Driverless Cars vs. Railroads, Round 1

First let me self-expose a bias: I'm a rail fan. Maybe not as big a rail fan as this guy, but a rail fan nonetheless.

It began in the days when I was a young kid and my mom would take me to the rail yard to see locomotives idle down, detach cars or push rolling stock over the hump. It continues today, even though most of my current train experiences are standing-room only, someone smells and the subway car is invaded by a team of street acrobats.

For most people outside large cities, trains aren't a true transportation option, but then again neither are cars. For everyone else, there is seemingly a 'sweet spot' for travelling by train, somewhere between 100 and 600 miles. Anything closer can be trekked by car; anything farther should require an airplane.

But even with these considerations, travelling by car is typically preferred. The advantages are numerous. There is no set itinerary. You don't have to adhere to luggage limits or fees. No rushing to the station to make departure. It's comparable in price, and usually faster than a train. Metrics back up the American penchant for driving over riding. The U.S. has more than double the rail network size of second-place China, but ridership stats rank behind railroad-deficient countries such as Egypt and Mozambique.

Despite this, investment in railway improvements and high-speed rail development continues to create political pressure in the U.S. In many ways it's a foreign issue too--take Britain's own HS2 high-speed rail debate as evidence that train tickets aren't an easy sell in many places.

So when one of train travel's primary advantages--the ability to sleep, work, game, watch a video or completely zone out--arrives in automobiles, by way of autonomous driving, is it the deathstroke for travel by train?

Seemingly so, according to this Forbes article that articulates that trains are already approaching obsolescence, and that the ability to sit down in a privately owned car (either yours or one you arranged for by emerging ride-sharing programs), travel at 100 mph, and enjoy the time as your own will significantly increase most people's reliance on and utilization of automobiles. Envisioning a fully-developed autonomous vehicle market, cars can be complemented by automated tractor trailers and flatbeds, further devaluing trains as a whole, but this time from the freight and logistics perspective.

But a few things can keep supply-chain-by-train a thing of the near-present and forever-future. First, a real, tangible tunnel or bridge that connects Alaska to Siberia via the Bering Strait would go a long, long way (figuratively and literally) in keeping locomotives relevant. Foremost, both Alaska and Siberia have sparse infrastructure, and the ability to keep cars fueled and serviced in the remote corners of these continents would be an enormous and expensive challenge. Not only that, but crossing the 125-mile tunnel or bridge via automobile would be much more risky proposition. When the first bridge over the Bering was conceptualized in 1890, the engineering was not up to task, but governments on both sides believed it would be an enormous economic advantage. One-hundred-twenty-five years later, the engineering is more than capable of creating such a design, but the political goodwill doesn't exist anymore. The most recent news on this front comes from China, who wants to build a China-Russia-Canada-U.S. high-speed railroad to transport people and goods from China to the U.S. in just two days.

A separate option is update trains themselves. First, train engineers can be replaced by automated systems as well. Though this can be controversial, as since July 2013 freight trains carrying potential hazardous materials have received increased scrutiny, this is ultimately leveraging the same technology that makes trains obsolete in the first place. Enormous operational costs can be recouped by integrating things like automated process controls, remote inputs and advanced ticketing systems, effectively saving railroads from themselves. Hybrid or hydrogen-powered trains are viable ways to decrease fuel dependencies.

Lastly, is to market trains less as a way to the destination, and more as a destination in itself. Take ocean liners as an example. Once airplanes turned a 10-day voyage on the open sea into a 10-hour power nap, ocean liners became terribly archaic. But for those who prefer the scenic route, don't have a schedule or purse strings or don't want to fly, the Queen Mary 2 still operates trans-Atlantic voyages for most of the year. Guests are surrounded by luxury during a seven-night crossing from New York to Southampton. In many ways, passenger trains could remodel themselves as a luxurious means to scenic travel. Rail lines like the JR Kyushu have taken this idea and implemented a four-day sightseeing trip around Japan. The image at right is from one of the suites on this train, while this gallery exhibits ideas for future rail liners.

No one can really predict if trains will become outdated or if autonomous vehicles will even work. But the precedent is there, and now it's up to the railroad industry to decide how proactive about its fate it needs to be.