Rail tanker car guidelines announced by Canada, U.S. Experts say reinforced tanker cars are not enough to avoid future disasters

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Canada's Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt announced new harmonized guidelines for rail tanker cars Friday morning in Washington, in part to deal with the lessons learned from the Lac-Mégantic tragedy of July 2013 and to deal with the 4,000 per cent increase in crude oil shipments by rail in recent years.

"We can never undo the damage that took place in Lac-Mégantic or in any other railway incident," said Raitt, referring to the loss of 47 lives when an improperly secured train full of crude oil dislodged from a hilltop perch and rolled into in the small Quebec town and exploded.

"But we can and we must learn from those events and improve our system."

Mark Winfield, an associate professor of environmental studies at York University, says Transport Canada established new regulations for tanker cars last year, only to do it again this year. 

"It sort of begs the question — how on top of the situation is [Transport Canada]?" he asked. "We're sort of in the situation of doing a re-do."

The announcement to phase out the DOT-111 tanker cars involved in the Lac-Mégantic came last year, but the successor cars, the CPC-1232s, were easily breached in accidents on Feb. 14 and March 7 of this year near Gogama, Ont.