In January of 1979, a railroad tank car containing the chemical acrylonitrile started leaking at a rail yard in south suburban Chicago. The chemical was manufactured by American Cyanamid Co (Cyanamid) in Louisiana. Cyanamid had leased the tank car, filled it with acrylonitrile, and delivered it to the Missouri Pacific Railroad for transport to the Chicago suburbs. The leak occurred while the ca...

public through the National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA 22161 This document is also available on the FRA Web site at www.fra.dot.gov Final Report July 2001 DOT/FRA/ORD-00/07 U. S. Department of Transportation Research and Special Programs Administration John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center Cambridge, MA 02142-1093 Office of Research and Development Washington,...

The performance metric for tank cars and other hazardous materials vehicles involved in accidents has generally been conditional probability of release given involvement in an accident. This metric considers the probability of a release event occurring but does not take into account the quantity of product lost in a release incident. In this paper, a new metric termed “release risk” is introduc...