With shedding union employees being a chronic obsession of the railroads, some of them have given credence to schemes to run trains ‘autonomously’. While not having a serious chance of implementation at scale, these autonomous follies can soak up public funding (e.g.: $6MM to Parallel Systems) and the time of regulators and business development staff.
RWU has authored a Resolution Against Pod Trains (linked above and below) to detail exhaustively the reasons ‘pod trains’ as a wasteful diversion. Neither the economics, the technology, nor the operating plan pans out, and the federal government needs to stop funding this now.
What makes this even more urgent is that public agencies that don’t know better – particularly the California Air Resources Board – are citing autonomous trains as a step toward achieving zero emissions. Again – this is drawing focus to a tech-fantasy rather than putting age-old technology to work – overhead wire-powered locomotives, likely with some on-board battery capability.
Autonomy in rail will lose favor as people learn more about it. Railroads need to give up on an expensive, dangerous, and fragile autonomous future and instead stop alienating their employees who run trains in the real world.
RWU Resolution Against Autonomous Pod Trains
Below are two factually entertaining YouTube videos explaining and lampooning Parallel Systems, the most prominent freight rail autonomy scheme to date: