4 ms·

They do in a lot of metros, although it's often very hard to retro-fit. The DLR got it at build-time. [1] One of the big issues is 'degraded working' where the

by jnty 7y ago

They do in a lot of metros, although it's often very hard to retro-fit. The DLR got it at build-time. [1] One of the big issues is 'degraded working' where there's been some sort of failure (or perhaps adverse weather conditions) which means trains have to operate on vocal authority to proceed on sight. The problem then becomes as hard as driverless cars - you have to know when you've reached milepost 70 or the next set of points by sight and it's really bad if you miss them. Arrival to and dispatch from stations without platform-edge doors is also tricky and human staff are often required to manage the process. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway

usrusr 7y ago
Very good point with the degraded working. In a train serving hundreds of passengers (or many dozens of truckloads), running on something that is literally as expensive to maintain as a whole rail network, the cost saved by cutting the driver is just not worth the extra hassle and delay in edge cases. Perhaps it is much more meaningful to think of that person as the engineer on duty than as a driver.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  Autonomous rail has probably racked up billions of passenger-kilometres by now. The edge cases are pretty thin and it's unlikely that a human driver will have equivalent levels of accumulated experience. The most reliable line in the MTA, for example, is the L train. It is also the closest to fully autonomous (due to union rules, there is a driver who turns it on and then "supervises" the train).
  - usrusr 7y ago
    I use a driverless subway almost daily. And it's rare, but not not terribly rare to see the fallback driver panel in use. It works because a fallback driver can be deployed in minutes, which is very much not true with the distances spanned by heavy rail. Regarding the L train, how much would service suffer if the "supervisor" wasn't there to clean up whatever is left by reliability nines? We may never know. And it is hardly surprising that a recently modernized line is beating the living history museum that is the rest of the MTA. It's quite a leap to go from modernization causing reliability to automation causing reliability.

by jnty 7y ago

usrusr 7y ago

Very good point with the degraded working. In a train serving hundreds of passengers (or many dozens of truckloads), running on something that is literally as expensive to maintain as a whole rail network, the cost saved by cutting the driver is just not worth the extra hassle and delay in edge cases. Perhaps it is much more meaningful to think of that person as the engineer on duty than as a driver.

jacques_chester 7y ago
Autonomous rail has probably racked up billions of passenger-kilometres by now. The edge cases are pretty thin and it's unlikely that a human driver will have equivalent levels of accumulated experience. The most reliable line in the MTA, for example, is the L train. It is also the closest to fully autonomous (due to union rules, there is a driver who turns it on and then "supervises" the train).
- usrusr 7y ago
  I use a driverless subway almost daily. And it's rare, but not not terribly rare to see the fallback driver panel in use. It works because a fallback driver can be deployed in minutes, which is very much not true with the distances spanned by heavy rail. Regarding the L train, how much would service suffer if the "supervisor" wasn't there to clean up whatever is left by reliability nines? We may never know. And it is hardly surprising that a recently modernized line is beating the living history museum that is the rest of the MTA. It's quite a leap to go from modernization causing reliability to automation causing reliability.