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"Recent train accidents -- from a derailment in Slinger to a pair of car train crashes in Kenosha County -- are raising concern about the rising rail traffic in Wisconsin.\"Just the volume of trains all across the state has raised precipitously, and any time you increase anything by that volume it raises safety concerns,\" Wisconsin Railroad Commissioner Jeff Plale said.VIDEO:\u00A0Railroad officials look to make train traffic safer in Wis.\u00A0The worse-case scenario of the oil tanker explosion last summer in Canada killing 47 people has Plale focused on the movement of crude oil from North Dakota, which has increased 4,000 percent in five years and much of it is moving through Wisconsin.\"Of course it could happen here. That's why they're called accidents. They could happen anywhere. It's our job to make sure we doing everything we can to prevent that,\" Plale said.Plale said the huge increase in train traffic means some tracks that hadn't been used for years are suddenly seeing trains again.People living near tracks, like Joe Treger in St. Francis, said they've noticed the increase and the disaster in Canada hit home.\"Took out a significant part of that whole town, so it was a little nerve racking,\" Treger said.\"Living near tracks?\" WISN 12 News reporter Nick Bohr asked.\"Yeah, exactly,\" Treger said.Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Ron Kind Monday wrote the U.S. Secretary of Transportation calling for stabilizing the volatile crude before it's sent on trains.Read Kind's letter\"We shouldn't wait around for the next great derailment and toxic spill or explosion to occur in our own backyard,\" Kind said.Plale told WISN 12 News rail transport is critical to Wisconsin's economy and is still the safest way to move products. He said his department is working with the railroads and the Federal Railroad Administration to keep it that way.\u00A0"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.wisn.com/article/increase-in-rail-traffic-in-wisconsin-raises-safety-concerns/6322527>