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Does Automating the Metro Save Money? (2017)
- guruz 7y agoNitpick: Automation does not imply instllating platform doors. Nuremberg U-Bahn uses radar instead to monitor the tracks. I don't know the cost differences between those approaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_U-Bahn#U3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_U-Bahn#U3
- rocqua 7y agoThe following paragraph: "On 30 October 2008, the first accident resulting in a death occurred at Rathenauplatz station. A passenger fell onto the track as a driverless train approached the platform. The train was unable to halt in time because of the short distance to the fallen passenger and limitations of its braking system. Even if the same incident had occurred with a manually operated train, the driver would not have been able to halt in time either." from that page is completely without a source.
- tralarpa 7y agoSeems to be this one: https://www.merkur.de/bayern/54jaehrige-unfall-vollautomatischer-ubahn-getoetet-17959.html https://www.merkur.de/bayern/54jaehrige-unfall-vollautomatis...
- jnty 7y agoThe (poor) economics of removing drivers from existing metros just goes to show what an extremely efficient way of moving people they already are.
- ghaff 7y agoThe tech crowd is really big on cutting out people when the reality is that people are 1.) Pretty versatile, even in fairly routine jobs, handling unexpected events and 2.) Often aren't that expensive in the scheme of things. Even personal transportation (taxis, etc.) drivers are only about half the cost. That's certainly not nothing. But it's also not the difference between expensive and almost too cheap to meter.
- TomMarius 7y agoWould you want to be a metro driver?
- betaby 7y agoAnswer to that question going to prove what? In my city metro drivers are unionized and paid on pair with software developers. Similar for bus. There is absolutely no shortage of the bus or metro drivers.
- TomMarius 7y agoI am not saying it is not well paid. But when you try the work (I did for a day), you realize that you spend whole days in tunnels, mindlessly pushing a button, waiting for a computer to finally and rightfully replace you. Even worse job than being a bus driver (which is IMHO way worse than being a taxi driver).
- jnty 7y agoSo all jobs you personally dislike should be abolished?
- TomMarius 7y agoI am sure the people who enjoy driving metro can do so in VR. Why would we forcefully hold onto a job that wastes human potential? Maybe the issue is the difference in my understanding of human potential. There is simply so much more to do for these people that I can't see why someone would want to forcefully hold onto old ways. Why would you force a person to spend all days in tunnels? Technology for automated metro is there for many years. Not using it is foolish. If you don't like people losing jobs, simply take the savings and employ the people elsewhere in the city, e.g. as bus drivers.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
- greatpatton 7y agoThe economics goes behind the limited analysis of this article. The main problem with train and metro drivers is that they need to be hired and trained to a certain level, and you also need other position like traffic regulator, etc. Here in Switzerland there is a lack of train driver creating problems as some services cannot be maintained to the expected level. In my city a suburban train line had to go from one train every 15min back to one every 30min, because of a lack of trained resources regarding traffic regulation (seems that 2 peoples were sick and another one quit), and cannot be as easily replaced.
- adrianmonk 7y agoThey're efficient in terms of drivers. Trains require large headway (gaps between trains, like following distance in a car) for safety reasons. This limits the number of trains you can run on a line. Which places a natural limit on the number of drivers you need. Instead, you scale up passenger throughput by adding cars to trains. When you do this, you scale up capacity independent of number of drivers. Sort of a marginal cost of zero. Another efficiency question, though, is bang for the buck. Trains are expensive to build. Headway limits the number of trains, and you can't make trains longer than the platform length. So you hit kind of a brick wall of scalability. So it's worth asking whether automation could let you squeeze more return out of your investment in building the train line. Maybe it would unlock capacity increases through reduced headway. Or maybe some other way. I think it's an open question how much this can help, though.
