(The following article by Stacie Hamel was posted on the Omaha World-Herald website on October 30.)
OMAHA, Neb. — Motorists stopped at a Council Bluffs railroad crossing might notice something different about some of the locomotives slowly passing by.
There are no engineers inside.
Union Pacific started using remote control locomotives at the Bluffs’ two rail yards earlier this month. The railroad plans to expand RCL to a yard in downtown Omaha, as well as on tracks leading to industrial customers in downtown Omaha, Carter Lake and north Omaha.
No date has been set for the Omaha expansion, a railroad official said. The trains, now operated by engineers, travel from U.P.’s Eighth Street yard to make deliveries and transfer cars at grain and other industrial plants.
The remote control technology allows operators to control locomotives by using radio-transmitters to communicate with onboard computers. The operators – former conductors with an additional 80 hours of training – either ride on or in the locomotives or walk alongside them as they move locomotives and push rail cars into place, adding or dropping them from a train, a task known as switching.
The railroad, which began implementing RCL in yards in 2002, now uses the technology in about 35 of its 44 yards systemwide and in more than 100 industrial areas.
BNSF Railway, U.P.’s competitor in the western United States, has implemented remote control throughout its system, using it in 61 yards, including Lincoln, but not outside the yards, where public crossings are more common, a spokesman said.
The use of remote control outside of rail yards has raised safety concerns at the Federal Railroad Administration and among union members.
“I take issue with remote control use, and I’m concerned with not only my union brothers, but also pedestrians and motorists in Council Bluffs,” said David Sigafoose, a former Bluffs yard conductor who chose to work elsewhere on the railroad rather than work with remote control.
Remote control locomotives travel through public crossings at 16th Street and 9th Avenue, which cut through the Council Bluffs yard. Public crossings at yards where remote control is used are common on U.P.’s system, officials said.
The 16th Street crossing is one of only 16 in U.P.’s system that are monitored by cameras allowing operators to stand hundreds of yards away from a locomotive to view the crossing on TV monitors. RCL trains pass through the 16th Street crossing about 75 times a day.
No camera-monitored zones are planned for Omaha, U.P. officials said.
Sigafoose, a legislative leader for United Transportation Union local 646, said, “If there’s no one up in that locomotive seat, there’s no one to stop the locomotive in time to keep from killing someone. You just don’t have the same reactive time when you’re standing on the ground with a box on your chest a hundred yards away.”
Union Pacific officials said remote control is a proven technology with a better safety record than conventional operations.
“We’re committed to remote control technology as the future of our railroad,” said Bill Holt, general director of remote control operations. “It is our primary method of switching cars.”
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, or FRA, for the three major railroads that account for the majority of RCL operations, accident rates are nearly the same as for conventional operations. The FRA reported a train accident rate of 24.09 per-million-yard-switching-mile for RCL operations compared to 24.52 for conventional operations. Injury rates for the three railroads were 6.58 per-million-yard-switching-mile with RCL, compared with 9.54 for conventional operations.
Still, the FRA has asked the railroad industry to stop expanding remote control to mainline operations and to industrial operations that require trains to move even short distances across mainline tracks.
“The RCL was developed for yard switching,” said Steven Kulm, FRA spokesman. “The railroads then started taking it out of the yard to industrial leads. When we heard that, it resulted in some concerns.”
Holt said U.P. would submit a proposal to the FRA if its plans for the Omaha industrial area exceed boundaries the agency set for speed, power of the locomotive or train length.
The railroad does not notify city officials when it implements RCL, even when its use will involve public crossings or industrial areas.
“We are not under any compulsion to contact the local governments for conversion of our yards to remote control,” Holt said.
Checks with the offices of mayors and other city offices in Council Bluffs and Omaha indicated none knew Union Pacific was implementing remote control locomotives on public road crossings.
“I’m not sure why we weren’t at least advised,” said Greg Reeder, Council Bluffs’ public works director.