How in the fuck is light rail transit not fully automated yet...

How in the fuck is light rail transit not fully automated yet? All these advances and testing in self driving cars and they still haven't automated the fucking trains. Why? What's the hold up?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems
nytimes.com/2013/12/28/arts/hey-stars-be-nice-to-the-stagehands-you-might-need-a-loan.html?pagewanted=all
youtu.be/dfBp-oGNoqE
youtu.be/CT4N-OCR228
youtu.be/G-_q-0GwiE0
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Because trains are basically super-heavy missiles.

UNIONS

/thread

this.

unions will hold back public transport for decades

Trains are increasingly automated, but it's just not a fast process.

Europe has many routes where the system will stop a train if it passes a "red light" or goes on a section with another train coming the other way or if an operator in the central stops it.

It's not deployed europe wide yet. And it's obviously a prequisite to eventually getting full automation.

>All these advances and testing in self driving cars
Let's note that cars also aren't actually self-driving yet.

Even introducing that (and there are more manufacturers than for trains...) is a slow process.

Ditto for cargo ships. And planes. Increasingly capable of doing autonomous maneuvers, not safe / tested enough yet to fully go autonomously.

>in the US

Even this shithole of italy has SELF driving underground , how can burgers be so behind in trains ?

Taxes

public transit can never be completely autonomous because some fuckhead will always try to exploit it.

For example, the doors have to be closed on the train before it can take off. If someone's arm is in the doorway, it'll open automatically and the driver cannot leave until they are shut.

Now, what'll happen if this train didn't have a driver? I'd never be able to take off, so it'd probably have to alert someone. well, if someone has to babysit the train, then it kinda defeats the purpose of it being autonomous.

>because, children.
>think of the children
>running onto the tracks
>suddenly
even when you can guarantee an automated train/tram/whatever 'sees' a sudden obstacle, you are probably well into AI Trolley Problem territory - eg, run over what may be a fleeting obstacle or a live babba crawled onto tracks, or drop anchor suddenly at 50 mph, which less damage?

Either one goes wrong, lawsuits n shit hitting fans. AI prob. make a better decision than a driver 95% of the time, its the other 5% (when theres no driver) you'll get sued for. Also Unions (see: Luddites)

because it's too expensive

imagine how much it would cost to build a self automated underground rail system across the US

That's insane. Unions have always looked after abuse and safety violation by companies. All unions welcome progress. Stop listening to anti-union shills. Follow the money.

The main reason why trains aren't automated is that unlike automobiles, they are mostly all different and manufacturers haven't completed testing yet. It's coming...

What's the driver gonna do? Jump out of the train and run halfway across the platform to tell the guy off? Or make an announcement along the lines of "don't obstruct the doors you cunts"?

The latter can also be done automatically. The former isn't realistic even today. Station operators can help, but automating the train doesn't necessarily remove station staff. Having something like a lift-like system of doors on the station that match up to train doors will reduce the need for that, too. In the end, if you have just one guy patrolling (or babysitting) the station, it's still a vast improvement over having a bunch of staff on the station plus a driver in every single train.

>children running suddenly onto the tracks
What the fuck is the driver of several thousand tonnes barrelling at several dozen mph supposed to do? I'm not sure I understand the dilemma when the only choice is to kill the guy in front of you because physics simply doesn't permit otherwise (discounting absurd solutions like derailing the train).

>$40.00 has been deposited into your account
Even unionized bots get paid more to shit post

Suicide jumpers.

>tfw just started job last month as a bridge relief operator (i control the spinning of the train bridge over the river to let barges pass through and shit).

Im very afraid of AI taking over this job some day. It's so fucking easy and I dont do anything except play MMO's all day on my laptop.

my cities metro rail system has been fully
automated for the last 30 years and serves 137 million people per year.

Only sane posts in this thread.

What city is this?

Vancouver?

But the missile knows how to drive from a position where it is, to a position where it isn't, so why train can't?

Vancouver

\en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)#Ridership

fucking leaf here
Vancouver confirmed

If you follow the money...it's leads back to the unions.

>some dickhead holds up train
>computer: "please remove arm from door"
>nothing
>computer: "please remove arm from door, this is your final warning"
>person: "what"
>computer: "releasing nerve gas at door 3 now"

It has existed since the 80s. Railway automation is easy as fuck.

Your examples black n white, its always a process, for human or AI - here are the facts of the situation, I make a decision, I do something, I do nothing, consequence.
Say weve got an inner-city tram system. The 'dilemma' is, for an actual tram driver, fairly common. He'll see an obstacle crossing (when it probably shouldnt be) like a car jumped a light, or not noticed the tram, whatever. Hes got to decide, is the object moving fast enough, be out of the way time I get there, or, if I brake a bit, etc. When the object is a pedestrian, bit more complicated. Might panic, go backwards, whatever. All of which, driver has to take into account.

