The global rail industry is facing significant challenges due to aging infrastructure and the impacts of climate change. German firm Sensonic has developed acoustic technology to detect potential threats to rail tracks.
00:00Some of the world's railways are struggling, and some are underwater.
00:09That's why Germany's national rail operator is asking for more than 150 billion Euro from the government.
00:17And U.S. train operators are taking advantage of 59 billion Euro in funding, earmarked by the Biden administration.
00:25Train infrastructure in both countries is in serious need of investment.
00:31Maintenance is costly.
00:32But how much money is left for future-focused technology?
00:36In the U.S., the current rail network looks like this.
00:40And this is what it'll look like in the future after new tracks are built, including the nation's first high-speed rail lines.
00:48That's thanks to the 59 billion Euro in funding, earmarked for rail infrastructure projects by the Biden administration.
00:55Under President Trump, cuts have already been made to railway projects, despite the fact that construction is very much underway.
01:02Some of the funding will be put towards needed upgrades.
01:06You've got parts of the rail system that are 70, 80 years old and more.
01:10Paul Janoski is a professor emeritus of civil engineering who's worked with the U.N. and World Bank on rail infrastructure.
01:18Just maintenance and operation is a huge bill.
01:24I mean, it's a multi-billion dollar effort by train companies each year just to make sure that the rolling stock is kept up to date.
01:33And now, experts say developers will need to ensure the rail systems are future-proof, built to withstand the impact of extreme weather events caused by climate change.
01:44Urban areas in places where high temperatures are typical, heat is already disrupting commuters.
01:51Auckland Transport and Kiwi Rail issued a statement today saying that a tiny section of the tracks got too hot today.
02:00Public transit has seen its fair share of issues this summer, especially here in Austin.
02:05In parts of Texas, temperatures are increasingly hitting up to 40 degrees Celsius during the summer.
02:13This kind of heat is absorbed by the steel rails, forcing them to expand.
02:19The heat stress on the rails and track bed can cause the tracks to bend out of shape in a split second.
02:26Any train traveling down a buckled path is destined to derail.
02:30Because train operators in Texas spotted the high risk of this happening to their tracks,
02:36commuters were provided with bus transport until it was safe to ride the rails again.
02:41Track buckling incidents are among the costliest the rail industry deals with today,
02:46with damage costing millions per derailment.
02:50In the U.S., there are more than 1,000 train derailments a year,
02:54a number that could rise if climate adaptation strategies aren't implemented.
03:00And over in France, where, like in the rest of Western Europe,
03:04the average temperature has been rising faster than the rest of the world,
03:08train operators are contending with the same problem.
03:12In 2022, they were forced to limit speeds nearly 300 times because of a high risk of buckling from heat.
03:19Limiting speeds helps reduce heat stress and risk, but it comes at a price.
03:23300 disruptions added up to 50,000 minutes of lost time, according to the German Center for Rail Traffic Research,
03:32and amounts to a socioeconomic cost of around 10 million euros.
03:37But what about rail in Germany?
03:39The German government's investment in Deutsche Bahn provides the company much relief.
03:44In 2023, it recorded a loss of 2.7 billion euro.
03:51Deutsche Bahn has attributed some of its losses to poor infrastructure and decreased long-distance ridership.
03:57It's an expensive problem.
03:59Last year, the company told DPA News Agency it had to pay customers nearly 200 million euro in compensation
04:07for delays and train cancellations.
04:10Deutsche Bahn says it's using the government investment for infrastructure, maintenance, and modernization.
04:17150 billion euro can help the company pay off its debts and make improvements,
04:23and provide funding for climate adaptation initiatives.
04:27Like experiments to paint rails white,
04:30which is what Deutsche Bahn thought might help reduce rail temperature and lower risk of heat stress
04:35when it painted a kilometer-long stretch of high-speed line.
04:39Because extreme heat, which Germany is experiencing more of,
04:42is what causes this to happen.
04:45Deutsche Bahn says the experiment ultimately didn't work.
04:48The drop in surface temperature wasn't enough to justify the effort and cost involved.
04:52It's the same conclusion that the Austrian and Swiss national rail operators came to.
