SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — The power of data, or more specifically data used well, may not have been explicitly the topic of BNSF Railway CEO Katie Farmer’s presentation at the Midwest Winter Meeting Association of Rail Shippers. But it was a recurring theme of several topics she covered as part of her keynote address Wednesday, the first day of the conference.
Data played a role in Farmer’s thinking about BNSF’s Barstow International Gateway intermodal and logistics project; discussing the railroad’s automated track inspection program; and in efforts to improve arrival time information for shippers.
“I’m really excited about what we’re doing in Barstow,” Farmer said. “And not just because of capacity. … What really excites me are the conversations we have with our customers, the shipping carriers, the drayage companies, the largest importers in the country. … What we’re talking about is not just capacity, but also how we’re going to exchange data with each other.
“To give you an example, if I’m a big importer and I have a box on a ship, wouldn’t it be cool if while we have a box on the ship we received all the information and could take decisions, the customer can make the decision while this box is on the ship, do I want to upgrade to IPI [inland point intermodal]? Do I want to stay local? Do I want to transload it? We have this information, we [can] we plan to work in our intermodal hub around this.
“Those are the kinds of conversations we’re having, and that’s how we’re going to continue to adapt and evolve the logistics park concept,” she said.
When it comes to track inspection, BNSF is working to extend a waiver from the Federal Railroad Administration for its automated inspection program — an effort slowed by the FRA’s push to make such waivers harder to obtain . [See “FRA aims to tighten rules …,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 28, 2024.] But at the same time, Farmer said, the company is working to develop an inspection system that installs cameras and lasers on locomotives in commercial service.
“This allows us to look, in real time, foot by foot, for any structural integrity issues. …This allows us to take this information, send it to [company headquarters] Fort Worth, and is rapidly using machine vision and artificial intelligence to identify, faster than ever, if there is a problem with that piece of track. This allows us to take our track inspectors and move them from being a researcher to being a repairer, and being able to fix that track issue without taking long windows of time that interrupt that service,” Farmer said.
