If they could get away with it, most local and county governments would (understandably) outlaw the transportation of hazardous materials by rail within their jurisdictions. They are prohibited from doing this because the railroad industry operates under the protection of Federal railroad laws that basically strip state, county and local governments from interfering with railroad commerce.
When you are an industry that operates under the protection of "regulatory tyranny" to begin with, nobody is going to take you seriously when you complain about the heavy-handed costs of government regulation.
Here is an article that gives a picture of what’s going on in the pipeline vs rail debate:
We would have the Keystone Pipeline if it were not for the “regulatory tyranny” going on in this country. In my opinion, the pipeline is safer because they go though less populated areas, unlike trains.
You can make the train only so safe. The Casselton, North Dakota incident may have happened because of a broken axle. How do we prevent against those types of failures? Making the tank cars more resistant to punctures will be expensive and there is no guarantee such efforts will prevent all explosions. There is always the possibility of terrorist activity too. We can only be so safe and then we try to live with the things that happen out of our control. Those who play on our fears are doing so because of an agenda. The agenda is to limit our use of fossil fuels. The Regime is doing everything it can through “regulatory tyranny” to do so.