SUDDEN. BABBA. ON . TRACKS is obviously a bit more dramatic, but, it happens, kid jumps before the line to retreive something, etc. Again, action you take is all relevant to factors distance from obstacle. It doesnt need to be , but, youve got to account for it. How much damage if I brake suddenly? etc. Where a Union-Due Paying Human gets it wrong, fuck, its Human Nature, shit happens, Union will back him up. Where an AI gets it 'wrong' - even if it had no other choice, ANDROID TRAM RUNS OVER BABBAS HEAD, its bad PR and court tiem.

Auto cars got to account for all this shit as well, I spose, but, an inner-city tram say, be 1000% more likely such shit to occur (happens daily) maybe not best example, as all of ground, no?
>fcukin blog

But in this specific case, it really is unions.
The issue is the consumer doesn't see any cheaper prices from this automation, if anything the price would increase because "technology! future! yay!". So no one has any interest in actually going through with automation, and the people working there still want money. Since money is somehow still required in this day and age.
Retards think unions are a bad thing because they're brainwashed, not because they're shills.

Skytrain still needs human drivers to take over sometimes; like when snow kept setting off the suicide jumper alarms last winter.

Watching for obstructions
Dealing with passengers causing issues
Where I live, the light rail tracks often either are either shared with busses or cross streets at normal intersections (like a streetcar-ish). I wouldn't trust an automated train to not hit people reliably considering self-driving car technology isn't even there yet.

Where did all these cocksucking union hating ancap faggots come from, fuck off.

There are plenty of fully automated train systems around the world.

so the answer to your question is either economics or politics

Not that many, actually. Basically these:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems

We still have to automate the other twenty thousand or somesuch lines.

>Not that many, actually.
>proceed to link to a long list of automated train systems

yeah okay.

its what destroyed Detroit

does The Union know about this?

in the short term, sure
over the long term prices would go down, as the technology matures and you start getting a return on the investment
Keynesianism is the real problem, sacrificing everything else for the short term is wholly retarded

Niggers destroyed Detroit.

Unions are a fucking cancer.

I lived for a while in France, Lyon to be precise, and ONE metro (subway) line was automated, and even though it's basically the same shit because they still need to employ people to monitor it remotely, people to check your tickets, a shitload of people for security because well, it's France, the Unions still got up in arms about "Muh automations" and they never automated the other lines.

Don't even get me started on bus, tramway, trains, taxi, uber, etc.
When you have lived in a socialist hellhole like France, you learn to hate those people and the unions.

>co.uk
>now you can get raped by "asians" men in the tube and be SURE nobody is going to help you

Delete this

Join a good one and you'll learn

nytimes.com/2013/12/28/arts/hey-stars-be-nice-to-the-stagehands-you-might-need-a-loan.html?pagewanted=all

>it's great I swear, I won't tell you why ,but it's great
Fucking commie

Because unlike software engineers, public transit employees are UNIONIZED, which guarantees they will not get fucked over by their employers.

I can't wait for the day all the coders get screwed over because their jobs get outsourced and automated. If only you fucks would have unionized.

t. dirty commie

Metromover is automated! But it's not a train.

Wrong. Communists are pro-automation, because communism means everyone has lost their job to robots. The guy you reply to seems to be a conservative.

>That's insane. Unions have always looked after abuse and safety violation by companies. All unions welcome progress. Stop listening to anti-union shills. Follow the money.

I am a union member and I can tell you that yes we do hold progress back. The equipment I use at work is over 20 years old and hasn't received a single major update since its inception. In fact when we are demanded to update our shit they will make the new stuff purposefully worse than the old stuff so progress doesn't get out of our control.

>Communists are pro-automation
No they're not.

Metromover = light rail transit, or not?
which is exactly what is being discussed besides Union dissing, (light) rather than actual trains, which would prob. be easier to automate as people and things tend to stay the fuck clear from those lines, unlike city trams or something.

It's the unions.

I work in the rail industry on Positive Train Control (essentially this very topic). Some form of train automation has existed since the 70's.

Freight is maybe a different story. The compression forces on a 2000+ meter freight train shear the steel couplings pretty often, and it is probably cost efficient to at least have someone on board who can preform the maintenance.

Why do they dislike automation? Please help me out.
It has rubber wheels. It's basically miniature buses on elevated tracks. They're cute, I like riding them.

There was dozens of country (some still established nowadays) where communism was tried.

Show me _one_ that embraced automation and thus having less need for people to work.

