According to Railway Age, Amtrak President and CEO Wick Moorman sees a new era of railroad investment as integral to the build out of infrastructure needed for long-distance and high-speed passenger rail travel in the US in coming decades. Moorman recently testified before the US Senate’s Subcommittee on Service Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security on these matters.
According to V. Profillidis’ book, “Railway Management and Engineering,” the railway industry exists in a rapidly changing world where competition from other transportation sectors is a threat to railway systems. As a result, the railway industry is in a period of restructuring as new technologies affect organizational structure and delivery of services. This restructuring includes outright sales, for example, Deutsche Bank Ag’s recent purchase of Welltower, Canadian National Railway Company.
Further complicating matters are commercial and tariff policies, the need for an injection of entrepreneurship into an old industry, complications over whether or not to introduce new high-speed rail or upgrade old systems, the need for more comfortable passenger trains, environmental issues, and more.
Modern Railroad and Railway Management
Railway management has come a long way over the centuries. Today, the field can be divided into operations management, intelligent signaling, traffic analytics, asset management, control systems, maintenance management, system integration, cloud hosting, and more. Track Management Systems, for example, focuses on maximizing the use of resources to efficiently maintain track networks.
All told, the railway management system market is expected to reach nearly $60 billion by 2021.
The following video, “Advanced Train Management System,” shows how Lockheed Martin and the Australian Real Track Corporation (ARTC) partnered to develop an innovative and affordable train management system to double existing rail network capacity while improving safety.
