Testimony of Thomas M. Menino, Mayor of Boston
Presented by Thomas J. Tinlin, Commissioner, Boston Transportation Department
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Public Hearing with regard to the Transport of Hazardous Materials
Hello. My name is Thomas J. Tinlin and I am the Commissioner of the Boston
Transportation Department. I am here tonight to provide testimony on behalf of Boston
Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
This testimony will lay out the City of Boston’s public safety decision to seek and
propose an alternative highway route for the transportation of hazardous materials to
bypass the downtown portion of the City of Boston when neither the pick-up nor drop-off
location for the cargo is located in the City.
We all remember how the events of 9/11 horrified and shocked the world. At that time,
governments around the globe began a determined effort to ensure the safest environment
possible for all who live, work and visit their cities. As a massive undertaking began to
harden targets of opportunity against terrorist attacks, simultaneously, an equally
important effort was underway to identify and mitigate everyday hazards in our cities that
also pose a very real risk to life, property and economic vitality.
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The City of Boston participated in this self-review along with almost every major city in
the country. One issue that stood out immediately was the transport of hazardous
materials through the City of Boston, with hazmat cargo trucks using downtown streets as
a short cut for the sake of profit and convenience to the trucking industry.
The completion of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project and the depression of the elevated
John F. Fitzgerald Expressway and I-93 corridor in Downtown Boston, which previously
served as the designated hazardous materials route, transformed this roadway into a
tunnel from which hazardous materials are excluded. As a result, those hazardous
material trucks that were once confined to the interstate highway system were now rerouted to surface streets in downtown Boston neighborhoods, bringing these hazmat
cargoes into much closer proximity to the general population on and adjacent to these
public ways.
For many years, the Boston Fire Department, under City regulations established in 1980,
had regulated the transportation of certain quantities of hazardous materials on our
roadways and had issued what were known as “cut through” permits to the trucking
industry, allowing them through access on City streets where there was neither a point of
origin nor destination.
It is important to remember that these permits were granted by the City purely as a
convenience measure for the trucking industry, not as a right. In point of fact, the permits
were granted by the Fire Commissioner for the specific purpose of authorizing these
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motor carriers to operate on City streets in exception to the otherwise applicable
restrictions contained in the City’s regulations, but only where “a compelling need” was
shown by a company and where transporting the hazardous materials was found to be “in
the public interest.”
It became clear that if these carriers were not dropping-off or picking-up cargo in Boston
then they were not meeting the “compelling need nor the public interest” threshold. The
risk of having them on our streets in the densely populated downtown area was too great.
We welcome, and continue to welcome, local deliveries by trucks carrying hazardous
materials necessary for the daily operation of the multitude of public and private
buildings located within Boston. However, continuing to accept the extra burden from
cut-through vehicles, with no business purpose for being in the City other than operating
convenience, presented an unreasonable risk to the general public when safer routing
alternatives are readily available.
To provide the industry with an opportunity to present its case on this issue, in 2006 we
held individual hearings with all hazardous material carriers that had previously been
issued cut-through permits for the downtown Boston area. It should be noted that the
City ordinance authorizing the regulations that allowed these permits to be issued, clearly
states that economic criteria “SHALL NOT”, not “should not”, but “SHALL NOT”, be
determinative of whether or not an alternative route outside the City is practical. Similar
federal regulations state that operating convenience of the motor carrier is not a basis for
determining whether such an alternative route is practical. At the hearings, companies
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testified before a committee made up of representatives from Boston’s Transportation,
Police and Fire Departments, that if they were prohibited from cutting through the City
their trips would be longer and more expensive. This translates to operating convenience
and economic factors, the very two criteria that the City’s permitting process clearly
states the Fire Commissioner SHALL NOT consider when deciding whether or not to
issue a permit. We also heard similar statements at last nights hearing held in Boston.
While still focused on enhancing public safety, the City of Boston wanted to be as helpful
to this important industry as possible. Therefore, rather than applying the City’s 1980
regulations strictly to impose an all-out 24 hour, 7 day a week ban on the use of City
streets, we opted in 2006 to implement a daytime ban. This would prohibit the transport
of hazardous materials through the City during the period when our population almost
doubles due to our work force, commuters, tourists, students and others. At the same
time, it would allow the through movement of hazardous materials between the hours of
8 pm to 6 am to continue. Although this provided the industry with ten hours each day to
cut-through downtown Boston, the decision did not sit well with some folks who are in
this room tonight. Nevertheless, it was a good faith attempt to balance the public safety
needs of the City with the demands of the industry.
The change went into effect on July 3, 2006 and lasted for about four years, with NO
complaint from the Commonwealth, the Federal Government, elected officials or
surrounding communities.
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At the same time, to increase public safety in connection with the transportation of
hazardous materials within the City, the City determined that it was in the public interest
and prudent to adjust the local hazmat route, shifting hazmat traffic from the temporary
route during Central Artery construction along Commercial Street to the newly improved
surface roadway and Cross Street corridor, which as the result of the Central Artery
Project now encompassed better sight distance, geometry, signalization and lighting, and
which was a shorter, more direct route than the Commercial Street segment it replaced.
In disagreement with these two changes, the American Trucking Association and the then
Massachusetts Highway Department requested, and was granted, a preemption
determination from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The preemption decision was issued on November 16, 2009, and, following a request for
an extension, became effective on July 1, 2010. In the decision, the federal government
indicated that it did not necessarily disagree with the routing decisions that had been
made, but determined that the City of Boston had not followed the proper process under
federal regulations before implementing this program. Their rationale was that the City’s
actions modifying its past permitting practice and downtown route were taken without the
required study and consultative process, and had created a de facto new route
designation.
