CSX expects PTC to pave way for 1-person crews; autonomous operations

This is only the beginning in railroading and many other industries. The start of using robots has been going on for some years and the automation of more and more tasks in industry. The time is here. 

Dave

I wonder how many people have to be killed before they realize the fallacy of this point of view.

John McEnerney posted:

I wonder how many people have to be killed before they realize the fallacy of this point of view.

I will never ride in an autonomous auto.

I don't even like riding as a passenger when someone else is driving.

If I was coming up today I doubt I would have become a railfan. There is nothing much in today's railroad scene that turns me on. Today's passenger locomotives and cars are all butt-ugly in my eyes, Amtrak is a joke outside of the NEC and every freight train seems to be pulled by a look-alike GE brick in one of the 4 or 5 remaining Class 1 paint schemes.

The two railroads in my neck of the woods are CSX and NS. CSX is not a name, it's a stock symbol and basic black is fine for steam locomotives but black diesels are boring and bring back bad memories of Penn Central.

Aside from the UP, it appears that main line steam (765 on Metra being a rare and welcome exception) is pretty much a thing of the past.

I'm glad I got to see the variety that I did, when I did.

Shouldn't be a big surprise, this has been the trend with railroads for years. In the steam era, having helper engines meant having crews in each engine, in the diesel era you needed only 1 crew because of MU capability. In the original era of trains they need brakemen to put the brakes on, with the air brake the engineer did it. Railroads used to have people at trackside checking trains for hotboxes, these days that can be monitored from the can of a train via sensors and video cameras. A steam engine needed an engineer and fireman, that kind of transferred over to diesels, but a fireman was really just another body in the cab if what a friend of mine who had been one told me. Lot of subway systems run by computer and the engineer is only a backup. Airliners have had the capability to be flown by an automated system for many years now, but is not likely to be automated any time soon, though you could see a plane where a single pilot is a backup (they used to have 3 people in the cockpit, today it is 2...

My biggest question with PTC has and always will remain: how will they ensure it's secure? The government has always and continues to consider the railroads one of the most likely, most vulnerable, and most tempting targets for terrorists or unfriendly nations to attack. When Trump came to town a few week ago the railroad I work for got shut down and Secret Service Agents watched over my train for the duration of his stay as it had quite a lot of very nasty hazmat. If They are worried about boots on the ground using the railroads as weapons, I would love to know why they are not worried about a computer system one could hack from anywhere on the planet which could be used to weaponize the railroads, or simply shut them down and bring our economy to a halt. I've heard the "it's not possible to hack PTC" or "no way it could be used like that" but every computer system is hack-able, and I can think of a few ways one could use it to halt rail operations or weaponize a railroad. It's a very concerning thought to me. 

"I will never ride in an autonomous auto."

If you live long enough, you may have the choice of an autonomous auto or walking/bicycling.  Already we have almost all autos with automatic forward braking, and many with automatic reverse braking.  Lane keeping functions.  Ability to maintain distance from the car in front of you with automatic braking (via cruise control).  Pretty soon the electronics will stop you from tailgating.  Not far away from full autonomy.

The reason is quite simple.  Almost all auto accidents and train fatalities are due to human error.  Probably close to 100% as opposed to system failures.  We're talking tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of serious injuries, hundreds of billions of wasted dollars.  You will be infinitely safer in an auto when no human interventions are needed, including your own, no matter how good a driver you are.

If you live long enough, you may have the choice of an autonomous auto or walking/bicycling.  Already we have almost all autos with automatic forward braking, and many with automatic reverse braking.  Lane keeping functions.  Ability to maintain distance from the car in front of you with automatic braking (via cruise control).  Pretty soon the electronics will stop you from tailgating.  Not far away from full autonomy.

On the other hand, while riding on the NYS Thruway yesterday afternoon our car, with all those features and more, lost track of a motorcycle that was in the left lane near us.
I am glad to have those features, but relying on them too heavily can be dangerous.

"I am glad to have those features, but relying on them too heavily can be dangerous."

