NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Friday, December 21, 2018
U.S. miscalculated benefit of better train brakes
and ethanol in the U.S. and
Canada.
The deadliest happened
in Canada in 2013, when
an unattended train carry-
ing crude oil rolled down an
incline, came off the tracks
in the town of Lac-Megantic
and exploded into a massive
ball of fire, killing 47 peo-
ple and obliterating much
of the Quebec community’s
downtown.
There have been other
fiery crashes and fuel spills
in Alabama, Oregon, Mon-
tana, Virginia, West Virginia,
North Dakota and Illinois.
After the brake rule was
enacted, lobbyists for the
railroad and oil industries
pushed to cancel it, citing
the high cost of installing
so-called electronic pneu-
matic brakes and question-
ing their effectiveness.
But supporters of the
brakes said the issue should
be reconsidered given the
miscalculation and concerns
about other benefits that may
have been ignored, including
reducing the frequency of
runaway trains and severity
of train-on-train collisions,
said Robert Duff, a senior
adviser to Washington Gov.
Jay Inslee, a Democrat.
“This is not theoretical
risk. We’ve actually seen
these derailments,” Duff
said. “We think there are
potentially other benefits that
have been left out. Shouldn’t
By MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. —
President Donald Trump’s
administration
miscalcu-
lated the potential bene-
fits of putting better brakes
on trains that haul explo-
sive fuels when it scrapped
an Obama-era rule over cost
concerns, The Associated
Press has found.
A government analysis
used by the administration to
justify the cancellation omit-
ted up to $117 million in esti-
mated future damages from
train derailments that could
be avoided by using elec-
tronic brakes. Revelation
of the error stoked renewed
criticism Thursday from the
rule’s supporters who called
the analysis biased.
Department of Trans-
portation officials acknowl-
edged the mistake after it
was discovered by the AP
during a review of federal
documents but said it does
not change their decision not
to install the brakes.
Safety advocates, trans-
portation union leaders and
Democratic
lawmakers
oppose the administration’s
decision to kill the brake
rule, which was included in
a package of rail safety mea-
sures enacted in 2015 under
President Barack Obama
following dozens of acci-
dents by trains hauling oil
KGW-TV via AP, File
Smoke billows from a Union Pacific train that derailed near
Mosier on June 3, 2016 in the scenic Columbia River Gorge.
all this be redone, with all
the benefits reconsidered?
Show us that the costs still
outweigh the benefits.”
Unlike other systems
where brakes are applied
sequentially along the length
of a train, electronic pneu-
matic brakes, or ECP, work
on all cars simultaneously.
That can reduce the dis-
tance and time a train needs
to stop and cause fewer cars
to derail.
“These ECP brakes
are very important for oil
trains,” said Steven Dit-
meyer, a rail safety expert
and former senior official at
the Federal Railroad Admin-
istration. “It makes a great
deal of sense: All the brakes
get applied immediately, and
Forecast for Pendleton Area
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there would be fewer cars in
the pileup.”
Under Obama, the Trans-
portation Department deter-
mined the brakes would
cost up to $664 million over
20 years and save between
$470 million and $1.1 bil-
lion from accidents that
would be avoided.
The Trump administra-
tion reduced the range of
benefits to between $131
million and $374 million.
Transportation Department
economists said in their
analysis that the change
was prompted in part by a
reduction in oil train traf-
fic in recent years, which
meant there would be fewer
derailments.
The transport of crude
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PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
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HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
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The Dalles 47/28
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46/30
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37/23
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Lake
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Klamath Falls
38/18
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2018
Sunrise today
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NATIONAL EXTREMES
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 87° in Marathon, Fla. Low -8° in Daniel, Wyo.
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
Oregon is still on track
to gain a sixth seat in the
U.S. House, according to
elections experts studying
new Census Bureau pop-
ulation estimates released
Wednesday.
Kimball Brace of Elec-
tion Data Services in Vir-
ginia said he projects
that Oregon should gain
another seat with about
140,000 people to spare.
That’s relatively close, but
not as close to the margin
as it is for some states.
“There are still some
potential changes coming
that could impact Oregon,”
he said. These include pop-
ulation changes caused by
a disaster or an economic
shock — or big differences
in what the Census Bureau
turns up when it attempts to
count the entire population
in 2020.
Another firm, Poli-
data in Vermont, also proj-
ects that Oregon will gain
a seat in the U.S. House of
Representatives.
Both firms project that
Washington will continue
to have 10 congressional
seats. But they say Califor-
nia could lose a seat for the
first time in its history.
Under current Oregon
law, it will be up to the
state Legislature to redraw
district lines in 2021. And
if Democrats maintain con-
trol of the Legislature, they
will be able to send a bill
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high
low
MEDFORD (AP) — The
Oregon Health Authority is
expecting to lift requirements
that led to rationing the use
of a $1,000-per-pill drug that
can cure hepatitis C.