We were surprised by this as the City did not intend to designate an entirely new route
but to simply enforce a long standing local regulation which allowed us to control the
hours that these vehicles were allowed to travel on the route which now had been
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realigned to take advantage of improved surface roadways within the same central
transportation corridor. In any event, the federal government had made its ruling and the
City was left with only two options:
1. Allow trucks carrying hazardous material to cut through the City every day of the
week, both day and night or,
2. Go through this process as laid out by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration.
The City chose the latter course of action.
To comply with this request, the City engaged the Battelle Memorial Institute, a
501(c)(3) charitable trust headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, that you heard from tonight.
Battelle is an internationally respected consulting firm that specializes in hazardous
materials transportation analysis, risk assessment, and policy support. The findings of
this federally mandated study were eye opening.
As I said earlier, our plan was simply to prohibit hazardous material from cutting through
the City during the day. This study, however, demanded by the industry, concluded that
the movement of hazardous material trucks through the City of Boston using the current
downtown routing presents significantly more risk to the general public, during both the
daytime and the nighttime, than available alternative routes that bypass the densely
populated downtown area of Boston.
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In fact, the relative difference in risk to the public between the routes was so compelling,
both day and night, that under the established federal through routing criteria the length
of the deviation on the proposed alternative route did not have to be taken into account.
The proposed bypass route is that much safer. Faced with conclusive evidence of
unacceptable risk, the City now had no choice but to pursue a nighttime restriction on
hazmat transportation as well.
The City of Boston has carefully and meticulously completed what the federal and state
government, as well as the industry demanded of us. It was a long and arduous process,
but the City of Boston got the job done. As the agency responsible for designating
hazardous cargo routes, it is now time for the Massachusetts Department of
Transportation to complete its job. The Commonwealth has invested literally billions
upon billions of dollars in our interstate roadway system including the onging widening
of Route 128, which is designed to promote and enhance interstate and intrastate
commerce and enhance highway transportation safety. The regional through
transportation of hazardous materials falls into this category. This industry should be on
that interstate roadway, pure and simple, and not on routes that go through or near
heavily populated areas, places where crowds are assembled, on crowded urban streets,
especially where alternative highway routes are demonstrated to be safer and present
significantly lower risk to the general public. To allow this practice to continue with this
overwhelming evidence would be reckless and ill-advised.
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The industry demanded this process, but now that they don’t like the results, they want a
do over. The industry will tell you it will cost them too much in time and money, when,
in fact, we are talking about an estimated 22 minutes of increased travel time in each
direction. Imagine: 22 minutes of travel as opposed to thousands of lives unnecessarily
put at increased risk. They will tell you it is too expensive, yet, Battelle’s report
estimates the cost will be less than one cent per gallon of product -- less than a penny as
opposed to putting thousands of lives at risk on a daily basis. The industry will tell you
that Boston is better equipped in the event of a disaster. This is probably the most
insulting argument to date; when you cannot make your case based on fact, make it
through fear. Industry figures show that an incident involving hazmat transportation
occurs on average once for roughly every one million vehicle miles travelled. Despite
this data, a single crash of a truck transporting hazmat in a crowded area has the potential
for deaths and injuries far beyond that of a truck carrying non-hazmat cargo, which is
why we are here.
Recognizing the potential for severe hazardous materials incidents underscores the need
for designating appropriate routes for the transportation of hazardous materials, which is
a key strategy for increasing and ensuring public safety. An incident on Route 128 is no
doubt a disaster, but that same incident in the heart of downtown Boston is nothing short
of a catastrophe that will exacerbate exposures and have far reaching effects on life,
property and the very economic vitality of our region. Also, as you all know, Boston
provides more emergency response local aid than any other city or town in the
Commonwealth and that will not change. In 2009 we were on scene at the tanker
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accident in Brown Circle in Revere and in Saugus last month, so the argument that
Boston is better equipped to handle an event is insulting on too many levels to get into
here.
It is unfortunate that some would attempt to make this an issue of Boston vs. its outlying
communities and our suburban neighbors when nothing could be further from the truth.
The primary criterion for a routing designation is that the designated route significantly
reduces public risk. The federal standards for the highway routing of hazardous materials
place central importance upon enhancing public safety. The federal routing designation
process we engaged in is expressly designed to identify and evaluate roadway and
community characteristics that make one route preferable to another from the perspective
of improving the overall public safety associated with the transportation of hazardous
materials.
Interstate routes that avoid populated areas minimize these risks because of their better
safety records. It’s really a matter of minimizing unnecessary risk to the greatest number
of potentially exposed people in the areas most likely to experience an accident involving
a hazardous materials release.
In closing, Mayor Menino would like to thank MassDOT, for holding these public
hearings and for working so closely with us on this issue. The Mayor would also like to
thank our elected leaders, Senators Kerry and Brown, Congressmen Capuano and Lynch,
and the entire Boston Delegation at the State House led by Representative Aaron
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Michlewitz, for their support in seeing this process through, as well as our local partner
City Councillor Sal LaMattina and all of the concerned residents and business people of
our city who have tirelessly focused on this danger.
The City of Boston’s public safety team has been fully engaged on this issue for many
years as they strive to keep Boston and the region safe every day. If their subject matter
expertise is needed, representatives from Boston’s Police and Fire Departments, as well
as our Homeland Security Office, are in attendance tonight and will respond to any and
all questions and concerns after these hearings.
Again thank you and we look forward to hearing the testimony provided by others here
this evening.