The 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.
Except, 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.
As 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.
The 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.
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.
ghaff|6 years ago
TomMarius|6 years ago
Patrick_Devine|6 years ago
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|6 years ago
greatpatton|6 years ago
adrianmonk|6 years ago
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.