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SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — The power of data, or more accurately, data used well, may not have been explicitly the topic of BNSF Railway CEO Katie Farmer’s presentation at the Midwest Carriers Association’s winter meeting railway But it was a recurring theme in several topics he touched on as part of his keynote address Wednesday on the first day of the conference.
Data played an important role in Farmer’s look at BNSF’s Barstow International Gateway intermodal and logistics project; in discussing the automated rail track inspection program; and in efforts to improve information on shipper arrival times.
“I’m really excited about what we’re doing in Barstow,” Farmer said. “And not just because of the capacity. … What I’m really excited about are the conversations we’re having with our customers, ocean carriers, drainage companies, the largest importers in the country. … What we’re talking about is not just capacity, but 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 nice that while we have a box on the ship, we have all the information that comes to us and we can make decisions, the customer can make the decision while this box is on the ship, do I want to go to IPI (inland point intermodal)? Want to stay local? Do I want to transfer it? We have that information, we can (can) plan work in our intermodal center around that.
“That’s the kind of conversations we’re having, and that’s how we’re going to continue to adapt and evolve the logistics park concept,” he said.
On the track inspection side, BNSF has been working to extend a Federal Railroad Administration waiver for its automated inspection program, an effort held back by the FRA’s desire to make those waivers more difficult to ‘obtain (See “FRA aims to tighten rules…”, Trains News Wire, Oct. 28, 2024.) But at the same time, Farmer said, he has been working to develop an inspection system that mounts cameras and lasers on locomotives in revenue service.
“It allows us to look, in real time, track by track for any structural integrity issues. … It allows us to take that information, send it to (company headquarters) Fort Worth and quickly use machine vision and artificial intelligence to identify, faster than ever, if there’s a problem with that track. This allows us to take our track inspectors and move them from finders to repairers, and be able to fix that track issue and not take large windows of time that interrupt this service,” Farmer said.
