I had a chat with a DLR "passenger service agent" a few weeks ago (DLR, or Docklands Light Railway being a "fully automated" light rail system in London). He had opened the driving console at the front and was sitting there, I asked if there was a fault or something that meant they were operating in reversion mode (PSAs can drive the trains in certain failure cases).
He said DLR introduced a policy many years ago where after 8pm or so (maybe just on Fri/Sat night?) the PSA needs to sit at the open drivers console ready to smack the emergency stop in case of people on the tracks. Before then it's optional, but some PSAs like to do it anyway in case "their train" hits someone.
Not really much point to this but I thought it was interesting how the PSAs are effectively put in a position of responsibility for the actions of the autonomous vehicle but presumably are not compensated the same as an active(?) driver would be.
Maybe a lot of the desire to move to "autonomous" (or really just more automated if it requires a safety driver) is a workaround for union wages by reclassifying drivers as new made up things.
Presumably like a DLR these buses will always require a human to take responsibility in case of crash, accident, fire etc - but this way for arbitrary reasons you can pay less!
> Not really much point to this but I thought it was interesting how the PSAs are effectively put in a position of responsibility for the actions of the autonomous vehicle but presumably are not compensated the same as an active(?) driver would be.
This is an interesting question. Most drivers on the underground aren’t active drivers at. I think every deep level tube line, except the Bakerloo, is autonomous, and the trains can’t be driven manually in normal operations because a human driver can’t react fast enough to continuous adjustments that are sent to train. Adjustments that are needed to safely operate the tube system at the frequency and close follow distance or achieves during peak.
Instead the only things a tube driver does is check the doors before closing them, instructing the train to depart, and hitting the emergency stop if something goes wrong. They probably do get paid more than PSA, but I know they get extra compensation due to amount of time they work underground.
I do want what level of liability a PSA is exposed to in that position. Presumably they would be in trouble if they were obviously not paying attention during the evening hours. But assuming they’re playing in their phone, I suspect they have little to no liability at all in the event of an incident. But I suspect that the emotional toll if “their” train hit someone would be high, regardless of their responsibilities.
> Maybe a lot of the desire to move to "autonomous" (or really just more automated if it requires a safety driver) is a workaround for union wages by reclassifying drivers as new made up things.
TfL actually have no desire to automate existing lines. The costs involved are astronomical, the saving minimal, and service improvements almost non-existent. For TfL there number one priority is improving capacity, and the biggest blocker to capacity on the underground isn’t drivers, it’s trains, signalling systems, and above all dwell time in stations.
The signalling systems place a hard cap on maximum trains per hour, and the existing systems haven’t performed as well as hoped (it should be mentioned that these systems were cutting edge when installed, TfL tech tends to be on the absolute bleeding edge of metro technology, but the problem is fundamentally harder to solve than original expected), and dwell time (the time spent in stations getting people on and off the trains) his hard to reduce much further, without re-engineering trains and stations to increase the number of doors and platform crowding.
Central government has been pushing the automation angle because it’s a “simple” solution to TfL finance problems. But as usual the problem is vastly more complex than that, and the “simple” solution is only good because it feel intuitively correct to public that doesn’t understand the actual problems TfL faces.
London reconnections has a number of fantastic articles covering all this:
Excellent points and London Reconnections is great!
I suppose the crux of my ramble was in the fact I had to invent the term "active" driver (there may be a more appropriate way to describe how low level in the feedback loop of vehicle control a human operator is, but I don't know it).
How we draw a line between who is a "driver" and why does the DLR (which is arguably pretty close to an ATO tube in terms of automation level) have PSAs whilst the tubes have drivers? If it isn't cost related is it a public perception thing (ooh this fancy train must be automatic it doesn't have a driver). Although as a passenger, being able to sit in the front seat of a DLR is very fun!
