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?
09:57Let us know in the comments.
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