- Patrick_Devine 7y agoExcept, not really, right? If you mean at existing service levels, then yes, of course. It's not really worth it. Where automation really helps though is with _frequency_ of trains. If you have headways which are half as long (like in Vancouver on the Expo line the headways are every 90 seconds during peak periods) it makes a huge difference compared to something like SF's BART which has a weekday frequency of 15 minutes. It also makes a massive difference when you're building a new line. If you can half the headway, you can half the size of the platform which makes building the line considerably cheaper. Less land to appropriate, less concrete to pour, less land to dig, etc. There is one problem though. If you build a super convenient metro system with trains every minute or two, people will start to use that system. A lot. Vancouver's system is running into problems (particularly on the Canada Line) with massive overcrowding because even with the high frequency of trains, there's just not enough capacity.
- jnty 7y agoAs the article says, many metros (including the one in the article) combine automation with drivers. You only need to pay for the bit of automation that actually increases frequency and use the driver for all the fiddly bits.
- markvdb 7y agoFor good reasons or bad, but... machines don't strike. That on its own is a very good reason to fully automate the metro.
- _n_b_ 7y agoLiving in Paris, where the people that run the trains have threatened to strike from December 5 "indefinitely" (we'll see what that means), that was also my first thought when reading the article.
- mobilemidget 7y agoPerhaps not strike, but they do sometimes malfunction, go out of order, sometimes due to vandalism, or stop working because of electricity issues.
- seszett 7y agoAutomated metro lines aren't unsupervised though. The automated lines in Paris and Lille also stop when there is a strike.
- greatpatton 7y agoNo during the last strike (September) in Paris the line 1 and 14 (the only 2 lines with automated metro) were both operational.
- seszett 7y agoThat's because the conductors were striking but not the supervisors, though, not because an automated line is inherently immune to striking. I thought line 14 was stopped because of a strike some time ago but it was apparently just because of an incident, it might never have stopped because of a strike indeed. But that just means the employees that manage it don't strike.
- rumanator 7y ago> That's because the conductors were striking but not the supervisors, though That's the whole point.
- k_bx 7y agoThe article doesn't mention one more thing that automation might bring: flexibility in working hours. Automated trains could work an extra hour for routes and districts that would benefit from it, or it could also be not working, e.g. extra trains that only work in peak hours. This is especially true in the context of self-driving cars, but might be true for Metro as well.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoThe first comment on the article mentioned that the automated sky train in Vancouver comes every 2 minutes even at 1AM. Sounds like an awesome benefit.
- bluGill 7y agoThat is the biggest benefit. When you already have an automated train and it isn't in the shop for maintenance the cost to run it empty is low enough that you may as well run it instead of store it. This means that people feel more confident in the system overall and are more likely to use it. That is automated trains eliminate the "what if I have to work really late - how will I get home" problem.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- maeln 7y agoJust one thing: It failed to mention that those extra pane w/ doors on the metro platform also help safety. People falling on the metro line (intentionally or not) is a real issue, and, aside from the obvious immediate consequence to the body integrity of the person that fell, it also yield a significant cost. It is become increasingly common to put those type of protective pane even on non automated metro lines. I saw them in Paris and Barcelona for example.
- bluGill 7y agoThe argument is bogus: either way they should be installing doors in each station preventing track access. This is basic safety: keep people off the tracks so they can't be hit by a train. This is also air quality: keep brake dust out of the air in the station. Maybe you decide automation isn't worth it, but you still want the doors, even if it means hiring someone to open them. The above was also stated by one of the comments, but it is worth bringing up.
- Angostura 7y agoHmmm. London Underground carries about 1.5 billion people reach year. In the last year for data I can find, around 80 ended up on the tracks. Only a few stations have any pbarrier between track and platform.
- IneffablePigeon 7y agoAll/most of the new stations on the Elizabeth line are going to have barriers afaik. It seems to me like all the new/refitted underground stations are getting the barriers these days too - I think it's a great improvement personally.
- tomarr 7y agoAlternatively they cost a lot and reduce flexibility (want to change your train fleet / door configuration?)
