Railroads are sitting on two ticking time bombs: autonomous and semi-autonomous trucks. You can't be sure if or when they will go off. But you cannot ignore the potential of this technology to upend the railroad industry. Trucks already have a service advantage. If they gain a cost advantage, too, you can kiss rail traffic goodbye. Which is why railroads want to operate trains with one-person crews and eventually no one aboard on main lines protected by positive train control. It's the natural competitive response to a looming threat. The technology for autonomous operation exists. In remote Australia, mining company Rio Tinto runs crewless trains between mines and port terminals. And New York Air Brake has operated its autonomous system on the Pueblo, Colo., test track. Neither has seen anything like the complex nature of real-world North American railroading. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the technology works and railroads can solve a host of issues related to autonomous operations.
展开▼
