Trump Has Opportunity to Usher In a Golden Age of Transportation By Embracing Automation

When President Trump announced former Congressman Sean Duffy as his pick for Transportation Secretary last month, he called on his nominee to “usher in a golden age of travel.” Indeed, travel—and transportation more broadly—stand to improve dramatically in the coming years if the Trump administration makes automation a priority.

Greater use of technology-driven modernization, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), can improve efficiency and safety in America’s transportation systems. For example, AI can enhance air traffic safety and optimize flight paths, schedule the arrival and departure of vessels at ports to minimize delays, and monitor road and railways infrastructure to predict maintenance before failures occur. Moreover, AI is paving the way to greater automation with significant benefits. Autonomous passenger vehicles can reduce injuries and deaths on American roads, autonomous trucks can reduce freight costs, and autonomous drones can expedite delivery of packages. All these changes can result in real benefits to the well-being and wallets of average Americans.

Unfortunately, while the United States has made some progress in recent years in developing the laws and regulations necessary to deploy automation in some areas of transportation, such as driverless cars, the Biden administration—mostly in deference to concerns raised by labor unions—has been quietly erecting roadblocks to greater use of automation in others. For example, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) blocked the launch of autonomous trucks in Texas last year. Existing regulations require drivers to place orange safety triangles on the road when trucks pull off the highway—trivial for a human but unnecessarily complex for an autonomous semi with nobody in the cab—and FMSCA (after being petitioned by the Transport Workers Union of America to reject a substitute safety measure “in the strongest possible terms”) would not accept the use of warning flashing lights installed on the truck instead.

Similarly, Biden’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has stalled efforts to increase automation that would improve safety and efficiency in rail. The clearest example is the FRA’s rule requiring two-person train crews, a requirement not based on any safety data but rather pressure from groups like the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen that oppose increased automation that threatens the jobs of their members. However, two-person crews are likely unnecessary because of automatic braking systems that prevent many collisions caused by human error. Unfortunately, the FRA’s crew size requirements undermine efforts to encourage railroads to invest in additional automated safety technology that increases productivity.

Multiple railroads have also filed petitions with the FRA to obtain waivers allowing them to reduce the frequency of visual inspection of tracks as they deploy automated track inspection, but the FRA has either outright rejected these requests or refused to act, despite a legal obligation to respond to these petitions. Automated track inspection uses lasers and cameras to automatically measure track defects, collecting real-time data on the state of the track as trains travel across the rail network and allowing railroads to more quickly and accurately identify potential safety issues. However, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED), a union that represents the workers who inspect and repair tracks, has opposed these types of requests, and the FRA’s political appointees have put the demands of organized labor ahead of its own safety experts. Indeed, the FRA’s recently proposed rules on safety waivers show just how off the rails the agency has gone. To receive a waiver, a proposed safety measure must be “in the public interest” which the FRA explains means the petitioner should “provide evidence that the regulatory relief requested would not eliminate jobs.” Not surprisingly, the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO called this proposal “a huge win.”

Improving America’s infrastructure has traditionally garnered support from both Republicans and Democrats—indeed, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed Congress with bipartisan support. However, automation in the transportation sector has become too politicized during the last administration. The recent opposition to automation from organized labor is just the tip of the iceberg. Port operators, bus drivers, air traffic controllers, and more will continue to run this same playbook unless policymakers recognize that holding back innovation is not a long-term strategy for modernizing the nation’s transportation system.

The Department of Transportation’s mandate should be to protect safety, not special interests, and promote efficiency, not stop progress. If the incoming Trump administration wants to create a golden age of transportation—improving both the safety and efficiency of passenger travel and freight movement—technology-driven automation should be a top priority from day one.