Metro-North to Pilot Automated Railcar Inspection
Written by Marybeth Luczak, Executive Editor
“Metro-North is always looking for opportunities to innovate and be more efficient in how we maintain our systems and equipment and provide service to our customers,” Metro-North Railroad President Catherine Rinaldi said during the announcement of a federal grant the commuter railroad will use to test an automated railcar inspection system. (Photograph Courtesy of MTA)
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will use a $2 million federal grant to test an automated railcar inspection system on its commuter railroad in New York and Connecticut, which it said will provide “early detections of existing and future defects, allowing conditions to be addressed immediately, reducing repair and replacement time.”
The pilot project for MTA Metro-North Railroad is one of 34 projects selected for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants program for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. USDOT earlier this month announced the awards for Stage 1 of SMART’s two-stage program, which includes planning and prototyping. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) established this discretionary grant program with $100 million appropriated annually for FY 2022-2026. The aim is to fund projects that “focus on advanced smart community technologies and systems in order to improve transportation efficiency and safety.”
MTA on March 20 reported that the automated system will permit Metro-North to conduct daily Federal Railroad Administration-mandated railcar inspections “more efficiently.” The system is slated to use a suite of sensors and software to create automated alerts of “undesirable conditions,” according to USDOT.
Used in addition to manual inspections, the automated system will “allow for more proactive rolling stock maintenance, which will save money and reduce impacts to customers,” MTA explained.
“Metro-North is always looking for opportunities to innovate and be more efficient in how we maintain our systems and equipment and provide service to our customers,” Metro-North Railroad President Catherine Rinaldi said. “With federal funding from SMART, we can explore new industry advancements to improve our maintenance practices, which will enhance the safety and overall reliability of our service.”
Following are among the other rail-related projects that were awarded SMART grants:
- $2 million to Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) for the Rail Crossing Gate Optimization Project, which will “upgrade rail crossing gate detectors with wireless technology and improve detection of pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists to reduce unnecessary gate downtime.”
- $2 million to San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) for the BART Leveraging GTFS Pathways for Improved Wayfinding and Accessibility project, which will “deploy digital wayfinding aids and station facility information, integrated and shared through public-facing endpoints in an open data standard.”
- $1.6 million to New Jersey Transit (NJT) for the Artificial Intelligence for Light Rail and Grade Crossing Safety project, which will “install AI video analytics to improve detection and safety at at-grade light rail crossings to inform safety countermeasures.”
- $1.3 million to Southern California Regional Rail Authority (Metrolink) for the Smart Track Intrusion Systems and Positive Train Control project, which will “deploy AI for track intrusion detection, paired with positive train control systems, on a 1.5-mile stretch of regional railway in a dense urban area.”