- ant6n 7y agoLondon has extremely cramped, extremely crowded stations. Platform screen doors become necessary as a way to ensure safety of _crowds_ not individuals. In most metro stations around the world, this is not true. How about making a study, counting all metro stations noting whether they have platform screen doors, automation, and the year built. You'll very likely see there's a strong connection between automation and platform screen doors, but less so for the other variables.
- stuaxo 7y ago
- izzydata 7y agoI find it curious that we are attempting to create an automated car, but we can't seem to make an automated train that is on a defined rail?
- cheschire 7y agoMy completely uninformed assumption has been that there are more unions preventing the automation of trains than automobiles.
- andbberger 7y agoThe paris metro has been automated for decades. Get out of here with your middlebrow dismissal
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoPersonal attacks are against site guidelines. A simple factual rebuttal suffices here.
- izzydata 7y agoMy ambiguous usage of "we" to refer to my particular country of the United States was misleading. I'm glad these things exist around the world and I hope we in the US can implement one someday.
- andbberger 7y agoEver been on one of those wee trains at an airport?
- danbolt 7y agoNo, I think it's pretty common in this case. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guideway_transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guideway_transit
- ant6n 7y agoOf course there exist automated trains. The question is whether automating an existing system makes sense, in terms of cost. The simple model chosen here is to assume that automation requires platform screen doors -- and showing that the cost of installing those is on par with the cost of the drivers. Meaning the drivers represent a small amount of the total cost of the system.
- jbay808 7y ago> The problem with automation is that in order to create a completely unattended system, the industry best practice is to install platform screen doors to ensure that nobody can ever enter the tracks. What...? The problem with non-automated metros is the same! Either way, best practice is to have doors for safety. Several train stations in Tokyo have doors/gates, despite those lines having drivers. Meanwhile, Vancouver's automated metro has no gates protecting the tracks, but a generally good safety record nonetheless. The attendants are mainly there to deal with issues that gates wouldn't solve anyway: medical emergencies, confused passengers needing directions, drunk/violent passengers, etc.
- petermcneeley 7y agoActually Vancouver had no gates at all. The ticketing was automatic and honor based.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoSort of honor based. You could be asked to show proof of payment and would get fined if you couldn't show you had paid.
- Patrick_Devine 7y agoThis was about gates on the platform, not gates to get into the station. Those new station gates have been a complete boondoggle however. Translink spent $200 million [1] on a system which was supposed to save $2 million a year in fare evasion but people just jump through anyway. They try to put a bright spin on this saying revenue went up $30 million, but they don't talk about ridership level increases at the same time. Even if they saved $10 million a year, it would take 20 years to pay for the system, far longer than the useful life of the fare gates. [1] https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/translink-still-losing-millions-to-fare-evaders-but-its-not-tracking-numbers https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/translink-still-los...
- jbay808 7y agoAnd the gates are very badly designed! The single-door design can't handle the peak crowds that go through them, and their 'beep' that confirms fare payment is a long monotone whine which makes it impossible to tell if you've paid successfully or the person next to you has, since all the gates are just constantly emitting a high pitched squeak. /rant
- gbronner 7y agoCost estimates are far too low, and fail to include substantial back-loaded pension benefits as well as training and such.
- crocal 7y agoSigh. The Lyon metro is only fully automated on line D. There is an ongoing project to automate line A and B. Lyon metro line D is relatively famous in mass transit signalling because it is one of the very first driverless metro and it features no platform doors. This is but one of the inaccuracies I found in this uninformed article.
- Yhippa 7y agoI used the Montreal Metro a few years ago and they were automated and didn't use the doors. Are they coming eventually or are they being rolled out in phases?
- bluGill 7y agoYou should automate because it eliminates future budget. When the next recession comes (which could be transit only: when political winds change and voters give transit less money, or won't allow fares to raise), the automated system is the last one cut because there is so little money to save. Since the trains are your busy routes and the backbone it means when things get better latter your most important users are still users and there are enough riders. If your system isn't automated you are tempted to cut service on the main routes to the point where people who are most likely to use transit buy a car anyway and then they forget that transit works because the car is their habit and they forget the downsides. Might be too late for anyone to see this...