DV Journal

Recent news that General Motors is abandoning its $10 billion self-driving taxi initiative reminds us that some technological breakthroughs are still beyond our grasp. The freight rail industry faces the opposite problem: Tech can do more to save money and lives, but regulators have been reluctant to allow it.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has been operating at a snail’s pace to approve waivers requested by railroad companies to put available technology to work. Last month, major rail companies like BNSF, CSX and Union Pacific sued the FRA for its failure to take action on multiple waiver requests to allow them to take advantage of new train and track inspection technology.

“Rail safety is a shared responsibility, and the FRA’s unlawful delays are creating uncertainty and preventing critical advancements in safety and efficiency,” said Ian Jefferies, CEO of the Association of American Railroads.

In October, FRA proposed automated track inspection regulations to supplement visual inspections. Today’s regulations require human inspectors to walk the line or ride a truck vehicle and visually inspect things along the way. FRA does not want to change this practice.

“Workers performing visual inspections remain essential, as visual inspections check for numerous conditions beyond the scope of track geometry,” said FRA Administrator Amit Bose. “By requiring track geometry measurement system inspections in addition to the currently required visual inspections, FRA proposes to enhance safety while promoting innovation through the use of technology.”

The Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure (Aii), an independent, nonpartisan public policy think tank focusing on infrastructure, wrote a brief calling for waivers to be approved.

“We think the action should generally be to approve these waiver requests because it is essentially an opportunity for the rail industry to implement more technology and more innovative practices that we do think the data shows lead to safety outcomes,” said Aii executive director Benjamin Dierker.

Labor unions such as the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division welcomed the rule. It was encouraging to see FRA consider human track inspectors. Still, Dierker said freight railroads are responsible for their upkeep and may be reluctant to invest in technology while also paying inspectors regularly for the same job.

“My position is not to say, ‘fire the inspector,’” Dierker said. “Our position is only that when the regulation sets up a prescriptive rule that says  a human inspector must walk the track and visually inspect, it intentionally gets in the way of innovative outcomes like this track inspection technology that probably wasn’t around and not even conceived of when the regulation was written.”

Marc Scribner, senior transportation policy analyst for Reason Foundation, thinks automated track inspection benefits railroad companies, rail workers and communities safe from derailments and other adverse situations.

Most of the hazards that a railroad worker experiences are in the field. By substituting technology and putting a robot in there instead of a human being, Scribner said we would see a reduction in railroad employee injuries and fatalities.

“So, this technology has direct benefits to some of the people who are opposed for economic reasons, but it has substantial safety benefits just by the potential to remove human beings from hazards in the field,” Scribner said.

For workers losing out on job opportunities, Scribner said railroads could use this technology on lower-priority tracks and reallocate workers to more troubled areas. After all, there are things humans see that machines do not detect. A track inspection sensor affixed to the bottom or side of a train will not see a downed tree or some other obstacle that is one mile up the track. Human inspectors would see those problems and act on them to avoid accidents.

The United States railroad network is the largest in the world. It sees the transportation of more than 1.6 billion tons of freight annually. That is why Dierker and others believe FRA needs to get things done with waivers and be more open to new and innovative technologies. As Dierker described it, “Good policy leads to safety but also efficiency and resilience for infrastructure.”

And if the administration refuses?

“If the current FRA doesn’t act on this in the next month, this would be the type of thing that the next Trump administration could quickly act on,” Dierker said.

(From a press release)

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) announced that technology recently installed on a 14-mile section of I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) between King of Prussia and Philadelphia is improving safety and traffic flow on the roadway.

PennDOT data shows that crashes, injuries, and travel time have decreased on the corridor since the department installed 72 Variable Speed Limit (VSL) signs and additional electronic message signs supporting a new Queue Warning (QW) system in June 2021. VSL signs display speed limits that are adjusted based on real-time traffic, roadway, and weather conditions. The QW system uses traffic data to update the electronic message signs in real time, alerting motorists about congestion before they reach it so they can slow down and watch for slowed or stopped traffic.

“The active traffic management tools we have invested in on I-76 are saving lives, benefitting the communities they serve by improving air quality, and shortening the ride time for about 100,000 drivers who rely on this critical corridor each day,” said PennDOT District 6 Executive Din Abazi.

