"The Oregon Department of Transportation, the state’s rail safety overseer, says it will no longer ask railroads for reports detailing where crude oil moves through the state after The Oregonian successfully sought to have them made public.

Railroads 'provided us courtesy copies with the understanding we wouldn’t share it -- believing it might be protected,' ODOT spokesman David Thompson said in an email. 'We now know that the info is NOT protected; so do the railroads.'

The result? At a time of heightened public concern about increasing volumes of crude oil moving by rail in Oregon, ODOT is reducing the flow of information that has benefited not only the public but its own employees."

Rob Davis reports for the Portland Oregonian April 22, 2014. [2]