Perhaps at present, but the most dangerous strategy is relying solely on the unreliable human being behind the wheel as technical fixes for that unreliability become available. We know that this leads to tens of thousands of deaths per year and terrible suffering of many. Every day on my short commute I see multiple acts of driving stupidity and lack of skill/understanding.  I look forward to living long enough to see these individual acts of incompetence and selfishness curtailed by technology.

Every day on my short commute I see multiple acts of driving stupidity and lack of skill/understanding.  I look forward to living long enough to see these individual acts of incompetence and selfishness curtailed by technology.

Agreed, and it's getting worse all the time.
I think today's cars have too many distractions. Dashboards with touch screens is a good example. Then there are cell phones and texting. Until the technology is ready, it would be great if law enforcement would crack down on distracted driving.

Technically, they could run unmanned trains today, but railroads, more so than most industries, are exposed to liability for safety of the public, which is not only a legal and financial issue, but also a political issue, as railroads are regulated by government agencies which, in turn, are authorized and directed by elected politicians.

Therefore, I do not personally believe that unmanned trains on other than private railroads are a likelihood.  Just my opinion.

Meant as a question, not a challenge.  Do remote controlled trains count as "unmanned?"  There's a UP operated yard near where I work that has signs all over it stating (paraphrasing from memory).  "Enter with caution.  Remote controlled trains operate in this area."

Having five years of experience as a freight conductor definitely does not make me an expert, but single person crews would make me extremely uncomfortable between the rails. We all know the expression, "like a freight train," it takes a crew to safely move all that tonnage.

"Autonomous auto," then put me out to pasture and shoot me between the eyes, I drive with manual transmissions, with the top down when available, one of the few pleasures left from the old days long past.

I am looking forward to self driving cars.  I believe that they will make the transportation experience better and safer for everyone.  

Amtrak already has one person engine crews.  It is just a matter of time before it happens to freight trains.  Railroads will continue to change along with the rest of the economy.  Hopefully, new jobs that we can't imagine right now will emerge to take the place of those that will be lost.

NH Joe

Landsteiner posted:

...Every day on my short commute I see multiple acts of driving stupidity and lack of skill/understanding.  I look forward to living long enough to see these individual acts of incompetence and selfishness curtailed by technology.

God forbid we should attempt to teach people the right way to do things. Naw...let the computer do it.

The dumbing down of America continues unabated...  

I experience too many computer failures every day to ever trust my life to one.

palallin posted:

I experience too many computer failures every day to ever trust my life to one.

All of us are already trusting computers computers with our lives nearly every day.  Whenever we get on an airplane, ride on a train, drive on a street with stop lights, have any kind of major surgery, call 911, turn on the power to our houses, or do almost anything in modern day living, computers are in control.  NH Joe

This is just asking for it.I do not see any good coming from a move like this.There is to much that could go wrong.

It's only a matter of time. They are testing tractor/trailers not having any drivers. Those test so far are going well. 

Dave

Landsteiner posted:

"I will never ride in an autonomous auto."

If you live long enough, you may have the choice of an autonomous auto or walking/bicycling.  Already we have almost all autos with automatic forward braking, and many with automatic reverse braking.  Lane keeping functions.  Ability to maintain distance from the car in front of you with automatic braking (via cruise control).  Pretty soon the electronics will stop you from tailgating.  Not far away from full autonomy.

The reason is quite simple.  Almost all auto accidents and train fatalities are due to human error.  Probably close to 100% as opposed to system failures.  We're talking tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of serious injuries, hundreds of billions of wasted dollars.  You will be infinitely safer in an auto when no human interventions are needed, including your own, no matter how good a driver you are.

This is nothing but thinly disguised political diatribe, this person wants a utopian fantasy world to live in.
Posters like this are why I will no longer be participating or contributing  to this forum.
I have made a living for 35 years, driving various types of motor vehicles, I don't need to be insulted by the intellectually ignorant.
Good day.

Posters like this are why I will no longer be participating or contributing  to this forum.

Your loss.

If you live long enough, you may have the choice of an autonomous auto or walking/bicycling.  Already we have almost all autos with automatic forward braking, and many with automatic reverse braking.  Lane keeping functions.  Ability to maintain distance from the car in front of you with automatic braking (via cruise control).  Pretty soon the electronics will stop you from tailgating.  Not far away from full autonomy.

