An illustration of the RailSentry application incorporated into Caltrain’s corridor that uses AI, CCTV and LIDAR technology to prevent car-train collisions at the intersections.
As government agencies weigh their respective relationships with artificial intelligence technology, SamTrans is taking a cautiously optimistic approach to AI, hoping to solidify more detailed plans in the coming months.
During a recent SamTrans Board of Directors meeting, Mehul Kumar, chief information and technology officer at SamTrans, outlined how the agency has spent the past year laying groundwork for AI use, stating that most initiatives fail not because of technology limitations, but because organizations don’t properly weigh risks.
The issue gets to the heart of if and how local governments and agencies apply new, innovative technology. Last year, Caltrain began using AI to track car movements along the most high-risk railroad intersections, including Burlingame’s Broadway crossing.
The application, RailSentry, has been incorporated into Caltrain’s corridor as part of a $150,000 contract that uses AI, CCTV and LIDAR technology to prevent car-train collisions at the intersections.
The AI tool is the first of its kind along Caltrain’s corridor, although not long before that Ray Mueller, Caltrain board member and San Mateo County supervisor, directed staff to look into ways to use similar technology to help prevent suicides, not necessarily for car collision prevention.
In other respects, governments are trying to minimize economic impacts from potential job loss. In 2024, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution that vowed not to limit the ways in which county positions could be replaced with AI.
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Last year, SamTrans began using a tool called GovAI, used by many other government agencies, which are built on large language models similar to ChatGPT but with added security and compliance layers designed for public agencies. For instance, the platform allows employees to analyze documents, but it does not allow ChatGPT or other LLM-building companies to use their data.
SamTrans manages millions of documents, many of them decades old, and does not yet have a formal data governance program, making that a key next step, Kumar said during a board meeting Jan. 7.
“One of the projects from an AI aspect is to classify our data. Before we send our data out, we need to go through a data privacy and data classification project,” Kumar said.
Currently, SamTrans’ current use of AI is mostly administrative — drafting presentations, summarizing emails, conducting research, analyzing text and transcribing meetings. But it could eventually be used to help with operational efficiency, including forecasting or equipment monitoring.
“There are some transit agencies that are way more advanced, but they’re also taking risks,” SamTrans General Manager April Chan said. “We want to make sure we are doing it deliberately.”
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