Of course people whose jobs are affected by these systems will speak ill of it, I'm sure the carriage drivers union wasn't very pleased with the automobile back in the day either. We will see the same thing for trucks and cabs real soon.
This article says http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2007/08/29/les-suicides-du-metro-... not a single incident has been reported last year.
That said I wonder how much of it is due to the decks door.
With added benefit that it is strike free, the line works later at night ... I wish none of the employees to be jobless or worse, but it's hard to justify using people to drive metros.
Interestingly, it seems the main obstacle is software - contractors are few, code is highly specific, ISO certification and warranty issues are very unattractive.
Very interested how TfL will approach this. They're really good at what they do, even at communicating (responsive website!). Don't think anybody does it better.
I'm sure they help (if only psychologically), but the Lyon line D doesn't have quay doors and it's been running fully automatically since 1992. The only incident I know of is a drunk person falling on top of the metro (trying to jump from a mezzanine to the quay and missing) and hitting a camera in a tunnel. No death.
Reasons I can think of:
Existing automation may be insufficiently good to cope with adverse weather and unplanned situations. Technology has moved on considerably since the Victoria, Central and Jubilee stock. We're automating cars now, after all. The article mentions a new signalling system being rolled out in support.
Lack of platform-edge doors. TfL have stated they won't run driverless trains without these. These are planned for installation on the Piccadilly line as part of the new stock rollout.
If a fault stops a train, it's far more useful to have someone on the scene to try emergency repairs than to wait until the train can be cleared from a tunnel - because a stopped train can literally hold up the commute of millions of people.
There are also safety issues. Drivers are trained in passenger management, and every so often they need that training to deal with fights, illness, suicides, or all the other messy things that happen on a public transport system - the public part of that being at least as important as the transport part.
Drivers are trained in passenger management, and every so
often they need that training to deal with fights,
illness, suicides, or all the other messy things that
happen on a public transport system
It's likely that London Underground is basically betting it'll be easier to just hire at less than the replacement rate and gradually automate more and more rather than risk massive conflict with the RMT for years.
it was until recently headed by the late great Bob Crow http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26527325
I don't know how they'd do it on the tube. Presumably door closing would still require manual control.
The door closing works well for the DLR -- the PSA checks all the doors are clear and then shuts them all at once. This probably isn't viable for a tube because platforms are smaller and more congested.
What for? The doors can be on a timer (station-specific if necessary)
> Driverless trains work well enough on the DLR in East London, and are probably an inevitable step in 21st century London.
It is. There are dozens of ways to make automated trains as safe as or safer than driven ones, Lyon's line D has been fully automated for more than 20 years (since 1992), doesn't even use platform-side doors, and AFAIK the only incident so far was somebody falling on the train itself (dead drunk and trying to jump from a mezzanine to the quay) and hitting a camera in the tunnels in 2010 (the person was lucky and survived)
Interestingly, the crash that made WMATA stop automatic operation[1] would not have been avoided by manual operation. The operator would've seen the same suggested speed that the train did, and wouldn't have been able to stop any sooner.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2009_Washington_Metro_tra...
I suspect that if there were an Elevator Operator's Union, they would have said the same thing when elevators became sophisticated enough to be operated by a single button press.
I understand in 1798 why they went with one locomotive and lots of carriages. The engine is too expensive. One driver per carriage is not feasible. Great. All of those are eliminated. Electric motors are cheaper than "real" breaks, so every 2 wheels have an electric motor anyway. And if you have to have them, people power the train using the lots of small motors, because that means no big engine in the first carriage.
But given that you need those things, why can't we just have every carriage be it's own "train" ? Why can't every carriage just have the destination that would be most convenient at that moment in time ?
Why can't London subway be a traffic-immune taxi service ? Now THAT, I want.
Likewise "operational separation" of different lines is key to reliability, both to ensure incidents on one line don't affect service on another, and because points are subject to a lot more wear and tear than plain track (see the current disruption to south London rail services, caused by a cracked crossover at Lewisham). Going forward TfL is trying to move towards a network of simple, self-contained end-to-end lines, e.g. by separating the Northern line into two independent lines rather than one line with five branches.
The kind of thing you're describing is in operation elsewhere in London where the capacity requirements make it more appropriate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ULTra_(rapid_transit)
I feel all of those problems are solvable, and it would be a huge improvement. The fact that railways have multiple lines is at least half the reason I don't want to use them. Same with the tube.
Today, using the tube is torture. Constant interchanges, deep long extremely crowded hallways, and it's getting worse every year. Why can't that be fixed ?
I'm convinced this can be made safer than central signalling.
As for the vehicle sizes, I'm sure whatever size vehicle is necessary could simply be constructed, and the article on wikipedia for mentions that you could have battery-powered vehicles with rapid charging at stations, negating the cost of having and maintaining dynamic (moving ?) electricity connections throughout the tunnels.
A vehicle the size of an 800-person tube train wouldn't be able to get round the tube corners without rails, and how could you negotiate a destination that made sense for that many people?
Because subway lines are fixed, have little branching and your carriage can't magically jump from one line to the other? Having independent carriages would mostly be messier, for no advantage.
The system you purpose would not be traffic-immune. A large train full of people is incredibly efficient. You are describing autonomous cars, which will be great and given the the size and number of roads they don't need to match the efficiency or rail lines.
Including comment from the RMT Union about how they are "deeply concerned" about driverless operation, the "lethal and cash driven nonsense of removing drivers"
Well... driverless operation may be "cash-driven", and TFL s often focusing on savings over performance (e.g by removing staff from ticket and information booths) but "lethal" sounds like a slur. Driverless trains work well enough on the DLR in East London, and are probably an inevitable step in 21st century London.