The 2017 Joint Rail Conference (JRC) was held in downtown Philadelphia, 4 – 7 April 2017. Strategically located in the center of the United States Northeast railroad corridor, Philadelphia proved to be an attractive venue for over two hundred rail professionals in North America and around the world—even without a university co-sponsor. The figure below shows a breakdown of attendees by country.
The conference started with two technical tours on the morning of 5 April: the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) Fern Rock Maintenance Facilities, and the recently-completed Crum Creek Viaduct to offer the attendees a touch of “real world” engineering.
Technical sessions began that afternoon at Doubletree in Center City Philadelphia. The theme for this year is “Railway Engineering and Technology Solutions for Tomorrow’s Transportation Needs”. The technical program was organized into ten tracks with over one hundred papers covering a wide spectrum of technical interests:
- Track 1: Railroad Infrastructure Engineering
- Track 2: Rail Equipment Engineering
- Track 3: Signal and Train Control Engineering
- Track 4: Service Quality and Operations Research
- Track 5: Planning and Development
- Track 6: Safety and Security
- Track 7: Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
- Track 8: Urban Passenger Rail Transport
- Track 9: Electrification
- Track 10: Vehicle Track Interaction
The ASME led the planning of JRC2017 with two special features. First, this year JRC hosted the first Grand Challenge Competition for registered participants to propose solutions to an industry challenge and present their idea to a panel of industry experts.
The question was “After many years of decline, the annual train accident rate for FRA reportable train accidents in the US has appeared to reach a plateau. How can the railroad industry push through this plateau to achieve new levels of safety and further reduce train accidents in the US?”.
Second, the ASME announced the Smamidas Charan (John) Punwani Memorial Undergraduate Student Scholarship to award selective undergraduate students to attend the JRC in the honor of John Punwani for his dedication to the success of the JRC and the ASME Rail Transportation Division (RTD).
JRC2018 will be led by the IEEE VTS Land Transportation Division, currently chaired by David Thurston. The venue is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 17 – 20 April 2018. Details can be found at the official JRC website: http://www.asme.org/events/joint-rail-conference
Figure below shows John Grantham and David Thurston at the head table of the JRC2017 banquet (first and second from the left)
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