The nation’s freight railroads will be able to try to rely more on technology and inspect their tracks in person less after the federal government approved a waiver request on Friday.
The Association of American Railroads trade group asked for a relaxation of the inspection requirements written in 1971 because railroads believe the automated track inspection technology they use today is so good at detecting problems early that frequent human inspections are not needed. They say expanded testing by BNSF and Norfolk Southern shows that safety actually improved even when human inspections were reduced from twice a week to twice a month.
The Federal Railroad Administration did not go that far in its decision, but said the railroad would be able to reduce inspections to just once a week under the approved waiver.
The railways also requested permission for up to three days to fix defects identified by automated inspections. But the Federal Railroad Administration said any serious defects in the tracks must be repaired immediately and all defects must be addressed within 24 hours.
These automated inspection systems use an array of cameras and lasers mounted either on a locomotive or on a train car that can be towed as part of the train to assess whether the tracks are moving out of alignment or changing. But the union that represents track inspectors says the technology can’t detect things like rocks under the track, plants growing in train tracks, a crack in the tracks or rotting railroad ties. In addition, inspectors can detect a host of small defects that together could derail a train where a machine might not register a problem, the union says.
“These are everyday defects across the country that we detect through visual inspections that this machine cannot detect,” said Tony Cardwell, president of the Brotherhood’s Employee Section Union. “And this technology doesn’t exist. It’s been around for 30 years. It hasn’t advanced much at all. It’s a glorified tape measure.”
The Brotherhood of Trail Maintenance Division staffing group, which represents trail inspectors, acknowledges that the technology helps detect problems. But the union says this automated inspection equipment should supplement human inspections, not replace them, because reducing route inspections would increase the risk of derailment.
Railroads counter that even if these systems couldn’t see ballast moving under the tracks or ties starting to rot, the system would notice symptoms of those problems because the track geometry — essentially the alignment of the tracks — would be affected when those things happened.
“What you’re looking at is ultimate performance,” said Mike Rush, senior vice president of safety and operations at the Association of American Railroads. “If these components are doing their job, the track geometry will be maintained. If they don’t do their job, the track geometry will not be maintained.”
When it was wrangling with the Federal Railroad Administration over whether its testing should be extended, BNSF Railroad said that “the technology has proven to be more sensitive and effective in detecting engineering defects in BNSF’s network than the manual visual inspection system mandated by historical regulations.”
Over two years of testing, manual inspections detected just 0.01 defects per 100 miles, compared to the section of railway where testing was conducted where the combination of technology and reduced inspections found 4.54 defects per 100 miles.
The Federal Railroad Administration has agreed that tracks do not need to be visually inspected frequently when these automated track inspection systems are used regularly.
Cardwell and the union’s safety director, Roy Morrison, think this is a bad idea. One benefit of frequent inspections, they said, is that inspectors become intimately familiar with their land, which helps them spot subtle changes. If they don’t get out on the trails often, they said, it can be difficult to spot problems.
“A track inspector who goes out on his main track twice a week knows that track inside out, and a lot of times he’ll spot a defect without even knowing what he’s looking at yet,” Morrison said. “He’ll get out of the truck and say, ‘Hey, something’s wrong here.’ Take some measurements and go, ‘OK, this is what’s going on.’
But the railroad says freeing inspectors from some mandatory on-track inspections will allow them to focus more on switches and other equipment that must be inspected manually. In addition, Norfolk Southern noted in its comments on the application that even if regular inspections are not carried out as is often the case, special inspections will be carried out regularly any time there is a major storm or flood in a particular area to ensure the tracks are not affected.
Norfolk Southern said that during its 18-month test of reducing inspections while using the technology, the railroad saw improvements in areas the automated system couldn’t find because inspectors were free to spend more time focusing on those areas.