Cleve City councilman Matt Zone is sheparding a bill to limit what he says is dangerous freight rail traffic from going through downtown on a daily/weekly basis... A couple years ago, EcoCity Cleveland authored an extensive, detailed study on rerouting such traffic away from the lakeshore around the periphery of the city -- I'm assuming that downtown lakefront line is where Zone says this hazardous traffic is traveling.  EcoCity's proposal had a lot of benefits, including issues addressed by Zone.  Also, it seems that if the lakeshore line can be freed of thru freight traffic, we could extend passenger rail -- the extended WFL or commuter rail -- directly on that roadbed and, thus, save millions in new track/structure construction.

 

Anyone familiar with this?  Has there been any consideration of this proposal to relocate?  What's the status of this proposal now?

 

 

Where did you hear about this? Is there an article?

Actually, I heard it driving on WTAM, yesterday -- egad, I'm ashamed to admit I listen to that lowbrow station (you know it's bad when they bring in Jerry Springer and he actually RAISES the intelligence level of the discussion!) -- I'll just say I listen for the sports; I'll just say that...

clvlndr,

 

Its ok.  I understand.  NPR can't provide everything we need.

Sun Newspapers will have an article on it tomorrow in the West Side Sun, by David Plata. Check it out.

 

EcoCity Cleveland may have paid for the study on relocating freight traffic off the lakefront, but they didn't author it. I did.

 

Visit....

 

http://www.ecocitycleveland.org/ecologicaldesign/blue/rail_bypass_sum.html

 

KJP

That article was a fine, detailed piece; it stood out in my mind as such -- no slight intended... but my question remains: now what?  Is it a workable proposal and how willing will the railroads be towards doing it?  Where would the $$ come from?

 

I think it's all the more imperative to consider this plan since the recent announcement that ($230M) high-end residential development will abut the N-S right-of-way on the Flats East Bank.  With the hefty rents/morts likely to be paid in this area, who's going to want a bunch of noisy rumbling freight trains going back 'n forth with the high frequency that exists now?  They’re kind of interesting looking at from the deck of Shooters on a warm summer night, but not living next to… Someone posted on Cleve.com an article from San Diego about high-end, high-rise residents complaining about S.D.'s Port Authority traffic/noise/dirt after SD saw res development in an area, apparently, not unlike our Port Auth.

 

So what's the next step towards moving freight trains off the Lakefront?  Also, if that's done, couldn't RTA simply switch WFL trains to NS tracks and merely string catenary over those tracks extending service eastward at a fraction of new ROW building?  This would save a bunch of money and extend the needed transit service to areas slated for development.

 

If living next to NS is such a horrible thought, then the developers shouldn't build there. I always get perturbed when residents complaint about noise from living next to railroad tracks. In 99 percent of the cases, the resident moved to the nuisance. Most of these railroad lines have been around since the 19th century. I don't know too many people who were born and raised in the house they now live before the railroad line was built next to them.

 

That study I wrote for EcoCity Cleveland and the Cleveland Waterfront Coalition was done before freight train traffic grew exponentially in the last couple of years. It was about 50 a day along the lakefront in 2003; now it's probably at 70 or more. I don't think NS is going to want to rid itself of its lakefront tracks, even if they reroute all of their through freight traffic to a bypass route. They couldn't risk losing that corridor as a relief valve in case of traffic congestion, in case of an emergency, or if routine maintenance takes a track out of service temporarily. There's just way too many freight trains anymore.

 

KJP

You're so right about people who move to "nuisances" and then complain about the noise.  Kinda like all those folks who moved to Brook Park and gripe about airport noise and expansion.  It's also why I shake my head at those ubiquitous "sound barriers" along urban freeways.  I do have sympathy for those who have had their hoods/burbs cut in half by freeways -- OK, they can build the barriers.  But many, if not most, of these burbs fought for these freeways and their populations swelled w/ people who wanted their "convenience" -- now they gripe of noise.  Ugh!

 

... as for the Lakefront trains, that's a pity.  I wish those trains could be relocated even though I, personally, have no desire to live in the planned Flats development.  As an environmental/hazardous issue, I'm with Zone on this one ... why should we have dangerous materials shunted routinely through our downtown (which we’re desperately trying to make resident friendly) and high-pop areas?  Cleveland is laced w/ rail lines that could shunt such traffic around these areas. 

 

As for the Flats/Lakefront development, while I do agree with/understand your argument about people freely opting to live in these areas, I do think these trains -- in such a high profile, highly developable area that is crucial to the city's long term residential growth and health -- are a serious negative.  They are extremely fast and loud (as trains are wont to be) and they blow their horns around downtown in part, I guess, to warn the bridge guy operating the Iron Curtain over the Cuyahoga.  Even if we could reduce them by, say, half, would be a plus... Why have they increased so much?  I'm not a freight rail expert, but wouldn't logic dictate that in a city like Cleveland that's taken so many hits in industrial and manufacturing jobs, particularly in steel, the traffic would be less not more.  It even seems like that Lakewood surface NS line that Kucinich "bargained" over which we held so much hope for commuter rail is now seeing more traffic.  Talk a year or so ago was that this line may be totally abandoned by NS.  It seems a large part of the hindrance in passenger rail transport regionally and nationally is the greedy and selfish freight operators.  Call me a socialist, but it seems in countries where the rails are nationally owned and/or run – like say Germany – busy freight and passenger transport harmonize much better than here.

 

It just seems like Clevelanders, once again, are getting kicked in the teeth.  With all the passenger traffic we'd like to see, both on the rails and at skimpy Hopkins, the only increase we're getting is noisy non-people, freight traffic that doesn't seem to be enhancing us as a commercial center all that much, if at all -- I'll bet much/most of this traffic is merely passing through Cleveland rather than serving it.

 

Like the old early 80s T-shirt said: "Cleveland: You've gotta be Tough"

 

Here's why freight traffic is booming, even in stagnant Cleveland...

 

> Most of the traffic is passing through Cleveland;

> These railroad lines were extremely well engineered a century ago as fast, high-capacity rail corridors;

> As part of the 1999 split of Conrail, CSX and NS took Conrail rights of way converging on Cleveland and created two parallel Chicago - East Coast mainlines out of them;

> CSX and NS took those two mainlines (which pass within spitting distance of each other at Berea and cross each other near the Harvard/Broadway intersection) and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into them, adding extra main tracks, computer-aided signal systems, etc.

> Railroads have reduced crew sizes, increased the efficiencies of rail yards, increased the sizes of rail cars to handle up to 125 tons per car, added lots of cool technologies and now carry more freight tonnage than at any time in their history with the fewest employees in more than 100 years;

> International trade has grown exponentially;

> Trucking companies cannot hire drivers fast enough, so the trucking firms are putting more of their drivers to work shuttling trailers and containers between shippers and rail yards;

> Ships hauling time-sensitive ocean-going container traffic don't go through the Panama Canal (many newer ships can't fit through the canal anyway!). So they off-load their containers at a port on one coast, ship them across country by rail, and load them back onto a ship on the opposite coast;

> Because of the way rail lines through Cleveland were engineered way back when, and because of the investments CSX and NS have made since 1999 to those lines, they are the highest-capacity, highest-speed rail freight corridors for east-west traffic.

 

If you go to the Station Restaurant on Depot Street in Berea and have lunch, don't be surprised if you see at least 10 trains in a hour, and possibly as many as 15 (except on Mondays, when traffic is less because fewer shipments are on the rails because Sunday came the day before). It is nothing short of astonishing how much freight traffic is out there. It has gotten to the point that railroads are literally having to turn away business and choose their customers.

 

Also, no other east-west railroads east of the Mississippi River have the capacity to handle the massive quantities of hazardous materials as do the rail lines through Cleveland. The only other that comes close is the CSX main through Akron, Youngstown and Pittsburgh. All the others have been downgraded to single-track routes (Pennsylvania RR through Canton), never were more than single-tracked (B&O through Cincinnati), while the rest have been abandoned altogether (Erie RR through Akron and Pennsylvania RR west of Columbus). To rectify this would cost many hundreds of millions of dollars, and serve only to make Cleveland's danger someone else's.

