

PHMSA's 1 August proposals for tank car rules under Quarterman, who left the agency in October to join the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center as a distinguished senior fellow, would have barred light crude from legacy cars by 2017 and ethanol and 2018. The modified timetable is based on whether a car is an old-style DOT-111 or post-October 2011 CPC-1232 and whether the shell is jacketed or not, with light crude allowed in nonjacketed CPC-1232 cars until April 2020.

Otherwise, Quarterman noted that the new tank car design standard that takes effect for new models no later than October 2015 largely hew to the original proposal her agency submitted last summer, including the requirement of electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes that shippers, railroads and tank car makers alike have aligned against.

The brakes were part of the toughest of three standards proposals PHMSA made and were supported by the staff of both PHMSA and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Shippers, railroads and even tank car makers have united in saying that the brakes do not improve safety — the American Petroleum Institute (API) lawsuit over the rules this week seeks to remove the requirement — but transportation secretary Anthony Foxx singled them out as a key to the rulemaking.

"I think the brakes certainly could have mitigated [past] incidents if they worked the way they are supposed to work, with all cars stopping immediately instead of one at a time," she said. "The biggest cause [of breaches] is the accordion effect where trains squish together .. so if you could eliminate that accordion going on, I think you would see fewer dramatic events."

She also rebutted some persistent criticism — largely from the administration's Democratic party — of the length of time it took to develop new rules. She noted that regulations typically take as long as four years to develop and that the new rules took exactly nine months from the proposal date, saying PHMSA worked with "lightning speed."

"This is a rule that could be around for another 50 years," Quarterman said, referring to the last time the government issued tank car design requirements in the early 1960s. "I know regardless of party, Congress and the Senate have folks back at home watching to make sure their interests are upheld, and they do press agencies very hard. … My hat is off to all the of the employees at my prior agency for stepping up and serving the public interest."