BNSF Railyway Co. helped lead fight to delay train safety technology
reuters.com
reuters.com
The railroad companies claim to have spent billions on implementation but it's not available yet. As the article says, they're not allowed to collaborate or share implementation costs because of trust regulations. Also keep in mind the scale of the deployment. There's hundreds of thousands of cars on the track today, and putting something on each car isn't something that takes an afternoon.
The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline.
edit: Fixed definition of PTC.
> Positive Track Control is the train safety technology at issue here.
I believe it's Positive Train Control.
> The government can't make it happen by creating a regulation and a deadline.
Very much true, and a big surprise to too many regulators.
As a point, PTC works in both dark territory and controlled territory, because it focuses on the train itself (but it isn't as reliable in dark territory). Yes in controlled territory it has greater information but it doesn't require every switch to be modified. Even back in the late 90's every controlled switch reported back its status to CAD extremely quickly and CAD could control the switches remotely. Yes, dark territory is different, but PTC had some benefits even in dark territory. It was the long term goal to have near zero dark territory where a switch, siding or other similar factor would be able to cause a collision.
And just as a point, even when a train leaves one CAD controlled territory (say Union Pacific territory) and enters another (say ran by BNSF) the CAD operators hand off control, much like air traffic control. So the issue of interoperability is minimal as it already is in place in at least a fairly common form. Not saying it isn't without fault or couldn't be better, but the world doesn't have to change overnight, just keep making progress on each part making it better and better.
What are the differences between the US PTC systems and the systems used in Europe?
And yes dark territory is what they call the areas that are unmonitored. Usually these are way out in the middle of no where on single track. Most monitoring believe it or not is hard wired and not wireless. For example, hot box detectors which are basically buried on the inside of the tracks monitor a trains bearing/axel temperatures and can report if one is over heating. This is critical because it is a source of derailments. Those boxes though usually are wired directly to lines running along the track and back to a common point. In many cases a number of lines terminate at one location and are fed to radio towers that beam that data back. In other cases it follows the fiber all the way to a rail yard or dispatch center.
I can't say now what the differences are with PTC in Europe, but I know when I was at GE we looked a lot at what they were doing because in most cases they are far more serious about their railroads.
As for not sharing costs, that is complete crap. The railroads are not developing the technology anyway, companies like GE and others have developed it and are continuing to develop it. Even interoperation between competing implementations is mostly moot. The railroads have to pay for the software, maintenance and on-going updates, but the development is coming from outside the railroads so that political BS claim is just that.
Not saying everything is perfect, but it frustrates me that after 15 years this isn't done and implemented, its 10 years beyond when I thought at least 2 of the biggest railroads would have it deployed at least in some form. Hell in 1998 GE had forms of it in test at 2 of the largest railroads in the country.
The railroads have been dragging their feet on this and should get fined. A lot.
Yes, of course I would like safer trains. I would like safer lots of things, especially cars, because so many more people have car accidents and die each year.
Ideally, our government would calculate lives per year saved versus cost for all kinds of proposed laws and regulations. And then we could more fairly decide which things to implement first, based on which would save the most lives.
This requires us to place a specific dollar figure on a human life, which everyone seems reluctant to do.
But positive train control isn't just about improving safety. It's part of a larger overhaul of the rail system that will allow increased efficiency. E.g. the Acela is much heavier than European passenger trains because of FRA crash standards. If PTC succeeds in reducing the likelihood of crashes and derailments, those regulations could be loosened, allowing lighter and faster trains.
I disagree with that, at least with regards to the USA. Does Congress pass a resolution every year that dictates what a human life is worth? Something that is applied across the board for all legislation, rather than buried deep in the implications of whatever law they're talking about now?
If they're accurately representing the costs (big if!), this doesn't sound like it meets the government's own cost-benefit standards, so I'd like to hear more about the rationale behind requiring this technology.
"The EPA does not place a dollar value on individual lives. Rather, when conducting a benefit-cost analysis of new environmental policies, the Agency uses estimates of how much people are willing to pay for small reductions in their risks of dying from adverse health conditions that may be caused by environmental pollution."
