In accordance with the 2015 Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) released its Progress Towards Safer Rail Tank Cars Transporting Flammable Liquids: 2025 Report.

The report discusses the progress in upgrading the rail tank car fleet to the DOT-117 standard, which meets new safety requirements, and summarizes the types of rail tank cars carrying Class 3 flammable liquids. There is a rolling phase-out schedule of tank cars based on both tank car type and flammable liquids carried.

Over 70% of rail tank cars carrying Class 3 flammable liquids meet DOT-117 specifications.. The number of DOT-117 and DOT-117R tank cars as part of the fleet transporting Class 3 flammable liquids continued to increase in 2024, from 67 percent (68,013 tank cars) in 2023 to 73 percent (73,757 tank cars) in 2024.

Almost all crude and ethanol were carried by DOT-117 or DOT-117R tank cars. This included 9,983 DOT-117/DOT-117R tank cars carrying crude and 36,958 carrying ethanol. Only 130 jacketed (a layer of thermal insulation) CPC-1232 tank cars carried crude, and 18 jacketed CPC-1232 tank cars carried ethanol.

Other flammable liquids remain the largest group of Class 3 flammable liquids not required to be transported in DOT-117 tank cars. This includes 85 non-DOT-117 tank cars for other flammable liquids packing group 1 (phaseout date: May 1, 2025), and 17,352 non-DOT-117 tank cars for other flammable liquids packing group 2 and 3 (phaseout date: May 1, 2029).

 

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