The real-time, responsive technology reduces speed limits as needed, improving motorist safety. Compared to the five-year average from 2015-2019 data (2020 and 2021 data was excluded due to reduced traffic during the pandemic), the average of 2022 and 2023 data shows:

• Average annual crashes have decreased 22 percent from 568 crashes per year to 444 crashes per year.
• Average annual rear-end crashes have decreased 32 percent from 380 to 257 per year.
• Average annual injuries have decreased 20 percent from 413 injuries per year to 330 injuries per year (2022 & 2023).
• Average annual serious injuries have decreased 62 percent from 6.6 per year to 2.5 per year.
• PennDOT traffic data shows daily traffic volumes on I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) had recovered from pandemic lows by 2021, with the corridor now carrying 10 percent more traffic than it did in 2019.

The overall reduction in crashes is helping to improve traffic flow by keeping more lanes open on a more consistent basis. In 2023, travel time decreased four minutes during the eastbound evening peak travel time (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM) and two minutes during the westbound morning peak travel time (5:00 AM to 9:00 AM) compared to 2019. PennDOT estimates that these results are having a positive economic impact on the community due to fewer crashes and hours of delay in the amount of $46.8 million per year.

Using the Federal Highway Administration’s Emissions Calculator, PennDOT analysis shows that reducing stop-and-go traffic conditions is also having a positive impact on overall air quality, reducing emissions by an estimated 3,140 tons annually.

PennDOT encourages all motorists traveling on I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) to pay attention to the speed limits (between 35 mph and 55 mph in most areas) and queue warning messages that are posted 24 hours a day. In general, a motorist encountering a reduced speed limit should expect to reach slower moving or more congested traffic within a mile to a mile-and-a-half of that reduced speed limit sign. Following the posted speed limit is safer and improves traffic flow. The speed posted on a VSL is the legal speed limit when it is displayed.

The VSL and QW systems were implemented as part of a long-range, comprehensive, multimodal transportation management plan to improve motorist safety and traffic conditions on I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) between the PA Turnpike and U.S. 1. PennDOT continues to monitor the technology’s performance and can make any necessary updates to the software’s algorithm to further enhance operations.

Additional roadway improvements are currently under design and set for construction in 2026 on the I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) corridor. Examples include flexible lane use, emergency pull-off/refuge areas, and multimodal and traffic signal improvements along parallel and some intersecting roadways.

For additional information on PennDOT’s I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) improvement program, please visit.

Information about infrastructure in District 6, including completed work and significant projects, is available here.  And find PennDOT’s planned and active construction projects here.

The computer science curriculum at CBSD is pretty solid. We teach kids Scratch, Java, computer programming, AP computer science, and data science. I was excited my kids were introduced to Minecraft in elementary school because with Redstone the kids are learning to code simply and intuitively. Like Steve Jobs said, “Everybody should learn to program a computer… because it teaches you how to think.”

I compared our curriculum to what I needed to know to build scalable systems like Google Web Search and Google Calendar. I have found a couple of gaps in our kids’ technical education. It is not just restricted to CBSD, by the way. I’ve noticed elite private schools like LaSalle have these gaps as well.

One of these gaps is understanding computation as a way of thinking about data, particularly concerning high-performance computing. To fill this gap, I designed my course called “Google Magic,” which I have been teaching in Winter Enrichment at Doyle since 2017.

Google Magic gives a high-level overview to 4th to 6th graders about how systems at Google work. I show the kids how Google Search actually operates. (Hint: it is the computer version of the index that any reference book already has.) We sit together and build a little “search engine” for Pokeman cards, where you can ask questions about the Pokemon, like color or HP, and instantly find the cards that match.

It never fails to delight me. I patiently walk the kids through some dry crawling and indexing algorithms, and their eyes glaze over. But once they see how it all works together to help them find their favorite Pokemon card, their eyes light up, and it is the most wonderful experience.

I love to teach the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. This is the basis for the cryptographic handshake you make with every website on the internet so no one can snoop on your browsing. The coolest way to describe it is. It is a way for you and me to have a public conversation in full view of everyone else, but in the end, you and I will share a secret that no one else can easily figure out.