"In the scientific literature, these estimates of willingness to pay for small reductions in mortality risks are often referred to as the "value of a statistical life.” This is because these values are typically reported in units that match the aggregate dollar amount that a large group of people would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risks of dying in a year, such that we would expect one fewer death among the group during that year on average."
"EPA recommends that the central estimate of $7.4 million ($2006), updated to the year of the analysis, be used in all benefits analyses that seek to quantify mortality risk reduction benefits regardless of the age, income, or other population characteristics of the affected population."
(FWIW, placing a dollar value on life is absolutely necessary in order for any kind of sane optimization, so I completely sympathize with having to use the clever packaging.)
A related example would be which of these two road that are better suited for self-driving cars or similar technologies:
The idea that techology is welcomed with open arms is among many false beliefs. Luddite companies (or countries) are far more influential than individuals, workers, or citizens, often dressing their actions in FUD, regulatory opposition (as here), or buying up (and destroying) competition.
The truth is that companies are interested in promoting their own technologies, where this provides them with some compelling advantage (usually market segmentation, control, or barriers). What they oppose are requirements to adopt technologies imposed externally, or development of disruptive technologies which, again, generally attack their own market interests and/or power.
Japan has had only 5 deaths in the past 45~ years with far more train operation and having bullet trains. With the only fatal occurrence happening due to an earthquake.
(Pre-1960's had only a few accidents, though high fatalities...)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Derailments_in_Japan
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_rail_crash
edit: changed "death" to "deaths due to train accidents"
> The Federal Railroad Administration estimates that were PTC to be installed on thousands of locomotives and tens of thousands of miles of track, it would prevent perhaps 2 percent of the approximately 2,000 collisions and derailments, preventing seven deaths and 22 injuries annually.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-positive...
(That quote is the first I could easily find, and it comes from a George Will article. If anyone suspects ideological distortion, I think they could find more objective sources that will say basically the same thing.)
For comparison, the FDA, EPA, and Department of Transportation use ~$9 million for the statistical value of a human life. If it costs more than that to save, it's considered unreasonable and the funds could be better spent elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...
Why does such technology need to be developed from scratch? Positive Train Control sounds very similar to the in-cab signalling schemes (European Train Control System) in use in Europe on the Eurostar and other high-speed lines, and is continuing to roll out on other lines, would adapting that technology not make a good start?
Does that mean they'd go bankrupt? Could someone then buy them for cheap and implement PTC and take over the business? Sometimes it's nice to entertain the idea of "let them fail".
And it's not like there's some other company or agency waiting to make PTC happen for millions instead of billions.
Pricing (hello Deutsche Bahn, 10x more expensive than buses LOL), service (thumbs up to Austria's Westbahn here), quality of the carriages (again, thumbs up to Westbahn, displacing even the DB ICE trains), WiFi...
(I know, the analogy isn't perfect. Still, I would guess that 90% of a railroad's capital is tied up in track, right of way, signaling, and similar stuff, and only 10% in engines and cars. Saying "let's nationalize the infrasturcture" means nationalizing almost all of the railroad company. Hence my comment that "there's not much left". Your distinction between nationalizing all the company and nationalizing "just the infrastructure" is not much of a difference.)
According to http://www.bnsf.com/about-bnsf/financial-information/form-10...
BNSF has about 85% of their revenue in the tracks and 15% in the trains so your guess isn't far off.
Can you comment on competition for a given route in the current railroad model? I assume railroads control who uses their tracks so they can prevent competitors from serving those routes, is that the case and how does that not constitute some form of monopoly?
Edit: Thank you for the clarification, I had no idea how much railroads had tied up in the infrastructure. It seems that much of the value of a railroad is on the ability to serve certain routes without competition which in hindsight is pretty obvious.
Now take the route from Flagstaff, Arizona, to Los Angeles. BNSF is the only one who serves that route, because they're the only railroad that has tracks to Flagstaff. So BNSF has a monopoly on railroad service to Flagstaff.