 

And, by the way, while we rightfully admire Europeans' passenger rail systems, if you ask a European freight railroad official, they admire America's freight railroads and seek their advice. Because European railroads mix their freight and passenger traffic, they are unable to operate the large (by length and weight) freight trains that we have, and don't have the regulatory freedoms that the U.S. freight industry enjoys. The market shares for freight shipped by rail in the U.S. vs European Union bear this out. In the U.S., freight tonnage shipped by rail is 35-40 percent of the total market (much more on certain corridors, like Chicago - New York City). In Europe, rail freight's market share is barely 15 percent of the total freight market.

 

Let me give you another example. The total freight tonnage on Interstate 80/90 between Chicago and New York City (combined routes west of Cleveland, of course) is about 150 million gross tons per year. For Norfolk Southern and CSX on their Chicago - New York City routes, their total freight tonnage is 200 million gross tons, or nearly 60 percent of that market.

 

Go to Berea sometime and watch all the container trains go by. You'll be watching the "Panama Canal Bypass" in action. Or, you'll see lots of general freights, many carrying hazardous materials. Remember that each of those rail cars is doing the job of three trucks. If we make it harder for the railroads to handle the freight in a cost-effective way, trucks are exactly where that freight will go.

 

Sorry for the run-on message....

 

KJP

Well, this is interesting!  I missed this the first time through...  So, same questions as before... is this something you could see happening KJP?  If so, this really could open up loads of opportunities for extending the Waterfront lines!

I know KJP praised the quality of the feight lines through Cleveland, but it doesn't make sense, to me, to have such lines take hazardous and noisy trains through high-pop areas.  The bypass makes total sense.  And maybe, if we can blunt the Bushies, we can get traction on the Amtrak hub which could, also, involve regional commuter trains over those tracks.

What Mr. Zone seems to forget is that these railroad lines are governed through Interstate Commerce rules and regulations.  I doubt that a city council ordinance prohibiting hazardous rail cargoes on the Lake Front line is going to go very far, as federal laws will pretty much trump a local ordinance if there is a conflict between the two.  The railroads, I can assure you, will fight this as well.  A similar local ordinance in DC is cuurrently in the courts.

 

Such local laws also raise the problem of "if not here, then where?"  What makes it any less hazardous to run trains through someone else's  community?  I'm sure Cleveland will have a fight on it's hands if some suburban community suddenly realizes that it will be getting all of this freight traffic.

 

Another issue:  what constitutes as hazardous load and how can such a load be diverted without slowing down the flow of freight traffic?  I can assure you the railroads will raise these questions.  Also, who is to say noise couldn't be construed by some as a hazard?  Where is the line drawn?

 

Any kind of bypass is going to have to take these factors into account.  This isn't as easy as Zone makes it sound.

Here are a couple of news releases from the Association of American Railroads.  yes, it is the lobbying arm of the railroad industry, but I have found most of their information to be valid and a great resource.  Their website is www.aar.org

 

Information on Rail Hazmat Transport

 

 

• Rail is the safest method of shipping hazardous materials. Railroads have an outstanding track record in safely delivering hazardous materials – 99.998 percent of hazardous materials carloads arrive at their destination without a release caused by a train accident.  Hazmat accident rates have declined 90 percent since 1980 and 49 percent since 1990.

 

• The alternative is to ship hazardous material by truck instead of rail, but rail is 16 times safer than truck.  Based on our best information, between 1981 and 2004, there were 10 deaths related to hazardous materials transported by rail, and 278 deaths involving hazardous materials transported by truck.

 

• Railroads carry an estimated 22 percent of the chlorine that is produced in the U.S. and 66 percent of the chlorine that is transported. Railroads carry about 1.7 million carloads of hazardous materials annually, including about 35,000 carloads of chlorine.

 

• Chlorine is used to purify more than half of the nation’s water supplies and in 85 percent of all pharmaceuticals.

 

Government Reports Decline in Train Accident Rates

 

 

WASHINGTON, November 3, 2005 ― New government statistics show significant gains for railroad safety in 2005, building on an industry safety record that has improved dramatically over the past two decades.

 

Data released by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) show an 11.6 percent increase in overall rail safety – as measured by the train accident rate – for the first eight months of 2005 compared with the same period last year. Employee injury rates were down 16.1 percent from the same time period in 2004 – the safest year for employees in the history of the railroad industry.

 

“Much of this progress can be tied to the rail industry’s investment in new technology and in employee training,” said Edward R. Hamberger, president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads. “We will continue to push for ways to make the rail network even safer for our employees and the communities we serve.”

