Will Striking Transit Workers Speed Up NYC Subway Automation?
from the people?--we-don't-need-no-stinkin'-people dept
As a fan of the NYC subway system it's tough to imagine how the city is functioning with all their transit workers on strike. However, it's leading some to ask the very reasonable question about what it would take to automate the subway system in New York. It's not a new question. In fact, earlier this year, NYC Transit opened up one automated line and have suggested that over the next twenty years or so, they expect to automate the entire system. Automated systems aren't that rare, as the articles note. Here in San Francisco, the BART system is apparently automated. The difficulty appears to be less in building an automated train system, but in retrofitting such a large, old and complex system as the massive NYC subway system. Still, after a day or two of no subways at all, it's not difficult to see plenty of people scrambling for ways to speed up that conversion process.
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Automated Trains
An important next step, after automating the trains, is to break them up. Instead of one 4 car train every 20 minutes, there should be 1 car trains every 5 minutes. Same capacity, same hardware cost, less waiting. My understanding is that the historical reason for multi-car trains is to keep piloting costs down.
They also need to look at providing automated mechanical barriers in the stations, and interlocking them with the trains, akin to elevator operations. Elevators have not been manned in decades, and have proven to be very safe and reliable. Think of subways as horizontal elevators.
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Re: Automated Trains
Your understanding is flawed; in order to prevent crashes--something that I, as a NYC subway commuter, are very happy they are doing--they don't run one train right up against the back of the one in front of it, even during rush hour. In fact, when the trains get close, it's common practice for the lagging train to slow down or completely stop in the tunnel to avert any possibility of a crash.
In addition, during rush hour, there are trains along the busy lines at a very fast rate--more than one every five minutes--and they still are packed. Using 1 car trains every five minutes would stall the city during rush hours and turn a half hour commute into a hour and a half ordeal.
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NYC Subway Automation
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Labor disputes will shut transit down, regardless
--Commutative Bob.
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Re: Labor disputes will shut transit down, regardl
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No Subject Given
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BART automated?
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Re: BART automated?
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