But the fact is, there's not enough railroad traffic that originates in Flagstaff to make it economically worthwhile to have two different rail lines.
And in fact, this kind of "monopoly" has always been an issue with rail service. If you have a factory in Chicago, there were something like 18 different railroads that served Chicago back in the day, but only one of them had a track to your door. So you only had one choice for your factory, even though there were 18 railroads in town.
On the other hand: That railroad had a monopoly on your rail service because they built a track to your door (at their expense), and the other 17 railroads didn't. So I have a hard time getting too upset about this kind of "monopoly" as any kind of unfairness.
The fact is, though, the main railroad competition is trucks, not other railroads. (Also barges, for low-speed bulk stuff.) And the trucks (and barges) are running on highways (and waterways) paid for with taxes (including the truck's gasoline taxes), whereas the railroads are paying for their track (and paying taxes on it).
Can you explain what the taxes are for on the rail lines?
In your example could the customer build their own small rail lines to meet up with the existing tracks of BNSF and UP both to allow them to pick who they use to haul freight between Chicago and LA? Does that happen?
I am reminded of a plant tour at a major manufacturer where they had a rail line that ran right into their factory to deliver raw materials, I wonder who owns the rails.
Do railroads have a anything similar to the meet up rooms in carrier hotels where you can move from one rail network to another?
I know they pay property taxes on the land (plus the value of what's on the land). I don't know how much that is, but it's different from a government-owned highway, which pays no taxes.
> In your example could the customer build their own small rail lines to meet up with the existing tracks of BNSF and UP both to allow them to pick who they use to haul freight between Chicago and LA? Does that happen?
There are two parts to the answer here. First, yes, sometimes shippers build a rail line to connect to an existing railroad. Sometimes shippers have their own locomotives to move cars on their track, too.
Second, connecting to two different railroads. This only works (economically) if the two railroads are close to each other. Around Chicago, say, it's easy. In Nevada, not so much. You might have to build two hundred miles of track to get a connection to a different railroad. No matter how bad the freight rates are from the railroad you've got, it's not worth it.
> Do railroads have a anything similar to the meet up rooms in carrier hotels where you can move from one rail network to another?
I'm not sure what "meet up rooms in carrier hotels" are, but yes, railroads have places where traffic moves from one railroad to another.
If UPS can ship Amazon prime packages overnight via rail, I have a hard time buying the argument that I should be taking a flight from Portland to Vancouver because the system can't handle it.
> I have a hard time buying the argument that I should be taking a flight from Portland to Vancouver because the system can't handle it.
Do you really want to sit overnight from Portland to Vancouver on a train as opposed to flying there in an hour and twenty minutes? Most people don't.
People are not meant to be hauled by the modern US railroad. They made different decisions in Europe. To give a technology analogy: Stop trying to use COBOL to write Fortran programs.
In effect, there are basically three separate market duopolies: in the west, you have a choice between UP and BNSF; in the east, NS and CSX; and in the north, CN and CP. On top of this, there's a few hundred smaller railroads that are much more local in scope.
[edit: also remember track sharing and common transport agreements]
How common are track sharing and common transport agreements?
AnimalMuppet did a great job answering the monopoly question elsewhere in the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10510522
Rail competes and works with truck, barge, and air. The US is blessed with a lot of competitive options for transporting goods.
My only beef with BNSF is their continuing attempts to lobby for no more pipelines because of all the money they are making from oil in ND. BNSF needs to review its safety policies but the two ND Senators (one from each party) are keeping up the pressure on that front.
I don't know enough about how the railroads work to comment on how feasible such an arrangement would be.
Does the government currently subsidize railroad maintenance and/or construction?
Edit: Is there a precedent anywhere else in the world for nationalized railways?
Not in the US, except to the degree that government transportation agencies use the tracks of private railroads (not the norm, but it happens) or own them (Amtrak owns the Northeast Corridor, very little anywhere else.
Btw, in Europe many networks are state owned, some are privately owned. By open-access regulation forces every track-owner to open their tracks for a fee to other operators. There's also a distinction between track-owners and track-operators, even if a single company may be both.