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Germany for example has about 35.000 train conductors. Subways are just an obvious first step. Add renewable energy to the equation and you can build a fantasti

Germany for example has about 35.000 train conductors. Subways are just an obvious first step. Add renewable energy to the equation and you can build a fantastic system running 24/7 without any waiting for trains.

vidarh 5y ago
Mainline trains is a non-starter for many decades, though, at least in the UK which still has a large number of level crossings, as well as stations with "fun" issues such as being too short for the longest trains. There is tech solutions in place to prevent the wrong doors from opening. Except when it doesn't work, where you really need someone on the train. And yes, it does fail. Been on trains when the doors refused to open because the system failed to recognise the station. For ages, the trains also waited for ~30 seconds to open doors at London Victoria, supposedly because the system that recognised the stations used GPS, and the station concourse at Victoria is too deep for the trains to get a signal. Don't know if that is true or not, but in any case automating even door control was a long, complex project that still has issues years later. Steps will keep being taken towards automating more of it, but there is decades old rolling stock, so any upgrades will take accordingly long to spread through the system as everything gets upgraded. Isle of Wight for example, ran on London Underground 1938 stock trains until last year, when they started upgrading to refurbished British Rail Class 484 rolling stock built in the 1970's and 1980's... With respect to renewables, not all of the UK network is even electrified yet...
- allendoerfer 5y ago
  Sounds overly negative to me. With those interest rates, we should really invest into any useful infrastructure project, especially when there are wins for or at least no cost to the environment. Let's generate some sustainable economic growth. We can solve the problems step by step. Starting at least brings us closer to a solution.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    I'm all for investment (though not in London - I'd rather we invest in drawing business out of London, to create a more sustainable and scalable distribution of the UK economy), but that does not change the fact that these upgrades are incredibly resource intensive, not just in terms of money but also skilled staff. There are many tens of billions of investment in prerequisites such as getting rid of level crossings and properly secure rail and upgrading stations and trains that'd be required before you can even think of upgrading mainline rail to driverless. For the London Underground, it means a rolling program of platform upgrades, signalling upgrades and rolling stock upgrades that'd similarly be in the many billions. And yes, now would be the right time to finance it, but even if you start now this is just not happening in the next couple of decades, that was my point. So by all means, it's worth starting to make the pre-requisite improvements, but it won't bring driverless trains on most of these lines anytime soon.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  It sounds like this could be all done remotely, with cameras, and one worker physically present at each station, plus a roving maintenance team. If we can fly drones through the deserts of Arabia why can't we drive trains remotely through the suburbs of Croydon?
  - jermaustin1 5y ago
    Losing contact with your UAV is a lot less risky than losing contact with a runaway train.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Depends on where and how the UAV goes down.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    I don't know if you suggested Croydon because you've seen me mention living there, or if you picked it at random or because it's one of the main locations with trains heading for Victoria, but Croydon is one of the highest trafficked parts of the UK rail network, with an interconnected set of some of the most complex junctions in the country, and a large rail depot that is hard to secure because of its sheer size... It's if anything one of the worst places in the entire UK to start such a project. The problem with what you suggest is that a ten minutes delay at East Croydon during rush hour, if you're lucky and a problem happens near a station, can easily lead to rush hour traffic from large parts of the South Coast to both London Victoria and London Bridge piling up with effects lasting for an hour or more. It's a horrible chokepoint. There are plans to fix that [1], but those plans also involve multi-year projects. In fact the planning has been going on for years at this point. A similar issue is a problem for the London Underground - while there are fewer complex junctions, the margins are far tighter. A train that's stuck on the station for a couple of minutes can have knock on effects over a larger area. All of this is solvable, but the costs involved in various improvements to mitigate them means it'd take a very long time before those investments would start paying off. [1] https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-routes/sussex/upgrading-the-brighton-main-line/unblocking-the-croydon-bottleneck/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-routes...
revax 5y ago
>Add renewable energy to the equation and you can build a fantastic system running 24/7 without any waiting for trains. You'll need some storage or natural gas power plant as most renewable energy are intermittent. Also, unless you have alternative routes, you cannot have a subway running 24/7 because maintenance needs to be done somehow.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  You're missing the obvious solution of nuclear trains. I think it's self-evident that these would have no drawbacks. In the unlikely event of a disaster all you'd need to do is seal the tunnel and dig a new one.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    rocket trains sounds better, and put them in vacuum tubes! That would be revolutionary \s
me_me_me 5y ago
And we will call it 'The Snow Piercer'

