Funny this happened. I had called half of city council the other day to ask them to do all in their power to stop the oil cars from coming through the city. I encourage everyone to do so as well!!

The same idiots who claim that oil and coal transport by rail is "perfectly safe" are the same ilk associated with Burlington Northern Sante Fe and Union Pacific Railroads, SSA Marine, Peabody Coal, Goldman Sachs and Koch Industries who stubbornly refuse to provide safety regulation information, claiming that the rest of us--who most likely stand to lose our homes, backyards, families, possessions, lives and livelihoods with these dirty, noisy multi-car monstrosities roaring through at all hours of the day and night are threatened 24/7---don't "need to know".

Time to get corporate interests out of our government and launch a mass exodus of Earth desecrating industrial profiteers.

Meh, I still need something to fuel the truck that hauls around the tools that allow me to make a living (and you folks need somebody to build/maintain your housing). I think that this is a bunch of politically motivated fear mongering.

@2, the point isn't that it's perfectly safe, it's that it's safer than road tankers, which frankly scare the shit out of me, or pipelines, which tend to have fewer incidents but much worse ones. There's no such concept as eliminating risk, only minimizing it as much as is feasible.

Listen to your Auntie Catalina. We need to improve regulation -- and not just these 1232 cars but some of the even safer ones that are under discussion -- and get older ones out of service. We also need to invest in infrastructure, dammit!

@5, it's also a relief that these cars were going 5 MPH instead of 63 MPH like the unattended runaway in Lac-Mégantic.

Why don't these coal trains, destined for points north, take the Empire Builder tracks, and travel directly to Everett instead of traipsing in from the South all the way through the most populous part of the state?

Yeah, it's real safe.

Lies, lies and more lies. It's not safe. We know this. Enough lying. We deserve the truth.

Well, as I said, all reasonable people...

Pipelines leak more, but human injuries and fatalities are a degree less than any mobile transport.

@3 Mr. Meh: Yeah, well, when all you hold precious is suddenly irretrievably lost due to the fatal derailment of an oil and / or coal train, whether it's the dangerously obsolete DOT 111 model or otherwise, don't come crying to me. The big corporate perps will be laughing all the way to their Reagan-deregulated Wall Street banks and won't look back at the wreckage they left behind.
If you think BNSF, Big Oil and Big Coal are right, then you're actually supporting the REAL fear mongers. They're bullying those of us fortunate to live here in the Pacific Northwest for our resources.
Think about it.

@5 / @11 Catalina Vel-DuRay: Thank you. Both comments are well said.

By the way, Seattle City Council is among many cities and communities throughout Puget Sound dissected by BNSF tracks that are calling for a moratorium on oil and coal transport by rail until safety regulations are properly addressed and fully implemented. The Sierra Club and Forest Ethics are among environmental groups along with many tribal nations filing suit. Many local people like me who have everything to lose are fighting this nightmare of insane corporate greed that is anything but what could be called "safe".
Back in the 1970s a bunch of "experts" once called nuclear power perfectly "safe", too----and then Three Mile Island blew up. 40 years later, we're still cleaning up Hanford. Radioactive debris from the globally disastrous accident from 3/4/2011 at Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is still crossing the Pacific Ocean and drifting ashore here on the West Coast.
None of this can possibly be called "Safe"!