TTD and Union Pacific disagree over safety technology deployment
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The discussion about how to manage visual inspections in the facial area of developments in security technology carries on. This time it is railroad carmen defending the worth of visible inspections for brake screening and upkeep.
Union members are responding to Union Pacific’s request to the Federal Railroad Administration to prolong a waiver governing UP’s test method for wheel temperature detectors (WTDs).
UP (NYSE: UNP) is asking FRA to enable the use of WTDs on intermodal trains operated on segments of UP’s technique, as nicely as prolong the distance at which visual inspections would be carried out. UP has been using WTDs under standard working and visitors ailments between the coal mines of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and an unloading facility at White Bluff, Arkansas.
But union associates say UP’s target is to cut down visible inspections and preserve on overhead charges.
WTDs are “actually a valuable machine that is plainly useful as a complement to the inspections, but [the technology is] genuinely about detecting the temperature on the rail,” Regan instructed FreightWaves. WTDs have “to be employed as a enhance to the inspections. A person is skilled to see exactly where there could possibly be a defect, exactly where there could be a issue down the road and what may will need to be enhanced or upgraded or replaced in the in the vicinity of upcoming. This gadget are not able to do that.”
TTD also argued in a February letter to FRA that UP unsuccessful to collect and offer any evidence for evaluate that the waiver need to be renewed.
“Without any beneficial data from UP’s Test Waiver Committee to support the extension, we do not feel that the ongoing use of WTD engineering is a safe and sound and satisfactory substitute for actual physical inspections by properly trained Carmen,” Regan claimed in the February letter.
Regan informed FreightWaves that FRA turned down UP’s waiver extension requests in 2014, 2017 and 2021.
FRA claimed its basic safety board denied UP’s petition in July 2021 because the railroad did not give sufficient information and analysis thoroughly demonstrating the claimed basic safety gains.
“We believe that the focus of bringing new technologies into a hundreds of years aged market like railroading … [should be] on producing railroads safer. It has to be a complement to what the personnel do. It has to make it so that staff who are really properly trained and remarkably experienced at what they do are offered extra resources to do their work in the safest doable way,” Regan claimed.
He ongoing, “We welcome these modifications. We want to make our work safer. We want to make certain that the union that the staff have just about every tool at their disposal to do their careers appropriately. But this is not the way to do that. Asking for waivers is not the way to do it thoroughly and to make confident that it is implemented in a liable way.”
The discussion about WTDs is related to the one that unionized servicing-of-way workers are obtaining with the railroads more than how the railroads really should deploy observe geometry technology, a part of automatic observe inspections. They contend that BNSF’s (NYSE: BRK.K) ask for to FRA to grow that technology’s deployment to two more territories is an prospect to reduce the number of visual inspections inside of these territories.
Union Pacific defends use of WTDs
But UP claims WTD technology has caught problems that visible inspections have skipped.
“The use of technology is an option for Union Pacific to increase on its powerful basic safety file. Our first results reveal that wheel temperature detectors recognize much more problems than common detection approaches, which translates into a safer operation for both equally the community and our workforce,” UP explained to FreightWaves.
“The use of this engineering will not reduce visible inspections by trained staff. The wheel temperature detectors modify the frequency of when a take a look at is essential, reducing unwanted brake tests and allowing for our inspectors and teach crews to emphasis focus on individuals brakes that warrant consideration,” UP claimed.
The Association of American Railroads, which has lent its guidance to UP’s waiver requests, claimed it supports its members’ desire to pursue security improving technologies this sort of as WTDs.
WTDs identify cars and trucks with ineffective brakes at a larger rate than a manually performed intermediate brake check, AAR explained. As a final result, the technological know-how expedites the repair service or substitute of thousands of freight car or truck brakes that could not have usually been right away determined below current FRA restrictions.
AAR also stated that all cars identified by a wheel temperature detector had previously passed a manually-done FRA first terminal brake exam.
FRA is nonetheless reviewing UP’s waiver. But it has claimed that there is very little to stop a railroad from using WTDs or “hot wheel detectors” to guarantee brake health and fitness efficiency. This sort of programs can accurately determine if brakes are operating adequately in real time, in accordance to FRA.
Click on in this article for far more FreightWaves posts by Joanna Marsh.
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