BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Remote-controlled freight trains, a controversial new technology already banned in some cities and blamed for several deaths, made their debut in Bakersfield Thursday amid warnings from local railroad engineers, reports the Bakersfield Californian.
Union Pacific Railroad delivered two of the special locomotives to Bakersfield Thursday, two weeks after a company spokesman said the system would not be deployed here.
“It turns out we are doing it in Bakersfield and it will start on Monday,” said Mike Furtney, the railroad’s western region spokesman, correcting an earlier statement by John Bromley, the railroad’s corporate director of public affairs.
“The good news is that it’s well-proven and established technology,” Furtney continued. “It is a very safe system. It has been used for many, many years in Canada and we are confident it will have the same success rate down here.”
Union Pacific launched the technology throughout its system early last year. It will be used mainly in switching yards to move railroad cars and link up sections of train. The company will begin training local ground crews to use the new locomotives Monday, starting with a week of classroom instruction and then a week of hands-on training.
Instead of having an engineer aboard the locomotive directly controlling train movements, the train is controlled remotely by a member of the ground crew — a trainman or switchman — using a control panel worn around the neck, not unlike a radio-controlled model car or plane. Trouble is, critics say, the remote operators may not be able to see obstructions — or people — in a train’s path from where they stand.
Leading the opposition is the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers union, which filed suit against the company last year to stop the technology. The union cautions that people crossing tracks and jumping between cars can be caught off-guard because they assume a train will only move with a human in the cab. It has compiled a list of more than a dozen fatalities that it blames on remote trains, in addition to a number of amputations, collisions and derailments.
“There’s going to be people run over in Bakersfield, I can tell you right now,” said Larry Fredeen, an officer in the Bakersfield local of the United Transportation Union and a Union Pacific conductor. “Especially in the Bakersfield yard, we’ve got tremendous trespasser problems. People are cutting through the yard all the time, walking across the tracks. What you’ll have with these (remote trains) is one end of the locomotive will be completely blind to anybody getting in front of it, and you’ll have people getting run over. It’s that simple.”
Compounding the problem is the fact that the new locomotives are virtually indistinguishable from regular locomotives. The only significant visual cue is a small sticker at each end of the new locomotives warning that they are remotely operated.
Noting that a lot of switching occurs in highly populated urban areas, union members also warn of bigger problems if a collision involves a train carrying hazardous materials.
“This is basically a safety issue that we’re trying to make the public aware of,” said Ronald Marney, legislative representative for the Bakersfield division of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. “It doesn’t take too much for a locomotive to move to cause a lot of damage.”
Furtney said the unions have no evidence to support their claim that remote trains are more accident-prone. The company has blamed the spate of accidents on human error, not the new technology.
“They’re going to continue to try to paint it as something dangerous and evil, which it isn’t,” Furtney said. “We’re going to continue to do it and, in that process, make the Union Pacific a more efficient railroad.”
He said the system will only be used in areas of Bakersfield where the railroad conducts switching operations, though on Thursday he couldn’t precisely define those areas. Train engineer jobs will be displaced by the technology, but Furtney said that will occur through normal attrition, not layoffs.
Several cities have banned remote-controlled locomotives within their boundaries, including Detroit, Mich., and Baton Rouge, La. But Furtney called these actions symbolic because railroads are governed by federal law. The Federal Railroad Administration has issued guidelines for the operation of remote-controlled trains, but no enforceable regulations.
The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway also runs a lot of trains through Bakersfield, but spokeswoman Lena Kent said her railroad has no plans to deploy remote-controlled trains here.