Except that old vehicles continue to be operated on public roads and most, if not all of those features can be turned off.

Interesting thought on tailgating. Our newer car has a feature whereby it's cruise control can be set to follow a car automatically at one, two, or three car lengths. Seems a little too close for my taste at highway speeds.

"This is nothing but thinly disguised political diatribe, this person wants a utopian fantasy world to live in."

This is the sort of response with which every technical advance in history has been met.  Mechanized agriculture, the automobile, in vitro fertilization are examples.  We realize that these advances will cause certain jobs to disappear and be replaced by new jobs of a different sort.  These facts don't make it easy for those whose methods of earning a living will cease to exist.  My sympathies, but change is inevitable.  Tens of thousands of lives will be saved each year and incalculable suffering mitigated by the changes that are coming, just in the USA alone.  That's more important than anyone's personal needs or preferences.  Sorry.

C W Burfle posted:

Every day on my short commute I see multiple acts of driving stupidity and lack of skill/understanding.  I look forward to living long enough to see these individual acts of incompetence and selfishness curtailed by technology.

Agreed, and it's getting worse all the time.
I think today's cars have too many distractions. Dashboards with touch screens is a good example. Then there are cell phones and texting. Until the technology is ready, it would be great if law enforcement would crack down on distracted driving.

Speaking of distractions...I haven't watched The Simpsons in years, but all of this is nicely summed up from :21 to the end. 

Tom 

"I have made a living for 35 years, driving various types of motor vehicles, I don't need to be insulted by the intellectually ignorant."

Your anger won't change the future.  Driving motor vehicles probably won't totally disappear as a task, it will just be from a virtual reality perspective instead of inside the vehicle.  We don't have coopers, wheelrights and blacksmiths in the numbers we used to, but they still exist.

New Haven Joe posted:

palallin posted:

I experience too many computer failures every day to ever trust my life to one.

All of us are already trusting computers computers with our lives nearly every day.  Whenever we get on an airplane, ride on a train, drive on a street with stop lights, have any kind of major surgery, call 911, turn on the power to our houses, or do almost anything in modern day living, computers are in control.  NH Joe

Over and above the fact that I don't fly (because of serious motion sickness), people are involved in every one of these case.  There are still pilots, engineers, doctors, dispatchers, and plant operators.

Landsteiner posted:

  We don't have coopers, wheelrights and blacksmiths in the numbers we used to, but they still exist.

Wrong again: all of those profession still exist, if in reduced numbers.  I happen to know a number of people making a living in each one.

C W Burfle posted:

Except that old vehicles continue to be operated on public roads and most, if not all of those features can be turned off.

Interesting thought on tailgating. Our newer car has a feature whereby it's cruise control can be set to follow a car automatically at one, two, or three car lengths. Seems a little too close for my taste at highway speeds.

My daily driver is a '69 Chevy pickup.

Those distances are too close.

"all of those profession still exist, if in reduced numbers.  "

My point exactly .  Vastly reduced numbers, of course. There were no software engineers, neurosurgeons, airline pilots, etc. in the early part of the 20th century.  In the mid to late 21st century there will be all sorts of jobs, some not yet even guessed at,  to replace the current large number of retail clerks, truck drivers, toll booth attendants and so on who may be reduced in number but still around in smaller numbers after further technical advances.

"There are still pilots, engineers, doctors, dispatchers, and plant operators."

And they are all heavily dependent on computers for their work, and their work is more effective, efficient and safer because of these computers in almost all ways.

"Our newer car has a feature whereby it's cruise control can be set to follow a car automatically at one, two, or three car lengths."

I think we both own Subarus.  The Eyesight system actually maintains much larger intervals than that although there are only three or four spacing choices.  I just leave it at the maximum spacing. At 60-65 mph it's more like 6-7 car lengths when you choose the longest spacing, at least on my Outback. 