If the safety monitor human (PSA/safety driver/whatever) has to be trained and licensed to operate the vehicle in manual mode, why is that any different to a driver of a traditional mainline train? Should a traditional train driver get a higher wage because they spend more time in a lower level feedback loop?
FWIW, TfL doesn't call them drivers anyway, the title is "train operator". I believe this is because their duties combine those that would traditionally belong to both a driver and a guard. Although the regime of working without guards is called "driver only operation", so what's going on there.
The crew on the DLR were originally called "train captains", which i think is an excellent name, and should be brought back.
> I think every deep level tube line, except the Bakerloo, is autonomous, and the trains can’t be driven manually in normal operations because a human driver can’t react fast enough to continuous adjustments that are sent to train.
Piccadilly and Waterloo & City are also manually driven.
AIUI, the SelTrac system on the Northern and Jubilee lines _can_ often be beaten performance-wise, but for reasons of service consistency and predictability this isn't allowed (by policy) on-peak.
You need to keep the bus "captain", because half of a bus driver's job is helping old people figuring out which bus to take and where to go and keeping the passengers in check (to prevent vandalism, throw out rowdies or even call the police if there is violence among the passengers, etc.). Occasionally it does not feel safe to take the bus as it is and without a driver to call the police if something happens, that would be the case much more often.
And if you need to keep at least one employee in the bus, why would you take them off the wheel and very likely increase the risk of an accident, while also making it more complicated legally in case an accident happens. I don't see a gain, unless the end game is to get rid of employees inside the bus altogether in which case the service quality would decrease drastically, because that half of the bus driver's job I talked about earlier is ignored completely.
Maybe it's a good fit in that specific case with the "pre-selected roads", but I am legitimately concerned about this technology being adopted widespread (esp. in the cities) and I don't like the thought of it.
> And if you need to keep at least one employee in the bus, why would you take them off the wheel
Driver can help passengers if they’re driving. I could imagine a world where you move the employee to the middle of the Bus and have them help with passenger loading/unloading and providing ticketing and help while the vehicle is in motion.
This is something you see on the trams in Amsterdam, they have a conductor in booth in the middle of the tram that can sell tickets etc. That way trams don’t need to wait at stops while the driver is selling tickets and dealing with customer queries. As a passenger it means you can ask about what stop to get off without distracting the driver.
Depends of the place I guess. In some places bus drivers will absolutely never help you with anything but will mostly be useful for the company to make sure the fare is paid. You can even have foreigner driving buses that don't even speak the local language in some places. In yet other places drivers are explicitly not responsible for anything but driving to ensure their own safety, and are sometimes even physically separated from the public.
Helping customers can also be made through intercoms at stations (some cities already have that).
Also note that you have fully autonomous metro without any driver in many cities and a metro contains much more people that can have the problems you mention, so I don't see why it would be impossible to have a bus in the same way.
a bus ‘Captain’ who will move around the saloon, talking to passengers about the service and answering any questions they may have, demonstrating what a future service night feel like...
They use to call these "bus conductors" before they sacked them all to save money.
I hope this isn't a case of how many people does it take to drive an autonomous bus? Two, one to drive it, and the other to wander round telling passengers it's autonomous.
Yes, the point of autonomous buses is partly to get rid of the human driver, so they are obviously not going to create a new position to continue to have a human on-board.
This is temporary until people are used to, and confident about, a bus with no driver, and until law allows no emergency driver on-board.
They weren’t so much sacked as they were made obsolete by technology and rising productivity. You could still find bus conductors in China even just 10 years ago where they still made sense a bit (if only to collect fares).
Last time I was in Delhi (about 5 years ago) there were still elevator operators. Not only completely useless to me as a user, but also taking up space preventing people getting in when it’s busy.
You can pay someone to do something that’s not needed, and maybe it gives them a sense of purpose based on a Victorian/puritanical view of the world (rather than just giving the money regardless)
However to me it’s like doormen and bellboys at US hotels or people behind a counter at a shop, it’s unnecessary human contact (which is horrendous), and it reduces functionality (reducing capacity of fixed infrastructre)
A better solution would be to employ people in more productive enterprises.