...

/n/igger here. I can't help but agree with but the most alarming thing if you want a highly automated rail system is grade separation. Things can and will go inevitably go wrong with at-grade systems. Sure, we can install bigger emergency brakes, we can put platform edge doors, those help, but we can't stop people from crossing a railway track too late. Most automated systems are grade separated and have a supervisor on board. Even Tokyo Metro's Namboku line, which is completely grade separate and has full height platform doors and driving fully automated, still got a "driver" to operate the doors and handle the train in case of an emergency.

Thinking about it, it's less a technological issue and more of a trust issue. Anyone who's not a deranged mental patient will not trust their lives in an 100% autonomous lifeless, emotionless, unconscious sardine can.

>Namboku line
Namboku is for cunts, Touzai FTW.

1. Unions

2. Train automation systems cost like $2B to install on a 30mi line. That's the cost in countries like Japan where construction worker unions and construction companies don't try to fuck everything up and jack up the price.

3. You probably need platform safety doors (PSD) if you want full automation with no attendant on train. (You cannot have people commiting suicide by jumping in the train and then have no one to immediately stop the train and do emergency checks while EMTs and other workers clean the guts off the train.) Installing PSDs on 20 stations will run you about $1B, and that's in Japan or Taiwan where construction bidding isn't completely rigged like in the U.S.

Unions, hopefully

They have to blame someone for accidents

>During the Stalinist era the attitude of Soviet officialdom towards computers was one of skepticism, if not outright hostility.
>Government rhetoric portrayed cybernetics as an attempt of capitalism to further weaken the rights of workers.
>In 1950 the Soviet journal Literaturnaya Gazeta published an article strongly critical of Norbert Wiener and his book, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, describing the author as one of those "charlatans and obscurantists, whom capitalists substitute for genuine scientists".
>Following the publication of the article, Wiener's book was removed from Soviet research libraries.

Computers and automation were the work of capitalist pigdogs and had no place in the workers' paradise. This attitude set back Russian computer development and even after it changed they never caught up.

Over here in SEA, we have automated trains. Run much better than piloted trains, too.

They are in Copenhagen. They're not in the US because the US is a third world shithole.

why across ? only in major cities

Its not worth all the testing they have to put in. since its already a skeleton crew. Compared to the cargo they deliver.

Or they could just have some on board robot go around monitoring and fixing components

I can assure you they aren't, even your Euro sissy trains need manual input somewhere

>All unions welcome progress.
Where the fuck do you get this level of optimism about organisations that have their own wages to prioritize over all else?

AI is vastly superior in assessing these situations than human is. Where human has to "eyeball" whether he should brake or not, on top of his reaction time being 100ms at best, AI will predict accurate trajectory and act accordingly in under 10ms.
There's no way human will outperform AI in situations where you have to quickly act based on projected trajectory.
As for the "dilemma", there is none. If you have an obstacle suddenly appear before you, you brake. It's that simple, in no situation is it better not to brake- if it is a car, it's better if you collide with as little momentum as possible, if it is a child, the same applies. It's really simple for a train/tram because you can't change your trajectory, your only option is to brake.
It's more complicated for a car because a car can change its trajectory. Braking is still the best option in most scenarios since AI is reacts really fast and accuractely predicts.

I kind of work in this business, my thoughts:

1. Unions are afraid. They don't say outright that they're afraid of losing their jobs, but they do produce a lot of 'propaganda' and appeal to emotion claiming a computer could never do what a train driver with X years of experience can.

2. Flexibility: the sheet number of people involved needs some flexibility. At some point, someone will fall asleep in the doorway, try to somehow cheat the system, etc. The number of edge cases is so huge it's still pretty efficient to have a human close by. Doesn't have to be a driver imo, but most humans are not comfortable 'cleaning up' after robots for their day job.

3. Probably the most important: We still collectively refuse to accept a computer making a task safer, but not 100% safe.
This is likely because we see ourselves as very rational and perfect beings and don't see computers as such. If the rate of accidents goes from 100/y by human error to 10/y by computer error, people will still not accept it and say the computer killed 10 people. This goes for vehicles too. We accept our own human flaws much easier than a computer error which is completely in the way of much applied automation.

The DLR is automated, nigger.

Have you seen automated vehicles in action?
Accident waiting to fucking happened. I saw several vids of them colliding with people already. I would not trust them just yet.

wrong.

Unions are the one thing that is keeping you from being a complete slave to the machine.
Bosses don't care about your safety.

They don't care about workplace accidents.
It's pure profit motive for them.

The driver leans out the window, tells the cunt to fuck off, and then either calls for metro police, sits and waits, or closes the door on the guy and moves on.

