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Comment by 627467 | Hacker News Reader

Won't be popular opinion but, one benefit of driverless subway is: decreased risk of industrial action disruptions.

In the city I live underground drivers hold ridiculous privileged (even compared to other underground workers) that allows positions to be effectively hereditary: children of drivers are more likely to get into the job than others.

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> Won't be popular opinion but, one benefit of driverless subway is: decreased risk of industrial action disruptions.

Very true, though equally the increased risk of automated safety system stopping the train in the middle of a long tube tunnel because one of it's sensors got dirty or a rat triggered a sensor as it went splat on the tracks are things drivers can work around easier.

So if a perfectly safe and working train stops due to a sensor getting dirty quickly (which for the London tube is more likely than most places), with a driver there they could see and know that issue and safely carry on. Automation will go into health and safety mode and stop that train in the middle of nowhere needing human attention. So delays become longer.

I'd rather deal with planned outages, than longer drawn out automated random ones.

> Automation will go into health and safety mode and stop that train in the middle of nowhere needing human attention. So delays become longer.

In Germany, trains have a system called "Notbremsüberbrückung" / NBÜ. This system overrides the passenger emergency brake in tunnels... basically (i'm shortening it a bit here), as soon as the last carriage leaves the platform (in an underground) or the train can't fully stop before entering a tunnel, the e-brake is disabled, and only re-enabled when the train enters a platform / exits the tunnel.

There's nothing preventing automated trains from using the same principle. Additionally, tunnels can be retrofit with cameras or motion detectors, to further prevent something larger than a rat from getting in a dangerous position.

A number of tube lines in London also has this. Central Line, (parts of) Jubilee Line, both do if I recall. Those lines are "semi-automatic" where the driver is providing oversight and operates the doors whilst the train will automatically drive. Driver can override easily.

And a driver can when some one is blocking the doors not proceed and get the blockage removed quickly.

Pre covid in the rush hour this was very common.

That's more a job for the platform staff isn't it? Apart from making (several) announcements I've never seen a driver fix this.

This. London's tube system is essentially stopped a day or so a year due to strikes, which is pretty dramatic for a city of 10 million people who rely on it.

Most strikes affecting the underground have not been just drivers, so making the system driverless would be unlikely to change that.

True, and been over safty concerns/reduction in safty staff.

Though: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19741282

Nicely sums up how the whole driveless tube/train aspect has been rumbling on for a while now.

London's transport strikes have been shown to ultimately benefit the wider economy, as people have broken out of their local maximums and found more efficient ways to travel around.

That you can identify a benefit doesn't mean it's outweighing the costs.

Perhaps the drivers should be paid a sum of money which closer reflects how much marginal value they add to the city, and this would convince them not to strike.

This point is well addressed in the article. There are more staff members than just drivers.

That sounds like a corruption problem that could be fixed via regulation, investigation, and prosecution.

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