Trains and autonomous vehicles

My son, Robin, gave me the idea for this blog post, suggesting on Facebook that he enjoyed hearing about PTC (Positive Train Control) and autonomous vehicles.

As my readers know, my slant is conservative, and generally against those who would throw their support behind ideas without thinking them through; ideas like self-driving cars and engineer-less (that’s what Positive Train Control is, really) trains. Here’s a slant I never thought about.

Public radio in Michigan is reporting a study done by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) that says a third to a half of rail passengers could migrate to self-driving vehicles by the year 2040. The study, as reported, is silent on whether railroad freight might also jump to self-driving trucks. (Here’s the link to the original article: https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/transportation-travel-tourism-automotive-will-autonomous-vehicles-derail-trains/ )

Before we get all hell bent on taking measures to counter this disastrous trend, let’s take a step back and look at what’s really being said: Up to a half of those people currently taking public transportation that includes rail, light rail, or rail-based rapid transit might jump to all road (no rail) trips by about two dozen years from now. I view this statement as equivalent to stating that there will be three to five flights to Mars by a self-driving rocket by 2040.

I personally think that predictions have to be looked at in terms of what those predictions are based upon. In this case, they are based upon the assumption that self-driving vehicles ranging from six-passenger cars to medium sized buses will be practical well before 2040. If you look at it logically, it has to be substantially well before 2040.

In today’s passenger business, barring disasters, loss of business no matter what the cause is rarely more than 1% per year. This low loss rate is, in part, attributable to the human attribute of habit. People don’t readily change their habitual way of going about things, and this includes getting from point A to point B. Even if the lure of autonomous vehicles were to generate five times this, we’d have to see proven safe autonomous vehicle operation in major cities and on major highways by 2030.

Got news: That’s less than 14 years away. If the loss of rail passengers to AVs is less than five times the usual maximum, we would be looking at needing proven tech being up and running right now to get to half.

Then there is PTC. Right now, Congress just wants us all to be safe, but keep a driver in the cab of the train, and, of course, keep voting for them. However, with PTC as it is being developed, there is absolutely no reason that driverless trains could not be in operation far sooner than driverless road vehicles. They could be in operation on some routes today! Why?

Railroad trains are already self-steering. Only the starting, stopping, and speed are in the control of the driver. With most modern railroads’ signaling systems, even before PTC, the routing is in the hands of dispatchers already far removed from the location where a switch is thrown and a train actually changes lines. With road vehicles, there is a quantum leap in the necessary technology and processing power for a vehicle to follow the route, let alone avoid other vehicles, pedestrians, and unexpected obstacles on city streets—like bicyclists—stop for random signals and stop signs, yield signs, etc.

Unless we make roads completely protected rights of way. But then you are just running different kinds of trains on a different kind of track.

What this prediction is really saying, then, is that up to half the people who currently ride trains will be riding autonomous vehicles, which, in my mind, include trains that have been converted to driverless PTC control, by 2040. I might be 93 then, and still wanting to ride trains.

©2016 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)