Thank you very much for that.
As you mentioned, the public's confidence in safe transportation and rail products is certainly important to employees, communities, and customers. There are many communities you go through. As you said, when you have three accidents in close proximity, both in place and time, you need to ask yourself what is going on, and you definitely need to get to the bottom of that.
A couple of my constituents wrote to me with respect to the derailment. One said that one of her concerns was the length of the trains, and that when she were younger she saw far fewer cars connected together than she sees now. Some are over a mile long. She wondered if there was an issue with the length of the trains themselves, perhaps related to negligence with respect to the repair and infrastructure of the tracks. She may be on to something.
Of course, we read comments like, “the trains are normally too long”, “they go too fast”, and “they're too heavy and it goes too fast”.
I believe you've said you reduced the speed when you're looking to see what the cause may be, so speed obviously is a factor. When you assess the unit trains relating to crude, of course you're talking about a different configuration than you may otherwise have, so that is a difference in factors.
Can you comment on the length of the trains for my constituent who says that trains seem to be longer, that they seem to be going faster, that they're more frequent, and of course that the loads are heavy? What do you say to all that?