I show the kids a simplified version of this algorithm using calculators to multiply and exponentiate the numbers. Once again, it is so delightful to see this in action. The amazement when the two actors end up with the same very large numbers on their calculators, but none of the audience can guess what it is. We repeat this algorithm several times because it really piques the kids’ interest. Math is so cool.

(This actually reminds me of when I saw Whitfield Diffie at the retirement party I organized for my Ph.D. advisor, John McCarthy. They were good friends, and John gave Whit lots of support and even a place to stay while he was working on his now-famous algorithm. Whit is really tall and a pretty snappy dresser for a mathematician. His wife was super nice, and I remember talking to her about their dogs, one of whom was sick.)

The highlight of the Google Magic course is the demonstration of MapReduce; maybe you know it as Hadoop. The name comes from two LISP operators, map and reduce. (LISP is the programming language invented by my Ph.D. advisor!) MapReduce is a framework we used at Google to quickly process information over thousands of computers.

Because kids learn best with tactile demonstrations, I show the kids how to use this framework to process three pounds of fruit runts, which is about 2500 pieces of colored candy. With a handful of kids and this algorithm, we cannot only sort by color but count all the candy in 10-15 minutes! No comment on how many pieces of candy are “lost” during computation, by the way.

Anyway, these are the ideas I would love to bring to the district regarding technology. Show kids how the hi-tech systems we build in Silicon Valley actually operate so they can build the next generation of them.

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n his State of the Union address, President Biden pledged to tackle one of the biggest problems facing Americans: the fentanyl crisis. With record-high drug overdose deaths, and kids under 14 dying at the highest rate among all age groups, it is clear that new approaches are required. Unfortunately, the administration is doubling down on outdated technology to solve a problem that we know requires intelligent, modern solutions to stay ahead of those who want to harm our communities.

If we are going to get serious about saving lives, we need an all-of-the-above approach that starts with providing our law enforcement officers with the cutting-edge capabilities at our disposal to detect and seize deadly drugs before they enter our communities.

The mission of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is to “Protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation’s economic prosperity.” As someone who proudly worked at this law enforcement agency for 25 years, I know that CBP officers around the country take their duty seriously. Yet, what we ask of CBP officers is, frankly, staggering.

With more than 11 million maritime containers arriving at our seaports annually, another 11 million arriving at land ports by truck, and 2.7 million by rail, these law enforcement officers face the herculean task of adequately identifying and stopping all illegal drugs and weapons during the security screening process. Unfortunately, CBP scans less than 10 percent of all cargo entering the United States, even though the mandate is 100 percent, as required by the 9/11 Commission report and subsequent federal legislation related to the scanning of maritime cargo.

To make matters worse, the scanning is done only with the limited capability X-ray machines. Over the last 50 years, CBP has used X-ray machines to search for drugs and other illicit materials at our ports and borders. Unfortunately, X-ray machines have limited penetration capabilities and cannot detect anomalies inside dense cargo. This well-known inadequacy — the inability to see through dense cargo — allows criminals to circumvent existing scanning systems by hiding fentanyl and other drugs within dense materials that X-ray cannot penetrate.

Much more must be done, and the best technology available must be used. For example, in 2019, CBP conducted a pilot program at the U.S.-Mexico border with a newly developed advanced muon tomography system, which can effectively detect anomalies within dense cargo. During the pilot program, this system was responsible for a significant drug seizure after the smuggling methodology used during the pilot easily defeated the on-site X-ray machines.

The need to deploy advanced scanning technology is so urgent that America’s busiest port, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, requested to Congress that a comprehensive approach be deployed there and integrated into CBP’s current suite of technology. Furthermore, several members of Congress, in both the House and Senate, have urged CBP to procure and deploy additional passive scanning technology. Notably, funding is already available through the Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Funding Bill, and CBP would need to redirect a small portion of those funds toward more comprehensive systems.

Illicit drugs are ravaging our cities and robbing too many Americans of their lives. President Biden is right to prioritize the battle against fentanyl, but let’s be clear: our ports of entry are our last line of defense before drugs enter our communities, and we must give our law enforcement officers the best technology available to spot and stop dangerous drugs. 

This should also be a priority for all lawmakers — regardless of party affiliation or home state. Until it is, we will continue to lose this critical fight — one that we desperately need to win for the future of our country.

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