You could replace driver with a metro operator, someone that patrols between cars and manages any issues like people dancing, panhandlers etc that an autonomous driver will be unable to.

youtu.be/dfBp-oGNoqE

damn. made in japan.
youtu.be/CT4N-OCR228

yeah but I only care about the paying passengers lives, not the dumbass who steps on the rails at the wrong time. No passengers life is endangered from a pedestrian getting hit.

youtu.be/G-_q-0GwiE0

Insider here at BART (SF) excited to finally share information about what I do. I’m essentially in charge of the car replacement program in the Bay Area. Here’s the process so far:

Project: replace our old cars with newer designed cars.

Steps
1. Every subway/rail system in the US is proprietary. They are all designed differently. So we first open the project up to contractors for bidding.
2. As a federal requirement, to upgrade our cars, we have to now upgrade our entire control system. Well guess what, again proprietary! We host bidding for contractors for that as well (mind you, federal and state requirements are incredibly lengthy).
3. Small issues (currently the new cars doors’ do not all open at every station, sets us back 3-4 monts). Or right now, the tracking system only tracks the first car while the rest attached behind it are neglected (another 3-4 months).
4. To upgrade our cars, we need to upgrade certain areas of our tracks. Bart was designed for 60-80,000 commuters/day. Currently we are transporting 300-,400,000 per day and only have 3-4 hours/night for maintenance on ALL train lines.
5. We need federal money. We present our case to both state and federal levels of government requiring funds. But remember, we’re all government niggers and run as inefficient as possible (like the DMV/beaurocracies) so whatever budget we request we’ll go over budget and behind schedule immediately so then we repeat steps 1,2, and this step 5 until we are on schedule. This process is as politicized as possible. So, many set backs for no fuckin reason happen from local politicians etc.


What should take 3-4 years, ends up taking 10-15 years. If this entire system was privatized? Guarantee we’d have self-driving subways in just a few years. But it’s not. It’s public. There’s no motivation to run efficiently and no incentive to lower operating costs.

they should install it on houston light rail so AI can get blamed for slamming into cars

>organisations that have their own wages to prioritize over all else
if you accept wages=profit then this is just regular capitalism

...

Trains at Osaka airport are fully automated.

lmao at this USA-time thread

you guys are hilarious

fully automated works fine in cph for 15 years now

we like to complain about things without actually doing anything to solve them
even in the most progressive cities they still take their sweet time fixing shit

>work at UPS
>even the minimum wage seasonal shits are less expendable than the packages
sure you could say it's because of a union, but I doubt they would be much more profitable without it

nope, transport for london has a very good union and all DLR is automated and some of the underground is aswell.

/thread

With trains, you don't even need to put the foreign object detection sensors on the train.

You could put them around the tracks and power poles, and have the tracks constantly communicate go/no go with the trains.

And with enough train depots around the system, you could have a train system running 24/7 with semi-on-demand trains during off-peak hours.

train drivers don't stop for suicide jumpers retard

Because a group of people is stronger than a single person. It's really that simple.

I'm not saying all unions are good. Good unions are good. They bargain for an agreement between you and an the employer instead having the employer just tell you what whatever the fuck they want.

Great article showing why being apart of a union is the way to go. If shit ain't right, a union has the ability to make to it right.

>How in the fuck is light rail transit not fully automated yet
To be honest, light rail doesn't really need to be, though it easily could be.

I don't have much experience with modern light rail, but I do have a fair bit of experience with PCCs and older trolleys/trams. They're dead simple to drive. You have a dead man's switch, an accelerator, and a brake. For normal operation that's about all you need. In inclement weather you'll use a sander too. But some cars had auto sanding, and I imagine most modern light rail would as well so you don't even have to worry about wheel slippage.


All you're really doing as a light rail operator is judging safe distance and speed from your stops and watching for potential crossings, or if you're a street tram operator you'll need to watch for moronic drivers.

>$500k
>average
>for a fucking stagehand
nigga, I've worked as a stagehand (prob thus the article, but anyway). NO stagehand, any-fucking-where, should be earning $500k, cosa nostra would blush.
I hope you were being ironic (prob. not) - but as the guy was replying to should have said:
>Unions: Join a good one and you'll earn
problem, there doesn't seem to be any happy medium inbetween Team(sters) 1 there and the gig economy, 'you ill? you fkd' Unionless Uber-type shit. And you killed Detroit BTW

So it sounds like you agree with me? There is balance. Go to far one way, and it collapses, go too far the other, same result.

and it usually scars them too, an AI doesn't need to be paid for emotional leave

US problems

Our unions are very good here in the first world :)

Location?