Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The myth of the driverless tube train

londonreconnections.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 152 posts

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#141

Post by LeanderK »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #124
LeanderK wrote: post #122

I don't get why the train attendant has to be able to move the train. That's not required in the driverless systems I know. Either the train is unable to move and has to stop immediately, or it tries to drive to the next station, right? The only job then for the attendant is to guide the passengers to safety and watch out for unruly passengers. I know Nurembergs underground quite well and it just works. No platform d…

Nuremberg is a small town where emergency personal, which can drive the train can be deployed quickly to all locations, without having lots of on call staff ready. Deploying this in London is a different challenge. However I agree that with remote control the need should be mostly avoidable.

Well, that's true but then the emergency personal could at least just be spread around in the city. I don't think the response time should be that critical, if the train is burning nobody is needed to drive it to the next station, assuming staff is on the train that knows the emergency procedures. They should only need it for technical problems.

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#142

Post by [deleted] »

chrisseaton wrote: post #65
LatteLazy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he has to be? But he could easily be dropped into a safe seat. That's what they did for Boris in basically the same circumstances. Maybe Heir apparent is a bit strong? He's not defonate. But I can't think of anyone else with the name recognition...

> I don't think he has to be? Of course he does. He has to be a commoner MP. > The leader and deputy leader of the Party shall be elected or re-elected from among Commons members of the PLP https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Rule-Book-2... > But he could easily be dropped into a safe seat. Hmmm not sure how many of those they have available right now!

[deleted]

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#143

Post by LatteLazy »

GordonS wrote: post #81
LatteLazy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's political. In the uk, train drivers unions are one of the last meaningful unions left and the right wing government hates that. Also, London has a left wing mayor and a very good public transport system. The right wing government hate both the mayor (he's heir apparent to lead the party nationally) and the concept of public transport. That's also the real reason private train operators were bailed out but public…

> The right wing government I'd love to know by what scale you consider the British government "right-wing"?

I suppose Corbyn was the right wing candidate in the last general election then!?

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#144

Post by GordonS »

LatteLazy wrote: post #143
GordonS wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right wing government I'd love to know by what scale you consider the British government "right-wing"?

I suppose Corbyn was the right wing candidate in the last general election then!?

Eh, what are you on about? Who says there has to be a left wing and right wing candidate?

Realistically, they are all pretty centrist - at their most radical, they lean slightly one way or the other.

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#145

Post by jbkkd »

ElFitz wrote: post #92

Aside from the strikes, another aspect of automated subways is worth considering. Most subway lines in Paris have a few minutes interval between one train leaving and the next arriving. On the automated ones, it sometimes gets down to ~30 seconds. Seems automating the trains enables much higher frequencies, probably by eliminating human reaction times and reducing margins of error. Now, other countries have that with…

The Victoria line in London is human-driven, and has a frequency of 60-90 seconds at rush hour.

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#146

Post by Symbiote »

jbkkd wrote: post #145
ElFitz wrote: post #92

Aside from the strikes, another aspect of automated subways is worth considering. Most subway lines in Paris have a few minutes interval between one train leaving and the next arriving. On the automated ones, it sometimes gets down to ~30 seconds. Seems automating the trains enables much higher frequencies, probably by eliminating human reaction times and reducing margins of error. Now, other countries have that with…

The Victoria line in London is human-driven, and has a frequency of 60-90 seconds at rush hour.

The Victoria Line was the first automatic (computer controlled) railway in the world.

The driver presses a button to close the doors, the rest is done by computer.

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#147

Post by DiggyJohnson »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #90
Mauricebranagh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago my father did some consulting work for LU and he motioned that a lot of the pre war equipment had far less faults that the modern 1980's stuff.

It also had much less requirements and probably required more maintanence. You can think this type of claims everywhere; and pretty nowhere those are true.

For what it’s worth you ought to be careful arguing your position considering that GP has a second-hand account and you only have a general principle.

I see that you hedged your point, and I'm not even disagreeing with you at all. Just an interesting thing to consider.

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#148

Post by johannes1234321 »

LeanderK wrote: post #141
johannes1234321 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuremberg is a small town where emergency personal, which can drive the train can be deployed quickly to all locations, without having lots of on call staff ready. Deploying this in London is a different challenge. However I agree that with remote control the need should be mostly avoidable.

Well, that's true but then the emergency personal could at least just be spread around in the city. I don't think the response time should be that critical, if the train is burning nobody is needed to drive it to the next station, assuming staff is on the train that knows the emergency procedures. They should only need it for technical problems.

For some scale:

The shortest line in London (ignoring 2.5km Waterloo &City) is Victoria line with 21km.

The longest line, U1, in Nuremberg is 18.5km and still doesn't run automated. They started with U3, which is running 9.2km. Even with only two ready rooms maximum distance is 2.5km, which can be travelled in a few minutes in case of emergency (using a car and emergency signals it's less than 5 minutes, but of course getting underground and from nearest entry point to train will take longer)

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#149

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

chrisseaton wrote: post #62
LatteLazy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's political. In the uk, train drivers unions are one of the last meaningful unions left and the right wing government hates that. Also, London has a left wing mayor and a very good public transport system. The right wing government hate both the mayor (he's heir apparent to lead the party nationally) and the concept of public transport. That's also the real reason private train operators were bailed out but public…

> he's heir apparent to lead the party nationally He’s not even an MP! He’s not allowed to be the leader.

Nor was the last Tory mayor. What ever happened to him?

Re: The myth of the driverless tube train

#150

Post by yardstick »

e17 wrote: post #89
yardstick wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly the same situation. Less wages to pay, less pension debts to fund.

If there are still strikes then it is the same situation. Your plan solves nothing, for reasons both the article and I have outlined already. If we put you in charge tomorrow to execute your plan of moving from £70k drivers to £30k hi-vis vest-wearers, you would cause weeks of strikes, massive disruption and solve nothing.

One of cost of a few weeks of strikes to reduce cost of drivers by over half? Sign me up. Also the unions strikes are selfish in nature, they all team up to support one another to keep remuneration artificially high by holding the transport system to ransom anytime sometime tries correct it. The Tube Mafia would be a more apt name.
Post reply on HN