Even as robotaxis and driverless cars become more familiar on U.S. roads, almost every mass transit system still requires a human operator on board. Two major cities are seeking to change that.
Officials in Washington, D.C., recently moved forward with a plan that could let computers fully control one of its subway lines, and Los Angeles is pursuing a new automated line beneath the Santa Monica Mountains. Honolulu already runs an elevated driverless line, the most expansive automated transit system in the United States, stretching 19 miles when complete.
Supporters call the push long overdue, noting that American cities trail numerous places worldwide that operate unattended metros and buses, including systems in Canada, Australia, South America and the Middle East.
“It should be much harder to automate something that’s on-road, that has all of these various obstacles coming at it, compared to a fixed-rail system,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank. “I don’t know a nice way to say this, but basically the transit world is where innovation goes to die.”
History of setbacks
Automation has been part of Washington’s Metro since it opened 50 years ago, but a 2009 fatal crash on the Red Line near the Fort Totten station, which killed nine people and injured many others, led officials to turn off the automated features. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed a maintenance problem in the automated signaling system. The features were restored over the past two years.
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority CEO Randy Clarke acknowledged the crash as a major setback. “That was a big failure, there’s no question,” Clarke told the Associated Press. He called the current system “highly regulated, highly documented, very proficient.” Under a nearly $1 billion plan backed by Metro’s board in April, the Red Line could run without a human in the cab as early as 2033, with safety features including platform barriers to prevent passengers from falling onto the tracks. Clarke said workers will still be needed for track maintenance and emergency response.
Labor and safety concerns
Unions have opposed automation. John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union and a former New York subway worker, said unions have fought off such efforts in New York and elsewhere, calling them “a catastrophe waiting to happen.” He warned that passengers would have to handle self-evacuation in a system that runs on a third rail.
Honolulu’s Skyline automated light metro, which opened three years ago and expanded last year, has operated without a single crash or injury, according to project director Vance Tsuda. He argued that even hybrid systems with human operators are less safe because a person could overlook something like an open door. “If you have somebody making that decision, they could make a wrong decision,” Tsuda said.
But David King, an associate professor of urban planning at Arizona State University, said the success rate must remain perfect to maintain public trust, especially after the Fort Totten crash. “We allow a certain amount of failure with private industry that we don’t tolerate when the state does it,” King said, citing the several rockets blown up by Elon Musk’s SpaceX as an example of private-sector tolerance for failure.
Los Angeles plans
The most ambitious effort may be the Los Angeles subway line proposed beneath the Santa Monica Mountains, one of the most notorious traffic bottlenecks in the country. The line would use shorter, more frequent trains with platform doors, said Cecily Way, who oversees planning for the Sepulveda Project at LA Metro. An environmental review is underway.
Feigenbaum said success in Los Angeles or Washington could open the door for other cities. “It sends a signal that this is technologically doable and this is something that maybe other systems are going to want to strive for,” he said.