That's a slightly "luddite" interpretation. The bus conductor job-class was outmoded by technology. More jobs are created at a higher technology level. This is how society has progressed for all history.
A fantastic Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch on this topic:
I'm interested to know how a full time job of sitting doing nothing at all except be ready to drive a bus full of people at a moment's notice works out.
I used to take a dialy bus ride in Spain where the driver would have an animated conversation with some of the regular passengers for the entire journey. I would have felt a lot safer if the bus was taking care of the actual driving.
Not really. There is very limited use of “driverless” trains on the mainline network, and almost all trains are manually driven. Many of the London tube lines do use ATO though.
How? Did machine learning leap forward yesterday when I wasn't looking? Did we achieve even basic common-sense reasoning? Or are they planning to unleash several tonnes of machinery onto the roads filled with passengers guided with little more than a CNN and a sprinkle of reinforcement learning that knows how to stay between the lines?
For those not familiar with the area, the route is a mile or so of totally straight road with passing not needed, pedestrians fenced off and no bicycles. And if there are blowing plastic bags they'll be traveling at around 70mph in the wind so no time to pick them up on the lidar.
The busses will have a safety driver on board, but apparently they expect they will not need to take control at all normally. It will be interesting to see (if possible) how much this holds up in reality.
"five single-deck autonomous buses operating at SAE Level 4 over the Forth Road Bridge between Ferrytoll Park and Ride in Fife and the Edinburgh Park Train and Tram interchange."
Last year I got to ride an automated shuttle bus as part of a trial in Cambridge. That had an extremely short route and was very much a trial, with a small number of pre-booked tickets available.[0] Sounds like the Scottish trial is much further along, which is great to hear.
What prevents me from standing in front of it and not move? It will just sit there won't it?
With a regular bus the driver will get out and give me crap.
In Zürich if the trams were autonomous they would be stuck at the stations during rush hours. People run in front of them all the time and the driver needs to be very aware of what is going on. If these same people know the tram is autonomous and has to stop they will be even more careless.
I can see autonomous trains working where there is clear separation between the track and people/cars.
I hope autonomous buses are more patient with cyclists than human drivers are. Don't you love it when a bus passes you just before a bus stop, then brakes to a stop right in front of you, forcing you out into traffic to pass. Would only lose five seconds to slow down until the bike is past the stop.
I hope future cyclists are more considerate of autonomous buses than with those driven by humans - so many cyclists seem to feel everything is downstream from them in importance. Autonomous buses having to brake suddenly because cyclists have suddenly cut in could really slow bus journeys down. This will be more of an issue in cities where shoals of cyclists typically disregard traffic regulations and ride aggressively.
Human drivers have learnt how to cope with this but I suspect cyclists will know the bus will always give way to them and take advantage of that...
If you don't want to have homeless people set uo tents on the streets its virtue signalling.
If you are also wealthy you are a champaign socialist, becase socialists should be poor. If you are are poor and socialist, then you are envious of rich people.
He said DLR introduced a policy many years ago where after 8pm or so (maybe just on Fri/Sat night?) the PSA needs to sit at the open drivers console ready to smack the emergency stop in case of people on the tracks. Before then it's optional, but some PSAs like to do it anyway in case "their train" hits someone.
Not really much point to this but I thought it was interesting how the PSAs are effectively put in a position of responsibility for the actions of the autonomous vehicle but presumably are not compensated the same as an active(?) driver would be.
Maybe a lot of the desire to move to "autonomous" (or really just more automated if it requires a safety driver) is a workaround for union wages by reclassifying drivers as new made up things.
Presumably like a DLR these buses will always require a human to take responsibility in case of crash, accident, fire etc - but this way for arbitrary reasons you can pay less!