(The Press-Enterprise published the following story by Adam Eventov on its website on September 24.)
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.–With a twist of a dial, railroad operators can now move 150-ton locomotives around the rail yards of San Bernardino County as though they were model trains on an enormous Lionel set.
But the new remote-control technology being implemented by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and Union Pacific has union members steamed.
Since February, BNSF has been installing the computerized devices into locomotives. Union Pacific plans to add the controls to their engines next March.
The football-size remote controls are attached to the belts of rail-yard workers, allowing them to move the locomotives back and forth at a top speed of 10 mph as they add cars to the trains. The system is not going to be used outside the rail yards, according to railroad and federal rail officials.
Remote controls are supposed to make the rail yards safer, because the worker controls train movement from the point where the cars are being joined together.
“The most hazardous operation in a rail is switching within yards,” said Michael Shircliff, general manager of BNSF’s Southern California Division, citing a study by the Federal Railroad Administration.
The remote-control units also reduce rail-yard crews from three people to two people by eliminating the need for an engineer. The United Transportation Union estimates the new technology will eliminate the need for about 7,000 engineers.
The engineers will not lose their jobs but be reassigned, putting those with less seniority at risk of being demoted.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers opposes the system and has asked Colton’s City Council and other cities to pass resolutions against the system, even though railroads fall under federal jurisdiction.
The union claims the system is unsafe and inefficient. Union representatives say conductors using the units are only trained for 13 weeks, compared with the six months of training engineers must have.
“You’ll find accident rates will climb dramatically,” said Timothy L. Smith, chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.
Shircliff said the training is adequate because rail-yard workers don’t encounter the same challenges as engineers controlling locomotives on the main tracks.
Canadian railroads have used the remote-control system since 1989 and have seen the number of accidents drop by as much as 44 percent during a four-year span, according to a report by the Association of American Railroads.
Since 2001, the Federal Railroad Administration has had 60 reports of accidents but found only two were related to the remote-control system.
Those two accidents are still under investigation, said Warren Flatau, administration spokesman.
“In our view, the jury is still out,” said Flatau by telephone.
Some BNSF conductors, including Ted Rhea, 32, of Beaumont, said the new system requires three times as much time to build a train.
James Brunkenhoefer, legislative director for the United Transportation Union, a competitor of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, said the Brotherhood’s opposition may stem from not winning the contract with the major railroads to operate the system.
Brotherhood spokesman John Bentley said his union never had a chance to negotiate for the contract. In a telephone interview, he said his union’s membership has stayed flat but his members are being reassigned to other positions.