 

Freight rail is by far the safest way to move goods and products across the country. Over the past 24 years, the rail industry has reduced accident rates by 63 percent and employee injury rates by 77 percent.

 

And the industry is currently working closely with labor and the FRA to reduce accidents caused by human error – the leading cause of train accidents.

 

“Railroads have been working on this safety issue for a number of months in order to reduce these human factor accidents,” said Hamberger. “Because most train accidents occur as the result of human error, we are working to improve procedures, technologies and training on our rail network.”

 

 

http://www.aar.org/Index.asp?NCID=3362

 

Cities Move To Prevent Rail Attacks

 

JERSEY CITY, N.J., April 7, 2006

-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Alexandra Marks.

 

Boston officials envision keeping rail cars carrying hazardous chemicals at least 10 miles away unless the city is their destination.

 

A plan in Chicago would prohibit such tanker cars in its downtown Loop. In Cleveland, city officials are considering banning them near Lake Erie, water treatment plants, and crowded neighborhoods.

 

Transport of these chemicals presents one of the knottiest public policy problems in the effort to protect the nation's cities from terrorist attack. Federal law requires railroads to carry such chemicals, which are used in manufacturing, water-purification systems, and wastewater-treatment plants.

 

More at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/07/national/printable1481063.shtml

 

I thought I'd post some stuff from the EcoCity report I authored on the Lakefront Bypass. The following is the minimum trackage/infrastructure required to reroute a limited amount of freight train traffic (perhaps up to 15 of the 70-80 freights per day) off the lakefront.

 

 

An overview graphic is below. The section that needs to receive the minimum investment -- in order to close a critical gap in missing trackage -- is between East 37th and Control Point 117 (a CP is a railroad site where a switch, or a complex of switches is remote controlled by a dispatcher or some other operator) via the North Broadway Corridor. The minimum investment is Option 1, which could cost upwards of $30 million....

 

 

Going west to east, here are some detailed images showing the options, starting with existing conditions:

 

Start at the East 37th area....

 

 

 

 

Pictures of the West 37th area from the I-490 rail overpass:

 

 

 

Here is the North Broadway corridor, with all options shown in the same image....

 

 

An image of the Vonwiler Yard area (the East 55th abutment is at the left edge). Track basically needs to be replaced here:

 

 

Now for the CP117 area, where the former Erie Lackawanna crossed the former Pennsylvania RR. These all became Conrail properties, and now are all owned by Norfolk Southern....

 

 

 

 

And a photo of CP117, looking north from Union Avenue overpass...

 

By the way, I thought you all might get a kick out of this then-and-now stuff....

 

First is the picture I posted in the previous message, taken by me in May 2003...

 

 

Then there's this picture by the late Dave McKay, taken in March 1976, of the Erie Lackawanna commuter train backing toward Cleveland Union Terminal (Tower City) from E-L's East 55th Yard for the afternoon rush hour departure for Youngstown and a dozen other stations enroute (ie: Lee Road, Solon, Aurora, Mantua, Warren, Niles, etc.). The service had 10 more months to live...

 

 

Can anybody post the Noaca future schedules for possible commuter rail? I have tried to find them with no luck. They were done some years ago. :wtf: :wtf:

I don't have them either. I just made up my own based on what I know of the rail lines.

This was posted today on the trains.com website.  It points out an earlier point that banning trains from one downtown only re-routes those trains through someone else's "back yard".  Washington DC passed such a ban, and now Ohio gets the re-routed trains.  This is pure foolishness by local officials.[/b]

 

CSX says northern route for toxic freight is sole alternative

 

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Hazardous rail cargo that used to travel within four blocks of the U.S. Capitol may be traveling through upstate New York due to a ban imposed by Washington, D.C., according to a story in The Syracuse Post-Standard. Up to 11,000 freight cars per year carrying toxic chemicals and other hazardous cargo could be detoured, according to a national chemical security expert.

 

Some say it's happening now, but local and state officials don't know because those records are not public, and railroad companies are not talking about the detour, citing security reasons.