It's amazing how the automatic braking in this system slows you rapidly to a stop 10-20 feet behind the car in front of you, should you not be paying attention.  I found this out by hovering my foot over the brake many times and it has worked every time.  Great system that could, in the future,  prevent tailgating if it were on all the time.  Currently the automatic braking only works under about 25-35 mph, I believe,  unless you have the cruise control on and have set the spacing interval.  A terrific safety feature.  Does take getting used to.

I think we both own Subarus.  The Eyesight system actually maintains much larger intervals than that although there are only three or four spacing choices.  I just leave it at the maximum spacing. At 60-65 mph it's more like 6-7 car lengths when you choose the longest spacing, at least on my Outback. 

Legacy Sedan with Eyesight. I was going by what the salesman told us.
It's my wife's car and so far I haven't driven it on the highway. Just on secondary roads not suitable for cruise. She prefers to use the traditional cruise control.
I drive a Subaru too. Mine is a Forester. Too old to have any of those features.

It seems some of you guys would rather live in the 18th century. There is nothing wrong with technology, it has saved more lives than anything in history.

My daily driver is a 2017 Hyundai Tuscan SUV. It is by far the best vehicle I have ever owned. I would never drive a old vehicle on a everyday basis. 

My dads friends who worked for the railroad told him the best day for them was when steam engines went to the dead line then to scrap. Technology marches on. 

Dave

"Just on secondary roads not suitable for cruise. "

I would have thought the same, but on country roads and even in town, using the cruise control and setting the speed control at the speed limit or 5 mph above, the car pretty much drives itself in terms of acceleration, deceleration and stopping.  You control turns .   

Probably not as suitable for stop and go traffic as the acceleration is very gradual .  But it works fine on country road with 40-55 mph speed limits, slowing when someone enters the road ahead of you,  and bringing you to a stop at red lights when there is a car ahead of you.

I'm sure that there are a few folks who were very happy that Captain "Sully" could handle his aircraft in a very unusual situation. I'm with Rich. I've always been happy to have learned "stick shift" driving in the hills of West Virginia. Dodging deer and drunks on these curvy roads have helped with honing driving  skills!

Ed

"Dodging deer and drunks on these curvy roads have helped with honing driving  skills!"

No doubt but here are two thoughts to consider.  (1) Laser radar or other detection methods can detect and react to a deer much faster than any human being can,  and then much more rapidly apply brakes/steer to avoid a collision.  (2) If cars were autonomous you wouldn't need to dodge drunks because they wouldn't be in charge of a vehicle.

I've always been happy to have learned "stick shift" driving in the hills of West Virginia.

I drive a 5 speed manual. So did my wife until the very heavy clutch pedal and brake pedal on her turbocharged Outback got to be too much for her. Both my sons learned to drive and took their drivers tests in cars with 5 speed manual transmissions. They both have cars with standards.
I still think the features that Subaru Eyesight provides are great. When my Forester needs replacement, my next car will probably be another Subaru with Eyesight.

Tom Tee posted:

It's here now in a limited fashion.  While driving on the south side of Lafayette IN.  I saw a sign at a grade crossing, " watch out for the locomotive.  It is unmaned" or something close. 

My relative living there says the freight moves are done from an office somewhere.  No engineer on board.

Felt real weird!

Those FRA-required signs warn that remote controlled locomotives are in use.  Several railroad rules require that the remote control operator protect the leading end of movements, so they cannot just shove out onto the crossing without proper protection for autos.

Ed Mullan posted:

I'm sure that there are a few folks who were very happy that Captain "Sully" could handle his aircraft in a very unusual situation....

Ed, I'm glad you mentioned Sully. I had not thought of that wonderful example. If this had been a pilot-less "autonomous" aircraft, everyone aboard it would be dead now, along with a lot of people on the ground.

These emergency situations are the kinds of things that technology simply cannot deal with, no matter how advanced it might be. Inevitably there will be situations presented to a vehicle (truck car, train, aircraft, whatever) that the software was not written to deal with.

The biggest, most perplexing problem presented to any software engineer is that of "error checking." What happens when things don't go as they should? Error checking within a software program has to anticipate EVERY POSSIBLE ERROR that could occur and have a routine written to deal with it.

Anticipating EVERY POSSIBLE ERROR in ANY software program is absolutely impossible. This is the "dirty little secret" that the technology proponents don't want to talk about.

There are a lot of things intersecting here, combination of what technology can/can't do and also the impact that technology has, along with (not surprisingly) people's fears for the future. 

Technologically,  automated control is nothing new, a lot of the modern era metros (Bart, Washington DC originally) as far as I know rely on automated train control, as for example do the monorails that run at airports and such. Some of them,like the BART system, have an operator but they are a backup in case something goes wrong. The DC system points out some of the issues of technology, they suspended automated operation in 2009 because of an accident with fatalities (the actual automated train control was working, the problem was the sensors they use to detect trains trackside failed, and the train that read ended the stationary train basically couldn't 'see it'...on the other hand, as we have seen with engineer controlled trains, failures of standard track signals have caused collisions, too, whether a human engineer or an automated train control, they rely on feedback systems that may malfunction (everything from fog obscuring the track ahead, to signals not displaying properly). 

Most people don't even realize the amount that supposedly "manually" driven things are not. Modern fighter aircraft, everything beyond the early 1970s, are aerodynamically unstable, so the pilot is basically flying a plane where what they request the plane to do is controlled by automated systems, they are not directly controlling the flaps and aerilons or the rudder, rather they request what they want to do and the computer system translate that into instructions to the flight surfaces that are rapidly adjusting them, if you tried to fly one of those 'by wire', literally the pilot tried to control the angle on the elevator or the aerilons, it would crash. Drive by wire exists on vehicles today, where the operator turns the wheel, and it is translated into electro-mechanical control of the wheels by computer system.  Modern passenger airliners are much the same, Captain Sully's skill was very real, but when he was using the control yoke on that aircraft, trying to land it, computer systems were handling the actual control surfaces the same way they do on jet fighters from what i know (I am sure of it with Jet fighters, my father worked on the F15 as an engineer, and uncle was an engineer at Grumman who produced the F14, pretty sure with modern era Boeing and Airbus aircraft). 

The real problem is what kind of risk are we willing to take and how do we ameliorate it? For example, with the Metro crash, the problem (to me) was a single point of failure, with the trackside sensors there was no way to know if one was defective, and they apparently don't do redundancy (want to know why fighter planes aren't failing all the time despite being controlled by computer fly by wire systems? Because the military requires several levels of redundancy, and the pilot has all kinds of diagnostics that tell them when something is going wrong). A PTC system is only as good as the components on it, if a single bad sensor can cause a crash it is a crap design, or one that cannot tell someone it is failing (for example, with trackside block sensors, if they had half a brain they would have them networked, and have some sort of "challenge/response", and if a sensor doesn't ack the message, it is reported as down and appropriate action taken, like warning trains in that block that the system is down and to use different rules . If a train is automated control, this is likely where an engineer would take over, likely the automated system would stop the train if told there was a problem, and the engineer would take over under some sort of other rules I would assume).  My concern about automated train control and PTC is how the system is designed, there is just too much beancounter driven "satisfice" with how things are implemented, which work great if they are fully working, but have little redundancy (it could be PTC has all kinds of fail safes, I don't know much about it, but I remain suspicious, safety to companies generally is seen as 'a cost', not a benefit, that hasn't changed much over time). 

As far as technology being the cause of accidents, while I am not sold on self driving vehicles, especially in crowded areas (primarily to be honest because being a driver for now close to 40 years, I have seen how bad some people drive), no system is foolproof, and human beings are a lot more fallible than automated systems in a lot of cases. For example, road deaths number around 40,000 a year, and from experience with a rescue squad a lot of those are caused by human failings, DUI (even today), distracted driving (texting, fiddling with something, eating, you name it), or judgement calls (idiots in SUVs doing 70mph in snow and ice, because "I have AWD").A self driving car won't have most of these problems, they don't drink, they don't drop a cigarette or a hot coffee in their lap, they don't text, they don't stare at their navigation screen, or whatever.

