Almost every mass transit system in the United States still requires a driver or operator on board — even as robotaxis become a familiar sight on city streets. Now two major cities are seeking to change that, weighing whether trains can run without a human at the controls.
Autonomous transit train (Credits: Insurance Journal)
Officials in Washington, D.C., recently advanced a plan that could let computers fully control one of its subways, while Los Angeles is seeking to build a new, completely automated line. Honolulu already operates one — an elevated driverless line that will stretch 19 miles when completed, making it the most expansive automated transit system in the country.
Driverless Trains: Washington and Los Angeles Push Ahead
Both projects would take years to implement and still face financial and technical hurdles, and they arrive amid a fierce debate over safety, cost and whether the substantial upfront expense is worth the long-term savings in labour costs. Supporters argue the push is long overdue, pointing out that American cities lag far behind places across Europe, Asia, Canada, Australia, South America and the Middle East that already run unattended subways, metros or buses.
“It should be much harder to automate something that’s on-road, that has all of these various obstacles coming at it, compared to a fixed-rail system,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation. “Basically the transit world is where innovation goes to die,” he added.
Why US Transit Automation Has Been So Slow
Wide-scale transit automation has been slow to develop in the US, even though on-road vehicles from companies such as Waymo, Tesla and Zoox have taken the automation lead in recent years. Washington’s Metro trains ran with some automated features when the system opened 50 years ago, but those were switched off after a fatal crash in 2009 and only restored over the past two years.
Now officials in the capital have renewed their push for automation on Metro’s Red Line, while an environmental review is under way in Los Angeles for an automated underground line cutting through the Santa Monica Mountains. Detroit and Miami opened elevated driverless trains as pilot projects in the 1980s, and smaller automated systems already carry passengers between airport terminals and along the Las Vegas Strip. Whether the new wave goes further will depend on safety regulators, funding and public trust — not just the technology.
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Source: Insurance Journal — read the full story there.
