First, A “Trigger Warning.” The contents of this post will likely greatly irritate Backshop. He may even be moved to post a mean, spiteful, false personal attack on me. Again. I suggest that he approach with caution.
Second, I do see some issues with the concept. Such as: signal activation, the need to accommodate 53’ containers, the need for a higher speed, and the need to couple with conventional equipment if it breaks down. I’m sure many of you can add more issues if you’re interested. I believe the issues I see can easily be dealt with. Any issues that I don’t see may be significant and hard to deal with.
Let’s start with my favorite underutilized rail line. The CN Iowa line. The line runs west from Chicago and enters Iowa at Dubuque. The line continues across Iowa through Waterloo to Ft. Dodge. Just west of Ft. Dodge it splits into two lines. One line goes to Council Bluffs and the other goes to Sioux City. There are branches from Waterloo to Glenville, MN, from Manchester, IA to Cedar Rapids, IA and from Wall Lake, IA to Ida Grove, IA.
The line has only two scheduled manifest trains. One per day each way between Kirk yard (Effectively Chicago) and Waterloo. The line also handles unit trains of ethanol and grain. Everything else is served by locals. There is no intermodal service offered on CN’s Iowa line. The line
The one-car or group of automous cars train is not crewed. Automatic train oprtation is sinmply never going vto be legal and safe on any railroad with infenced and at-grade right-of way. Complete isolation as in rapid transit systems and within land owned by the coirpration that is the customer and/or owner of the railroad are possible, and CN, former IC, western line c definitely fails the separation requirement.
2, CN shoukld get off its lazy butt and go after the business. Don’t need automatic cars. Sufficirny business for a regular daily train.
This objection is stated every time autonomous operation is brought up, but it is never explained in a way that justifies it. Can you please explain, for the first time ever, what a crew will do to overcome the safety issues that you see with autonomous trains?
Tell me exactly why a right of way fence is needed for autonomous trains, but not for crewed trains.
This point seems like an argument put forth by people who simply oppose autonomous running because it threatens labor.
So do the potential customers, at both ends, have to invest in equipment to load/unload the containers off the rail vehicle? I guess they would have to have chassis available for the time the containers are off the rail and in the truck docks at their facility. Most already have yard tractors, so that’s not a problem. Or will they run from intermodal terminal to intermodal terminal? That just adds more problems for handling from customer to customer. Not insurmountable, but not really convenient.
Once, or maybe if, autonomous trucks are everywhere this will be obsolete. I’m not even sure without autonomous trucking this will take much off the highways.
Like so many jobs or processes, the techies see one part, usually the easiest part, to automate. They don’t realize that often there’s more than meets the eye.
Euclid-- This is so obvious that you really surprise me with a lack of understanding. By fence, one that does not just discoyurage trsspassers, but actually prevents tresspassing. And of course no grade crossings.
Withouit such separation, unforeseen incidents occur regularly, and automatic operation will never totally account for them. My estimate would be reduction of unforeseen incidents from one per-hundred trips to one per-ten-thousand trips.
We are assduming in both cases very careful train assembly, no empty well cars separating heafvily loadeed cars, etc.
Okay, so a fence will reduce trespassing and thus reduce accidents. I get that. Without a fence, and with grade crossings, people and cars will get into the fouling zone of a train and get hit. It will make no difference whether the train is operated by a human on board or by autonomous running. In either case, the train simply cannot stop in time.
It has been deemed perfectly okay that a human engineer cannot stop the train in time because it is the responsibility of pedestrians and drivers to yield. So if people follow the law, there is no need for a fence.
Yet it is not okay that an autonomous system is unable to stop the train in time while it is the responsibility of pedestrians and driver to yield.
Those who have been following the tech will be amused, but not particularly surprised, to see that the moron idea of ‘autonomous bogies’ using the container as a stressed member has been ‘reconsidered’ so there is now a perimeter frame with corner support and presumably twistlocks. It seems they are using a physical probe-type sensor to govern the platooning, probably to go through several further rounds of ‘reconsideration’ before they get something rational.
Strangely they remain entirely ignorant of the possibility that, now that they have a structural frame and a ginormous traction battery/cap system, they can implement the emergency magnetic track-brake system that Erik and I were discussing in a couple of the interminable Bucky emergency-brake-desirability timeless-topic threads. Program the platoon to fire emergency from ‘last car’ to ‘lead’ a few milliseconds apart so that any with ‘impaired’ brake implementation come into smooth contact and can be decelerated with appropriate modulation. And no flat wheels.
As with the Weems electric railroad for M&E in the 1890s, the elephant in the room is physical security for the autonomous container loads. Where there is none for crewed stack trains, imagine the fun with conservatively-programmed and more than a little ‘dumb’ AI models…
Do a search on “autonomous automobiles” and pay attention to the accident reports.
Yes, they are sharing the road with everyone else, but not always successfully, and it isn’t usually the “other guy’s” fault.
Such operation on a single track line will require the ability to conduct meets. Individual autonomous vehicles will end up in sidings, waiting for opposing traffic.
Out on the plains, you’re talking cattle country, with all that entails.
The autonomous railcar idea has merit, but we aren’t there yet, nor will we be for a while.
Lets say we have a line for autonomous operations. Two hundred miles long with 20 customers at each and and 20 customers spaced at locations along the 200 miles.
Each of these 60 customers ship and recieve from all the other customers in carload lots.
How does autonomous schedule, originate, move and deliver these cars? What support facilities will be required to make this a self sustaining operation?
Transportation is simple when dealing with single events at a time. When dealing with a multiplicity of events at the same time it begins to become infinately more complex.
All I will say (I wouldn’t want to disappoint Greyhounds) is that it would take more than the revenue from the one route to cover all the R&D costs associated with having autonomous rail cars.
Actually, most of the “R&D cost” of these things doesn’t matter. There is over $37 million of VC money already in Parallel Systems (probably more now) and ALL the heavy lifting for Level 4 autonomy will be developed by the automobile/truck/aircraft groups with far more market potential than any railroad application.
My point is that autonomous autos do not always recognize problems. I have little doubt that the same will be true of autonomous railcars. A 100+ ton railcar (or several) zipping down the line all by itself doesn’t need any challenges like trespassers, animals, objects thrown on the tracks, etc.
I’m not talking about the software. Even just engineering self-propelled railcars with onboard motive power wouldn’t be cheap, especially for such a limited use.