On May 12, IANA (Intermodal Association of North America) offered an interesting look at the North American rail intermodal sector. The webinar featured technical slides shared by Bloomberg Senior Analyst Transportation & Logistics Lee Klaskow and TTX Vice President Fleet Management Company Pat Casey. TTX market development experts John Woodcock and Peter Wolff also participated.
While rail and transit organizations are great at collecting various forms of data, they typically struggle to effectively analyze it in order to inform decision making. With the ongoing digital transformation of
As the industry’s centralized provider of interoperable rail data, Railinc is an essential partner to the industry in keeping trains moving efficiently and safely through rail corridors across North America. The company,
LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a form of remote sensing, uses laser light pulses to gather information from surfaces in the form of “points” (3D coordinates). The data is processed with point cloud software to form a digital CAD model of the scanned environment. Data gathered during LiDAR surveys and the resulting 3D digital model can be used to analyze current railroad conditions, identify safety risks an dplan the construction of new lines and facilities.
Railway Age has partnered with freight transportation intelligence provider FreightWaves to expand its coverage of logistics and near-time analytics. FreightWaves is sponsoring a new channel, “Freight Forecasting,” on www.railwayage.com.
As the industry’s centralized provider of interoperable rail data, Railinc is an essential partner to the industry in keeping trains moving efficiently and safely through rail corridors across North America. The company, a subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads, was purpose-built by the industry to tackle big challenges with the power of data. Railinc manages 11 million daily messages among more than 570 rail carriers. Given its significance, Railway Age reached out to talk to Railinc chief executive Allen West to get a sense of how the North Carolina company is handling the COVID-19 situation.
Among the final duties that former MTA New York City Transit Vice President Network and Resignaling Pete Tomlin discharged before he left the agency following Andy Byford’s resignation as President was demonstrating an innovative piece of new technology—UWB (Ultra-Wide Band), wireless technology that offers faster and less-expensive installation of modern CBTC (communications-based train control) by eliminating much of the onboard and wayside equipment traditionally required for advanced-technology signaling. Tomlin—arguably one of the finest signaling and train control people on the planet—collaborated with suppliers Thales and Piper Networks in an impressive public demonstration of UWB.
Trapeze Group and Masabi have collaborated to offer transit agencies an integrated fare payment solution aimed at revolutionizing the rider experience and changing the way public transit agencies deliver Mobility-as-a-Service to their communities.
5G wireless communications will be a big part of the railway industry’s future. 5G systems will provide many new capabilities, higher reliability, lower latencies and ultra-broadband connectivity to support many new and important applications. But making 5G a reality and moving on from GSM-R or other legacy radio technologies is complex. The questions are, how soon, and what is the best route to get there? There are different aspects of the transition to consider.
Locomotive modernization solutions and industrial IoT (Internet of Things) technology provider ZTR has partnered with security software and asset tracking provider BlackBerry Limited on what the two companies describe as “an advanced digital railcar remote monitoring solution.”