 

An executive with CSX said in court papers in 2005 that his company had to make a circuitous northern detour — through central New York — because of Washington, D.C.'s anti-terrorism ban. John Gibson Jr., a CSX vice president, said in a lawsuit challenging the ban that the railroad would have to detour an average of 13 trains per day carrying hazardous cargo.

 

He offered an example of what would happen to rail cargo heading from North Carolina to Delaware: "In order to avoid the District, this traffic must move through Erwin, Tenn.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Cleveland Ohio; Buffalo; Syracuse; Oak Island, N.J.; Philadelphia; Stoney Creek, Pa.; and then to Claymont, Del."

 

He said the length of the trip would more than double, from 754 miles to 1,655 miles.

 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia returned the issue to a lower court in May 2005, with the appellate judges suggesting there was a high likelihood that CSX would win its argument that the ban is unconstitutional. Until the case is resolved, CSX has voluntarily stopped shipping hazardous freight on a rail line that comes closest to the Capitol.

 

Others familiar with the rail company's plans say there is little doubt the extra cargo is passing through upstate New York and the major CSX rail yards in the Syracuse area.

 

"CSX said in court they would have to use their next available line. I don't think it could be any clearer," said Fred Millar, a chemical security consultant from Arlington, Va., who helped write the Washington, D.C., ordinance.

 

The last major freight accident in Central New York occurred in November, when 28 train cars derailed in Central Square, in Oswego County north of Syracuse. Six of the cars contained chemicals.

 

In that accident, a freight car leaked corrosive sodium hydroxide. Other rail cars carrying chlorine left the tracks. Although the chlorine did not leak, officials canceled classes in the Central Square school district as a precaution.

 

Millar, the chemical security expert, said the industry's accident record is not the issue.

 

"I think it's a distraction to talk about accidents because the numbers are low enough that public officials are willing to have this cargo move through their communities," Millar said. "The real issue here is the terrorism threat.

 

http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/006/671slong.asp

They shouldn't construe silence as "willingness" -- lack of awareness is more like it.

I love how advocates for this say the railroads can just re-route trains through less populated areas.  yeah... maybe in Wyoming, but anywhere east of the Mississippi River, cities and suburbs have sprawled even beyond rail lines out what used to be in rural areas.  Besides, what gives any city the right to re-toute trains through someone else's backyard?  The answer lies in better security in rail yards and along the rail lines themselves.

 

Cities may ban trains with chemicals  

Posted 6/22/2006 10:34 PM ET

By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY

 

At least a half-dozen U.S. cities are considering a ban or limit on rail shipments of deadly chemicals in an effort to prevent terrorists from turning tank cars into weapons of mass destruction.

The restrictions would apply to rail cars carrying lethal chemicals through populated neighborhoods. Rail industry figures show that 1.7 million carloads of hazardous material are shipped along the nation's tracks each year.

 

"I cannot imagine an easier way for al-Qaeda to fulfill its goal than to take out a (chlorine-filled) tank car," says Fred Millar, an environmentalist who helped get a ban passed in Washington, D.C., last year, the nation's first. The rail industry is fighting the ban in court.

 

More at

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-22-chemical-trains_x.htm 

 

So if an attack kills 10,000 in Canton versus 100,000 in Cleveland, then would they call that a success? Since we've lost half of the rail mileage in this nation, most if not all of the remaining routes pass through populated areas, especially east of the Mississippi. The remaining routes are more apt to be maintained to mainline standards, making them less subject to accidents than if they were rerouted over lower-grade lines which have lots of jointed rail (easier to tamper with than welded rail), more numerous grade crossings and other inherent risks. So if we detour this hazardous traffic, it increases the cost of shipping it, and potentially puts more of it on less-safe highways, increasing the chances of accidents.

 

Again, the way this debate is being framed thus far suggests there are acceptable numbers of deaths and injuries. Like you said Noozer, deal with the manufacturing standards of rail cars hauling hazardous materials. It can be done. The rail cars which haul nuclear waste are about as indestructible as any man-made object can be.

A back-door approach to the D.C. rerouting battle?

railwayage.com

 

A new rail line bypassing the nation's Capitol may be built to alleviate security concerns and passenger/freight bottlenecks. The District of Columbia Department of Transportation, in cooperation with the National Capital Planning Commission and other regional partners, has hired consulting firm Parsons Brinckerhoff to evaluate alternative alignments, analyze their benefits and costs, and rank their suitability by early 2007. Just who would approve, build, and pay for such a line is unclear.