Most patients covered
by the Oregon Health Plan
had to have liver damage in
order to qualify for the hepa-
titis C cure, the Mail Tribune
reported Wednesday.
The state plans to lift that
stipulation in March, allow-
ing the treatment before peo-
ple sustain liver damage from
the disease.
About a quarter of the
state’s population is covered
by the Oregon Health Plan.
The state authority has esti-
mated that 95,000 Oregon
residents have hepatitis C but
about half don’t know it.
New drugs released in
2013 and 2014 can cure most
cases of the disease previ-
ously thought incurable, but
the price tag caused problems.
Pharmaceutical company
Gilead Sciences charged
$84,000 for a 12-week treat-
ment of Sovaldi, and it priced
Harvoni at $94,500.
Providing the drug to
everyone with hepatitis C
would have likely bankrupted
the Oregon Health Plan and
led to unaffordable premi-
ums, health officials said.
“It was a complete bank-
breaker. There was no way
individual insurance plans
or governments could afford
HILLSBORO (AP) — A man was has
been killed after being hit by a MAX train
in Hillsboro.
Authorities say the eastbound train hit the
man early Thursday morning 50 yards west
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to Gov. Kate Brown — her
term runs until early 2023
— even if Republicans
object.
If legislators can’t com-
plete the job, the task goes
to the federal courts.
In addition, several
groups are pushing to take
redistricting away from the
Legislature and give it to
some type of independent
commission.
Oregon last gained a
new congressional seat in
1980. Since then, the dis-
trict lines have remained
relatively unchanged. But
an addition of a sixth seat
could greatly scramble
their boundaries.
Currently,
Demo-
crats hold four seats while
Republicans have one.
Oregon Health Plan to end ration of
costly hepatitis C cure
Man struck, killed by MAX
train in Hillsboro
-10s
However, excluding those
potential damages means the
difference between costs and
benefits would have been
much narrower.
A 2015 act of Congress
mandated that the Depart-
ment of Transportation
repeal the braking require-
ment if an analysis showed
more costs than benefits.
Fraser said a correction to
the agency’s findings will
be published to the federal
register, but the repeal will
stand.
“With the correction, in
all scenarios costs still out-
weigh benefits,” Fraser said.
“Therefore, the outcome ...
would not have changed.”
The Association of Amer-
ican Railroads declined com-
ment on the agency’s cost
benefit calculations. Spokes-
woman Jessica Kahanek
said the move to rescind the
Obama rule was in line with
the requirements set forth by
Congress.
John Risch, national leg-
islative director for the Inter-
national Association of Sheet
Metal, Air, Rail and Trans-
portation Workers, said elec-
tronic brakes are overdue
and would have prevented
some accidents, including
the deaths at Lac-Megantic.
He added that the omis-
sion of some derailments
from the government’s find-
ings further tilted a study
that was already flawed.
Oregon likely to gain a sixth seat
in the U.S. House, forecast shows
By JEFF MAPES
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Cooler with
periods of sun
on U.S. railroads peaked in
2014 when 540,000 tank cars
shipped. That fell to about
210,000 carloads last year,
most of it from the Bakken
oil patch of North Dakota
and Montana, according to
industry figures.
But in making their cal-
culations, the economists
left out the most common
type of derailments in which
spilled and burning fuel
causes property damage but
no mass casualties, the AP
found. Equipping fuel trains
with electronic brakes would
reduce damages from those
derailments by an estimated
$48 million to $117 million,
according to Department of
Transportation estimates that
were left out of the adminis-
tration’s final tally.
Including the omit-
ted benefits reduces the net
cost of the requirement to
as low as $63 million under
one scenario laid out by the
agency.
Transportation spokes-
man Bobby Fraser said the
omission was unintentional
and would not have changed
September’s decision to
cancel the electronic brake
requirement. Under the
administration’s analysis,
the cost of the brakes would
have outweighed the ben-
efits even when consider-
ing estimated damages from
derailments that were left
out of the original findings.
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the pill where it was priced,”
said Jennifer Lind, CEO of
Jackson Care Connect, a pro-
vider of Oregon Health Plan
coverage.
The prices of the treat-
ment are falling as more hep-
atitis C drugs and generics hit
the market. Gilead Sciences
announced in September that
it will release a generic ver-
sion of Harvoni in January,
pricing it at $24,000.
“As those prices have
gone down, you’ve seen peo-
ple getting more and more
access to the drug,” said Josh
Balloch, vice president of
government affairs for All-
Care Health, another pro-
vider of Oregon Health Plan
coverage.
of Northeast Cornelius Pass Road at the start
of a train overpass. Shuttle buses served area
stations.
Sgt. Eric Bunday, a Hillsboro police
spokesman, told The Oregonian/Oregon-
Live that police were still trying to figure
out why the man was on the tracks. The area
doesn’t have a pedestrian crossing, he said.
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