With concern about Bakken crude oil trains passing through larger upstate NY cities,and Sen.Schumer calling for lower speed limits because of accident fears would it be practical to run them along the more rural ex Erie route through Olean to Binghampton.Could that route handle them and would it make sense route-wise ? Not sure if any shipments have gone over that route and of the connections west of Jamestown.
I might be wrong but the loudest volume anti-CBR hue and cry in NY state I've read about is from residents of Albany who have been protesting the crude oil trains that unload at the Port of Albany. If this is this case, then assuming many of the CBR trains are destined for Albany (as opposed to NJ or New England), a Southern Tier routing via NS/CP or a Water Level routing via CSX would not appease the Albany residents. IIRC, a few years ago, a small # of CBR trains may have run via NS to Binghamton and then via CP/D&H to Pan Am at Mechanicville for delivery to Irving at Saint John, NB but after the Lac Megantic disaster and due to the very poor condition of Pan Am track in Maine, these trains were discontinued.
Plus, US crude oil by rail shipments are declining fairly significantly and likely permanently given the new pipelines that are coming on line to get Bakken crude to refineries. Not sure if this will impact the Port of Albany or not though although CSX has now revealed that CBR traffic on the water level route headed for NJ (which technically by-passes the city of Albany via Selkirk) has declined from 15 to 30 weekly trains to 5 to 15 weekly trains.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/amount- ... -1.1635272
http://www.wsj.com/articles/crude-slump ... 1469484016