04:57Deutsche Bahn wasn't available for an interview,
05:00but a spokesperson said that the company is planning alternative climate protection measures,
05:06like intensified vegetation management along its routes,
05:10additional protection for control and safety technology,
05:13and heat-resistant technology on vehicles.
05:16So what options do train operators have to protect rail routes against severe weather events?
05:21One company believes it has a solution.
05:25We listen to what the railway is doing.
05:28Daniel Pike works for Sensonic,
05:30and told us he actually got his start in the industry producing rails for Deutsche Bahn.
05:36The main thing we do is we turn optical fibers into essentially a long string of microphones.
05:44Through AI modeling, Sensonic technology can help train operators detect a threat to a section of track.
05:51If you get hot water and pour it into a mug,
05:53and cold water and pour it into the mug,
05:55you can tell the difference.
05:56That's amazing!
05:58But we can.
05:59So we try to teach our models what they're listening to.
06:03Identifying things like the likelihood of a landslide or a rockfall.
06:07In the UK, their technology is used to detect cable or equipment theft.
06:12In India, it's being used to hear when an elephant is approaching.
06:16When an anomaly on the track is detected,
06:19Sensonic sends an alert to train operators,
06:21so they can react.
06:22But at the moment, Sensonic's acoustic technology isn't being used to detect buckling from heat.
06:29Pike says that it could, theoretically,
06:31but it would mean having to create a real buckling scenario on a train line in order to gather the needed data.
06:37The railway is huge.
06:38It's massive. It's hundreds of kilometers, thousands of kilometers long.
06:42So how do we get information from a very difficult to monitor long lengths of things?
06:49And that's not the only issue.
06:51You leave your mobile phone out in very hot temperature,
06:54and pretty soon you get that little notice, too hot, it's shutting off, right?
06:59The same thing happens with sensors, even though you can have very high temperature sensors,
07:10but the cost gets very expensive.
07:13So we have an electronics problem.
07:17Sensonic is headquartered in Austria, which was devastated by extreme flooding last year.
07:23Storm Boris dropped five times the average September monthly rainfall in the country in less than a week.
07:30News outlets were calling it a one-in-a-1,000-year flood.
07:36After the floods, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a 10-billion-euro aid package
07:42for member states that had been impacted.
07:45But while the floods devastated significant parts of Austria,
07:49damage to its capital city, Vienna, was relatively minimal.
07:53That's because retention basins and other flood prevention measures
07:57had been put in place around the Danube River, which runs through the city.
08:03A history of flooding had taught Austrian authorities a valuable lesson.
08:07Just months before the flood, the Austrian rail network announced 124 million euro in funding
08:14for flood protection projects, like the UK's network rail, which earmarked 3.2 billion euro,
08:21specifically so that it could adapt its rail infrastructure to climate change in the next five years.
08:27And in the U.S., where rail is used primarily to transport goods,
08:32a reliable network is key to commerce and trade.
08:35Our dependence on rail is not going to go down over the next 20 years.
08:40It's only going to keep increasing.
08:41And we've got a plan for what the future environment's going to be,
08:46because otherwise, all these things that we just assume show up,
08:52everything from washers and dryers to automobiles,
08:57aren't going to be there because we don't have a system that's working.
09:00So, what can we take from all of this?
09:05Train operators and companies are looking for solutions,
09:08and that's a good thing, because preventative measures are cheaper than post-disaster recovery.
09:14But it's an expensive endeavor, and hard to scale up,
09:18or in this case, along kilometers and kilometers of track.
09:22At the moment, it seems to be a budget priority in countries like Germany,
09:26but Germany is facing a recession.
09:28It's not clear how much politicians will want to continue to spend now
09:33on heat-proofing infrastructure for the future.
09:36In the U.S., rail projects have a long road ahead.
09:41Rail is one of the most efficient forms of public transportation and freight travel.
09:45We'll need it to help us meet carbon reduction goals,
09:48but it's being threatened by extreme weather and underinvestment.
09:52We want to know about rail infrastructure where you live.
09:55Have you been delayed due to extreme weather?
