21–30 of 243 posts
Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?
It's already a thing, first example that comes to mind is line 14 in the Paris metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_14
Although I would assume there are conductors in a control centre somewhere?
15 years ago the MTA was caught maintaining two different sets of books - one internal that showed the agency had a surplus of cash and another set of books for the public which showed the agency as being "cash strapped" and needing to raise fares as a result. See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/nyregion/hevesi-says-mta-m...
The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic. It's hard to believe it's capable of producing anything other than it's current broken state.
We, collectively, seem to accept car accidents because we think we can avoid them with good driving skills. Train accidents leave us helpless, and we can’t cope with that. The whole concept of ”bad things happen to good people for no reason” is extremely hard to bear. Somehow this reminds me of people who believe the right diet will protect them from cancer, the right prenatal care from birth defects, etc.
Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?
Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit#Automat...
This smacks of corruption or of elements of society deciding that systems aren't going to simply work anymore. The population of New York City when I lived in Queens was 7.3 million when I lived there in 1989. The subways pretty much worked back then. The figure for population of New York City in 2017 I found was 8.5 million. Population increase can't account for the difference. There must have been considerable systemic decay.
Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?
Helsinki metro was planning to have automated trains when the western extension opens in 2014. It opened in late 2017, without automation because of technical difficulties. I have a hard time believing there will be much automated traffic on the roads here (with uneven surfaces, unclear markings, snow, and other traffic) before the metro can be automated (in a dedicated tunnel where there is no other traffic, movement is technically only possible on the rails and there is no snow).
Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?
"The line operates using fully automated [..]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_4_(Budapest_Metro)
I spent 5 years taking the Toronto subway (Yonge line, North York Center to Union) every day. I noticed this interesting pattern. During rush hour, any small delay on one train will almost certain impact every train down the line- there's little time buffer between trains. The bigger the delay, the more trains effected by it. The more passengers per train, the more likely that train will have a delay- loading and unl…
By promising a schedule that doesn't assume nothing goes wrong. Time padding means the inevitable minor delays can be absorbed quickly, and infrequent longer delays are recoverable.
Also, I don't know about Toronto, but most of the big delays in Boston are issues with equipment rather than passengers. Derailment, signal failure, etc. should scale with vehicle traffic rather than vehicle occupancy/passenger count, and big delays decrease how much traffic is going around at the moment.
We, collectively, seem to accept car accidents because we think we can avoid them with good driving skills. Train accidents leave us helpless, and we can’t cope with that. The whole concept of ”bad things happen to good people for no reason” is extremely hard to bear. Somehow this reminds me of people who believe the right diet will protect them from cancer, the right prenatal care from birth defects, etc.
It's the same thing that powers fears over mass shootings even though, statistically, they are a tiny fraction of overall gun violence. Most of the rest, however, can be avoided by keeping yourself out of bad situations with gangs or drugs...so even though the stats are higher people feel more in control...vs just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.