Here's some data for you from the Canadian side.
Evaluating Safety Metrics for Oil Transportation Both railways and pipelines in Canada have made significant efforts to minimize spills and ensure the safe transport of crude oil. These efforts have included investments and improvements in training, engineering processes, safety culture, and technology.
Between 2012 and 2014, Canadian pipelines and railways together transported 252.7 billion gallons of crude oil8 ; of this, 729,700 gallons were reported spilled.
This means that together railways and pipelines delivered 99.9997 percent of the gallons they transported without spillage. Some industry studies have examined the number of oil spill incidents involving crude oil and related products and drawn the conclusion that pipelines provide a safer alternative for moving these products. These analyses have used as their basis of comparison what is known as the “incident rate,” which is based on how many separate release incidents each mode has experienced.
Using a different metric, known as the “spill rate,” which is based on the total volume of oil each mode has released, would have led these studies to the opposite conclusion: that railways provide the safer alternative. Thus, the most balanced view involves looking at these two sets of figures together, to determine what story they tell about the safety characteristics of each mode and their relative levels of risk.
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There goes the environmental argument. And more importantly, the broader issue is that our entire national energy policy is slowly going away from fossil fuels, so there's really no rational argument to keep heavily investing in the infrastrucutre.
