Talking Trains (Again) With IBM’s Head Of Rail Innovation
When we last spoke with Kieth Dierkx, in July 2009, IBM had just opened its Global Rail Innovation Center. Since then a lot has changed in the railroad world, and Dierkx, the center’s director, believes a lot more will change in the years to come. Sure that means developing high-speed rail networks. It also means using technology to create a smarter, more efficient railroad experience; as Dierkx recently wrote in the Journal of Commerce (subscription req’d), “improving the physical infrastructure can only take us so far.” We caught up with Dierkx to talk about what might carry us the rest of the way.
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.