The savings likely aren't worth it. Trains can pull a lot of cargo compared to a truck, so the marginal cost for a driver is a substantially smaller percentage.

Yup, this is often the answer.

Same with "why do we still have humans taking orders at McD?" Then it materializes when the cashier's minimum wage pops up -- in comes the kiosks.

I don't think it has anything to do with cashier wages, and more to do with customer perception.

Kiosks are already cheaper than people.

With minimum wage at $7.25/hour, and a Kiosk being able to replace 2+ shifts (16 hour days 7 days a week), that's $30K/year in savings, which would more than pay for a kiosk and maintenance.

Developing the software to run them isn't free, but spreading $15M in development costs among 14,000 restaurants is only $1K each.

But many customers would balk at having to order at a kiosk, so McDonalds will still hire humans.

> But many customers would balk at having to order at a kiosk, so McDonalds will still hire humans.

A lot of locations around me have both kiosks and staffed registers.

I used the kiosk once and thought it was annoying to work through. If you have a simple order like "A medium #3", then its an order of magnitude faster to order through a person. On the other hand, if you like to customize your burger, or order a several things a la carte, the kiosk might be better depending on the competence of the human at the cash register.

(Of course, whether or not your customized burger or list of a la carte items gets made correctly by the kitchen staff is an entirely different conversation...)

> If you have a simple order like "A medium #3", then its an order of magnitude faster to order through a person.

This is a user interface [fixable] problem, not some inherent defect in kiosks. You should be able to walk up to the kiosk, tap #3, wave your NFC payment at it, and walk away with a hamburger. Today's "Tap. Tap. Scroll, Scroll. Tap. Back. Tap. Tap checkout. Tap Ok. Insert credit card in this other machine. Tap confirm. Sign. Remove card. Tap done." mess is merely incompetent product design.

Also usability. Ever watched an older person try to get a drink out of one of those touch-screen drink dispensers with 100 choices of soda+flavors?

Same would happen with a kiosk order taker. Two humans talking can still communicate much more reliably than one human navigating a somewhat unfamiliar UI.

I think the decision has 3 main factors:

1. Total operational cost,

2. Customer satisfaction,

3. Risk related to change.

You make a good point though -- perhaps it's not primarily driven by the combo of current and projected minimum wage hikes.

Can anyone quantify?

There's an initiative to move to autopilot for trains, or Positive Train Control. The US Gov't started the initiative in 2008 after a particularly gnarly train accident which killed 25 people. It was due to be rolled out in 2015 and we're still waiting...

For long-haul rail freight the economics don't matter as much as they do for trucks. 1-2 people can control a 7 mile train as opposed to trucks which have 1 driver per 50' trailer.

/SSA

There was an ELI5 post the other day with a pretty detailed response[0]

The TL;DR amounts to the braking system and current regulation about when trains are eligible to be automated.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/712012/e...

They exist, you can find them on e.g. the London underground.

I'm curious how the minimum wage compares in the various train driver jurisdictions. (I don't know -- possibly not relevant.)

They exist for local rail and subways, and with the unification of the European signaling and braking systems, soon they’ll also dominate long-range rail