 

CSX Transportation currently operates through the Washington, D.C., area, and voluntarily reroutes trains carrying certain types of hazardous materials. But early last year, the Washington, D.C. Council passed legislation making it illegal to transport hazmat by rail within 2.2 miles of the Capitol. Patchwork regulations, CSX said at the time, would have a significant impact on all hazmat transport--with different communities having different sets of restrictions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit, agreed and overturned the law in May 2005. A three-judge panel said that regulating hazardous rail shipments is a federal- rather than city-government issue, covered by the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act and the Federal Rail security Act. Rerouting, it added, "creates security risks because it will increase the length of time hazardous materials are in transport."

 

CSXT Vice President-Public Safety & Environment Skip Elliott told Railway Age that the case has started a necessary dialogue and review of hazmat transport at the state and local levels (RA, “Secure hazmat corridors,” January 2006, p. 59). “In my opinion, this will ultimately drive change in shipments of high-hazmat products, involving rerouting or additional tracking capability or technology,” he said. “I don't know the answer. We need clarification from the court as to who is responsible for rerouting, from the legal aspect, and what dialogue needs to take place among carriers, chemical manufacturers, shippers, and the government to ensure it's transported in a safe manner."

 

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security and CSX are in the midst of an 18-month pilot project to secure the railroad’s 7-1/2-mile corridor between Reagan National Airport and Benning Road rail yard (RA, CSX and DHS partner to protect D.C. Corridor, Sept. 2005, p. 20). Under a $9.8 million DHS contract, Duos Technologies, Inc., and Epsilon Systems Solutions, Inc., are installing more than 300 cameras and sensors to automatically detect anomalies and simultaneously alert the authorities to respond. It’s not certain that such an effort would preempt rerouting, which also has been proposed in Boston, Cleveland, and Baltimore.

 

http://www.railwayage.com/breaking_news.shtml

Residents that complain about noise from living next to railroad tracks have to wake up! Common sense, they bought the house next to the tracks! The trains didn't move in behind them. When someone buys a house next to train tracks what do they expect? Peace and quite? That makes me so mad! Leave the train company alone and pack your bags and move out! (So someone else can move in and continue to bi**ch) The tracks and trains were there FIRST! Not you or maybe not even the house! SO NEXT TIME SOMEONE BUYS A HOUSE LOOK IN THE BACK YARD FIRST AND IF THERE ARE TRAIN TRACKS DON"T BUY THE DA**N PLACE!!

TSA to track rail shipments with toxic cargo

Updated 1/21/2007 10:37 PM ET

By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY

 

WASHINGTON — The government for the first time will monitor rail shipments of potentially deadly cargo passing through cities to make sure cars vulnerable to attack don't sit unguarded for too long.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will start a nationwide tracking system in about a month to determine how long rail cars filled with lethal materials are stopped on tracks or sit in unsecured storage yards in urban areas.

 

Unguarded rail cars filled with toxic chemicals such as chlorine in cities are the single biggest terrorist threat related to the nation's railroads, the TSA says.

 

The U.S. Naval Research Lab has said an attack on such a rail car could kill 100,000 people. Railroads carry 105,000 carloads of toxic chemicals a year, and 1.6 million carloads of other hazardous materials such as explosives and radioactive items, the government says.

 

More at

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-21-rail-cargo_x.htm [/b] [/i] 

 

Cities trying to re-route trains away from downtowns are getting a lot of pushback from their "burbs". 

 

From the Baltimore Sun

 

Md. opposes D.C. rail diversion plan

Southern counties routes 'unacceptable'

By Michael Dresser

Sun Reporter

 

April 6, 2007

 

An agency charged with overseeing land-use planning in the Washington region identified yesterday three possible routes to divert freight rail traffic -- including tankers containing hazardous chemicals -- away from the center of the nation's capital.

 

A nine-month, $1 million feasibility study by the National Capital Planning Commission suggested two possible routes through Southern Maryland to Jessup and another that would run through a tunnel under the Anacostia section of Washington and into Prince George's County.

 

More at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/traffic/bal-md.rail06apr06,0,1273945.story?coll=bal-local-headlines