vidarh 5y ago

Mainline trains is a non-starter for many decades, though, at least in the UK which still has a large number of level crossings, as well as stations with "fun" issues such as being too short for the longest trains. There is tech solutions in place to prevent the wrong doors from opening. Except when it doesn't work, where you really need someone on the train. And yes, it does fail. Been on trains when the doors refused to open because the system failed to recognise the station. For ages, the trains also waited for ~30 seconds to open doors at London Victoria, supposedly because the system that recognised the stations used GPS, and the station concourse at Victoria is too deep for the trains to get a signal. Don't know if that is true or not, but in any case automating even door control was a long, complex project that still has issues years later. Steps will keep being taken towards automating more of it, but there is decades old rolling stock, so any upgrades will take accordingly long to spread through the system as everything gets upgraded. Isle of Wight for example, ran on London Underground 1938 stock trains until last year, when they started upgrading to refurbished British Rail Class 484 rolling stock built in the 1970's and 1980's... With respect to renewables, not all of the UK network is even electrified yet...

allendoerfer 5y ago
Sounds overly negative to me. With those interest rates, we should really invest into any useful infrastructure project, especially when there are wins for or at least no cost to the environment. Let's generate some sustainable economic growth. We can solve the problems step by step. Starting at least brings us closer to a solution.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I'm all for investment (though not in London - I'd rather we invest in drawing business out of London, to create a more sustainable and scalable distribution of the UK economy), but that does not change the fact that these upgrades are incredibly resource intensive, not just in terms of money but also skilled staff. There are many tens of billions of investment in prerequisites such as getting rid of level crossings and properly secure rail and upgrading stations and trains that'd be required before you can even think of upgrading mainline rail to driverless. For the London Underground, it means a rolling program of platform upgrades, signalling upgrades and rolling stock upgrades that'd similarly be in the many billions. And yes, now would be the right time to finance it, but even if you start now this is just not happening in the next couple of decades, that was my point. So by all means, it's worth starting to make the pre-requisite improvements, but it won't bring driverless trains on most of these lines anytime soon.
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
It sounds like this could be all done remotely, with cameras, and one worker physically present at each station, plus a roving maintenance team. If we can fly drones through the deserts of Arabia why can't we drive trains remotely through the suburbs of Croydon?
- jermaustin1 5y ago
  Losing contact with your UAV is a lot less risky than losing contact with a runaway train.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Depends on where and how the UAV goes down.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I don't know if you suggested Croydon because you've seen me mention living there, or if you picked it at random or because it's one of the main locations with trains heading for Victoria, but Croydon is one of the highest trafficked parts of the UK rail network, with an interconnected set of some of the most complex junctions in the country, and a large rail depot that is hard to secure because of its sheer size... It's if anything one of the worst places in the entire UK to start such a project. The problem with what you suggest is that a ten minutes delay at East Croydon during rush hour, if you're lucky and a problem happens near a station, can easily lead to rush hour traffic from large parts of the South Coast to both London Victoria and London Bridge piling up with effects lasting for an hour or more. It's a horrible chokepoint. There are plans to fix that [1], but those plans also involve multi-year projects. In fact the planning has been going on for years at this point. A similar issue is a problem for the London Underground - while there are fewer complex junctions, the margins are far tighter. A train that's stuck on the station for a couple of minutes can have knock on effects over a larger area. All of this is solvable, but the costs involved in various improvements to mitigate them means it'd take a very long time before those investments would start paying off. [1] https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-routes/sussex/upgrading-the-brighton-main-line/unblocking-the-croydon-bottleneck/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-routes...

revax 5y ago

>Add renewable energy to the equation and you can build a fantastic system running 24/7 without any waiting for trains. You'll need some storage or natural gas power plant as most renewable energy are intermittent. Also, unless you have alternative routes, you cannot have a subway running 24/7 because maintenance needs to be done somehow.

Y_Y 5y ago
You're missing the obvious solution of nuclear trains. I think it's self-evident that these would have no drawbacks. In the unlikely event of a disaster all you'd need to do is seal the tunnel and dig a new one.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  rocket trains sounds better, and put them in vacuum tubes! That would be revolutionary \s

me_me_me 5y ago

And we will call it 'The Snow Piercer'