Interview: IBM’s rail innovation director

Future of rail technology

Marci Gilbert, Apr 05, 11.

In an interview, IBM’s Global Rail Innovation Center director, Kieth Dierkx, shares the changes that will come in the future for rail line technology, as seen in Infrastructurist:

Infrastructurist: You recently wrote that successful rail in the future will be about more than physical infrastructure. What do you mean?

Keith Dierkx: I think we’re entering a period of much higher integration of transportation systems. One of the phrases that we use is the “multi-modal” approach to transportation. One example of that is, I’m sitting in the IBM building one block from the recently torn-down Transbay terminal in San Francisco. They’re now turning it into a multi-modal hub, where we would be integrating the local San Francisco municipal transportation — that could be the trolley car system, the bus system, the trams — with the high-speed rail, with the bus network. All those things are going to be coming together in a single place.

What we’re seeing now broadly is that within certain distances — you might say 400 to 500 miles — that high-speed trains are a very attractive alternative to air travel. If I’m downtown in San Francisco and I wanted to go to downtown Los Angeles, and I can do it in 2 hours and 49 minutes and I literally walk one block from where I am now to get on train and go — this goes to that ease of use in the multi-modal world.

Infra: How will travelers navigate this world?

Dierkx: I think connecting all of those things is information technology. The ability to seamlessly integrate that travel experience and provide all that information on the mobile device becomes very important. So if you’re arriving 15 minutes early, and if you wish to catch the earlier train, this is the information that’s pushed to you based on you opting-in to receive that information [on your phone]. You can then look at social media, like some of these coupon-based programs, so when you arrive at a certain location you get a special from the local small businesses in this area, whether that’s a restaurant or retailer. All of that information can be pushed to you, spurring economic activity around these nodes.

Infra: This idea of systems, of connecting travel modes, is being discussed a lot with regard to the future of transportation.

Dierkx: The phrase that IBM often uses is this idea of “systems of systems.” These things exist not just within a transportation network. Think about smarter cities. Cities do lot of maintenance around water systems, around power systems, around sewage. For example, I could plan and use analytics and data to drive maintenance and upkeep of a single street. So if I’m going to do water pump maintenance that’s 90 days out and I’ve got another upgrade coming on that same street, the data might tell me I can close that street once for three days rather than twice for three days. Now I’m helping the city from a congestion and traffic standpoint. A lot of this is about being data driven.

Source: Infrastructurist