Chlorine Industry Fears Higher Shipping Costs

The chlorine industry is asking the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to fix what it calls a “faulty cost-benefit analysis” of a new regulation that requires freight railroads to install a new crash-avoidance technology by 2015. The industry fears that railroads could pass along potentially large costs for implementing the technology to shippers of chemicals that pose toxic inhalation hazards (TIH). In 2008, Congress ordered the use of positive train control (PTC) systems that are capable of preventing train-to-train collisions and derailments. FRA estimates the cost of installing PTC to be $10 billion to $13 billion over 20 years, with about a $500 million safety benefit. But the Chlorine Institute says that that analysis “drastically underestimates the rule’s benefits” and “could foster a situation that would allow railroads to impose on TIH shippers an unfairly large share of the costs of applying PTC technology.” Arthur Dungan, the trade group’s president, told FRA in a filing that railroads “have already announced that they will attempt to recover their investment in PTC from those shippers offering TIH materials for rail movement.” A railroad industry group says the high cost of the PTC mandate “is a direct result of the toxic nature of chlorine shipments.”