They also don't get tired, driver fatigue, both in trucks and cars, is a major source of accidents. An automated system also will have much quicker 'reflexes' and can "see' much better than a human being can. If you look at what causes fatalities on the road, if you look at what causes accidents, there is no doubt that an automated system will remove a lot of them....so the real question is if an automated control system can handle not only road conditions, but also the reactions quite frankly of human drivers that don't always drive well, do unexpected things, and how well can the control system handle that, or other weirdness? What kind of certification testing is required on these control systems, and do you trust the corporate beancounters to follow them or game them (Volkswagon, anyone, with emissions certification/control? Would you trust a next generation Roger Smith to care about safety more or getting profits any way they can). My problem isn't driverless cars, as much as I love to drive, it is that I don't trust either the industry or the government to require the kind of things that make it safe.  That said, though,I suspect once they are perfected (and they aren't yet IMO), while I am sure there will be accidents and yes, deaths, and some of them may be faulty technology or defects or breaks (then again, in a car today, brakes fail, steering joints break, transmissions fail, all of which can lead to accidents and deaths, especially if a car is poorly maintained), eliminating drunk driving, distracted driving, gabbing on the phone, eating, etc, will cause a huge decrease in accidents while the amount caused by tech failure will be a tiny fraction of that. 

I don't think driverless vehicles are going to be common for a while and there is going to be resistance, both from people and for political reasons (with driverless trucks especially, with the loss of significant jobs, is going to cause pushback even assume they work correctly), but it eventually is likely to happen. Not sure how that will play out, if they will eventually ban manual driving, not sure.  The real issue is going to be where jobs are involved, whether it be taxi or limo services, or trucking (or trains), rather than safety I suspect, technology has always supplanted jobs, the real question that no one has answered (and I am not going to,because a lot of it is political) is that with new technology it wiped out some jobs, craft workers replaced by factory hands as one example, it also tended to create a whole new score of others (for example, with mass production, producing parts on a mass scale at other factories, which involved labor), the real question is that with technology today, the new jobs created around the technology are being done by technology, too (put it this way, an automated factory requires a fraction of the labor of a traditional factory, and even if you factor in the people employed in the new factories, the people who create the technology (computer programming/support, network engineering, robotic tech), it is not likely to replace the jobs lost, pure and simple, there will be new classes of jobs created, as there was in the past, it is just that the numbers are not likely to add up and figuring out how to increase efficiency/safety/etc via automation but maintain a flowing economy, I leave that up to the experts. 

Getting back to the original thread, train crews have been diminishing since there were trains. The air brake got rid of a lot of the brakemen jobs, with the advent of a diesel engine you no longer needed a traditional fireman or fully crewed helper engines bc of M/U, modern sensors and video has further cut down or eliminated the roles of brakemen and/or conductors, computer controlled and routed trains has eliminated a lot of the jobs associated with the actual shipping and making up/breaking down trains, containerized loads has changed things, too.  I don't know if I like the idea of totally automated trains on any large scale, if they are controlled remotely, they can be subject to hacking and terrorism, and nothing automated is going to be 100% totally reliable or accident free, so having a person there makes sense.  I will add might be a bit boring for the engineer if they are just the backup per se, the way I think that driverless cars might be. 

"This is the "dirty little secret" that the technology proponents don't want to talk about."

There aren't any secrets about this.  Occasionally even the best technology will fail, as you say. But airlines are a bad example in my view.  Highly trained, highly paid pilots plus extraordinary technology have made major airline disasters vanishingly rare.  We would be idiots to mess with that, except by adding additional technology and still having at least two pilots on any commercial flight. It's working.  End of story.

However, the current technology wedding cars and drivers is failing utterly and completely.  30,000 deaths per year, 100s of billions of dollars in medical expenses and property damage, not to mention incalculable suffering,  demonstrate that the current model is an abysmal failure.  Unless we can employ highly trained and disciplined drivers and high technology, as we have now on the airlines, nothing will change.  We are not going to make 100 million+ drivers competent to drive, attentive to the road, never drinking alcohol or doing drugs.  The only solution to these millions of preventable deaths over a lifetime is better technology, not better drivers.  It's one thing to have a few thousand great pilots paid $100-300,000 dollars per year.  We're not going to be able to do that for 200 million automobiles, are we?