Well, I put a bee in Jim Vena’s bonnet when I wrote that railroads should thank the Federal Railroad Administration for its new two-person train crew rule. The thrust of that column last month: Service would suffer if the Class I railroads were to go to engineer-only operation because of delays related to having ground-based conductors respond to mechanical failures on the line of road.
The Union Pacific CEO says that take is wrong on three levels. First, Vena says, consider the big picture. If autonomous or semi-autonomous trucks take to the highways, railroads would need to respond to the competitive threat by reducing their costs. Second, you can’t stop the march of technology. Third, railroads would be smart about this. Rather than go all-in, they’d use a go-slow approach and take conductors out of the cab only when and where it makes sense.
Vena, in an interview in Chicago this month, emphasized that Union Pacific is not looking at shifting to one-person crews. The new regulation and current labor agreements would prohibit it, and Vena says he’d rather concentrate on modernizing work rules to give the railroad more operational flexibility and UP train crews more predictable schedules.
But things can change, and right now the U.S. Department of Transportation is working at cross purposes. On the one hand, it’s bending over backward to encourage the development of autonomous trucks, as well as systems that would allow one driver to control a platoon of big rigs. On the other hand it’s telling railroads they can’t go from two crew members to one despite technological advances like positive train control and locomotive cruise control systems that can automatically start, run, and stop trains.
Regulators want a successful railroad system, Vena says, and the last thing they’d like to see is freight shift to highways from rail. Yet that’s precisely what would happen if there’s widespread adoption of some level of self-driving trucks. Trucking costs would plummet and railroads would no longer be able to compete on price or service.
“We need to be ready for that. You can’t have your head in the sand and wake up one day and have a big piece of your competition that is much more efficient than you are. That’s what it’s all about,” Vena says.
And one way to reduce costs and boost efficiency is the use of one-person crews. Railroads could save anywhere from $989 million to $1.97 billion annually, according to an Oliver Wyman analysis that evaluated the savings under two different scenarios. The first would be taking the conductor out of the cab only on trains that don’t stop to set out or pick up cars en route. The second would be removing conductors from all trains that operate on high-density main lines.
The projected cost-savings from engineer-only operation are nothing to sneeze at, although labor costs have been diminishing on a per-train basis as railroads move their tonnage on fewer but longer trains. Truckers get far more bang for the labor buck by removing drivers from the equation.
Regardless of how the savings pencil out, Vena says technology will continue to improve and that railroads should take advantage of it. “Can we get to one person crews? Absolutely,” he says. “The technology will take us there.”
Many of the same safety arguments you hear against single-person crews today were made back in the 1980s when railroads sought to replace cabooses with end of train devices, Vena points out. Back then the skeptics insisted that a $4,500 metal box that monitors brake pressure and train speed could never replace the eyes, ears, and noses of the conductors and brakemen who kept a watchful eye from the cupola or bay window.
Vena began his railroad career as a brakeman on Canadian National in Jasper, Alberta, and eventually became a conductor and then an engineer. (“I am the only CEO that actually ran trains,” he notes.)
“I remember us having five people on trains and then four people on trains,” Vena said in an April interview. “Technology will move you ahead. That end of train unit replaced the caboose because it actually, if you’re a locomotive engineer … gave you way more information than the conductor and brakeman ever did. They were on the caboose as they were cooking their bacon and eggs on that stove downstairs.”
Railroads didn’t replace the caboose in one fell swoop, Vena notes. Instead, they addressed the myriad scenarios where the thinking was that the caboose couldn’t be replaced. One by one, those hurdles were cleared. And cabooses gradually were phased out.
When the technology, timing, and regulations are right, Vena envisions one-person crews being rolled out the same methodical way as EOTs, single-person operation of hump locomotives, or remote-control yard switchers.
Out on the main line, Vena says railroads would have to take into consideration a bunch of operational factors, such as terrain, accessibility from roads, and interactions with lineside communities before deciding where one-person crews might make sense. “I’ve never thought that the railroads could get down to a single person everywhere,” he says.
“But I’ll tell you, down the road we’ll come to a point where in some parts of the railroad it will make sense, just like we are operating some hump yard [jobs] with a single person. We’ve been able to do that slowly, safely, and make sure we get to the right place,” Vena says.
You can reach Bill Stephens at bybillstephens@gmail.com and follow him on LinkedIn and X @bybillstephens
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