201911 – Burton – Should We Forget the Driver?

One of the key advantages that rail transportation has over its road-based competitors is that of driver efficiency.

Typically a train will need less drivers to get from A to B for a given load (be it humans or freight) compared to the number of road vehicles required to transport the same load. However, there is an emerging risk that this significant rail-vs-road advantage is about to be eroded. Huge amounts of R&D spending has been invested globally over the last 5-10 years in the pursuit of self-driving cars and trucks. Will this become a serious threat to rail’s competitiveness?