Including comment from the RMT Union about how they are "deeply concerned" about driverless operation, the "lethal and cash driven nonsense of removing drivers"
Well... driverless operation may be "cash-driven", and TFL s often focusing on savings over performance (e.g by removing staff from ticket and information booths) but "lethal" sounds like a slur. Driverless trains work well enough on the DLR in East London, and are probably an inevitable step in 21st century London.
Of course people whose jobs are affected by these systems will speak ill of it, I'm sure the carriage drivers union wasn't very pleased with the automobile back in the day either. We will see the same thing for trucks and cabs real soon.
The 14th line in Paris is driverless I believe. With automated doors on decks I don't think there was a single life critical incident. Wikipedia reports a bunch of system locks before 2007. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_14_du_m%C3%A9tro_de_Paris...
That said I wonder how much of it is due to the decks door.
With added benefit that it is strike free, the line works later at night ... I wish none of the employees to be jobless or worse, but it's hard to justify using people to drive metros.
I get that building a _new_ automated metro is easy. Converting an _older_ line to automatic and fully driverless is what's hard. AFAIK, there's only one conversion so far to full auto: Line 1 in Paris. It took 10 years and billions of euro to deliver (it's a total success though) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Métro_Line_1#Automation
Interestingly, it seems the main obstacle is software - contractors are few, code is highly specific, ISO certification and warranty issues are very unattractive.
Very interested how TfL will approach this. They're really good at what they do, even at communicating (responsive website!). Don't think anybody does it better.
They're [trying](http://www.automaattimetro.fi/en) to do that in Finland. The cost is around 170 million euros now, even though the projected cost was 100 million.
> That said I wonder how much of it is due to the decks door.
I'm sure they help (if only psychologically), but the Lyon line D doesn't have quay doors and it's been running fully automatically since 1992. The only incident I know of is a drunk person falling on top of the metro (trying to jump from a mezzanine to the quay and missing) and hitting a camera in a tunnel. No death.
Keep in mind section "Systems and lines with ATO and human driver (Grade of Automation 2)": most tube lines are already automated (to a point), it's just that there's still someone seating there at the helm.
On the topic of automating train functions, one of my biggest pet peeves is when the conductor is responsible for [inaudibly, or plain just not] announcing stops. DC and NYC are really irritating...NYC is automating it on some lines though.
Existing automation may be insufficiently good to cope with adverse weather and unplanned situations. Technology has moved on considerably since the Victoria, Central and Jubilee stock. We're automating cars now, after all. The article mentions a new signalling system being rolled out in support.
Lack of platform-edge doors. TfL have stated they won't run driverless trains without these. These are planned for installation on the Piccadilly line as part of the new stock rollout.
One of the actual reasons is that drivers go through intensive training (er...) as first-call engineers.
If a fault stops a train, it's far more useful to have someone on the scene to try emergency repairs than to wait until the train can be cleared from a tunnel - because a stopped train can literally hold up the commute of millions of people.
There are also safety issues. Drivers are trained in passenger management, and every so often they need that training to deal with fights, illness, suicides, or all the other messy things that happen on a public transport system - the public part of that being at least as important as the transport part.
Drivers are trained in passenger management, and every so
often they need that training to deal with fights,
illness, suicides, or all the other messy things that
happen on a public transport system
As I understand it in a lot of the London trains it's not possible to move between carriages - so the driver can only deal with fights, illness, suicides etc over CCTV or by stopping at a station?
There are doors but they are not for use in normal circumstances. The new Victoria Line trains were initially supposed to be "space trains", open all the way through, but didn't actually end up getting built like that.
The line is equipped with an Automatic Train Operation system (ATO); the train operator (driver) closes the train doors and presses a pair of "start" buttons, and if the way ahead is clear, the ATO drives the train at a safe speed to the next station and stops it there. This system has operated since the line opened in 1968, making the Victoria line the world's first full-scale automatic railway.[20]
Platform edge doors is definitely part of it - people get stuck in the gap, children fall through, there's few practical driverless systems that can cope with that. Yet there are some places - e.g. Central line - where the gap is almost a foot between train and platform. The doors aren't the only problem, it's the whole carriage, on those curved sections.
What "actual reasons" aside from inertia? The section danielbln linked to are UTO, they're fully automated and unattended (some of the trains don't even have a driver cabin, passengers can seat at the very front of the train) and most have been running for years if not decades without incidents (that I know of).
RMT (the union) mainly (there may be actual technical reasons too for some lines, but any technical reasons are likely to largely be a result of knowing that there's no point in investing too aggressively in enabling full automation if they won't be able to make full use of it). Notice the page takes care to point out that current drivers jobs are safe.
It's likely that London Underground is basically betting it'll be easier to just hire at less than the replacement rate and gradually automate more and more rather than risk massive conflict with the RMT for years.
And yet the Docklands Light Railway, also in London, and also under TfL control (though operation is outsourced to Serco, soon to be Keolis/Amey) has run without drivers (but with "train captains") for its entire history, over 25 years. And it does travel underground in places.
Did they always have train captains ? I know there have been incidents (like a gang of kids chasing someone onto the tracks to be run over), that might have made them introduce "train captains".
To a point. They walk up and down the train, do the door opening / closing, check tickets here and there, and occasionally drive the train (though it always seems painfully slow when under manual control).
I don't know how they'd do it on the tube. Presumably door closing would still require manual control.
I asked a PSA why it's slow and she told me that when under manual operation the train is "off the grid", so to speak, and is speed limited for safety reasons (other trains no longer know where it is)
The door closing works well for the DLR -- the PSA checks all the doors are clear and then shuts them all at once. This probably isn't viable for a tube because platforms are smaller and more congested.
Just an anecdote: I use the DLR multiple times per day and after a few years using it I finally got stuck on a door the other day. I pushed the button to open the door, it started opening and when it was around 80% opened, I was entering the carriage, when it suddenly closed really fast. I got sandwiched on my shoulders and then on my right foot. The door didn't open, I had to force myself to remove the damn foot painfully. It did hurt. Can't imagine what could happen if it was someone weaker (like a child or an elderly). Oh, and my red snickers turned black.
People getting stuck in doors, holding doors open, etc. etc. - though I wonder if it would be more efficient to have a person per train or a person per platform for that.
Indeed - quite a lot of stations already have platform staff for checking doors and notifying the driver that it's OK to close. I suppose it would depend on the ratio of active trains to stations as it which is most efficient. I believe TfL have committed to manning all stations after the closure of ticket offices so having platform dispatch staff may be a useful use of labour.
Vancouver's Canada Line (fully automated) opens the doors fully and then tries to slowly close them if it detects an obstruction. A similar system could be in place.
Yeah there's attendants at every station, they're just not always out on the platforms. I've seen them bitch people out for doing it. There's also announcements really frequently telling people not to hold doors.
It is. There are dozens of ways to make automated trains as safe as or safer than driven ones, Lyon's line D has been fully automated for more than 20 years (since 1992), doesn't even use platform-side doors, and AFAIK the only incident so far was somebody falling on the train itself (dead drunk and trying to jump from a mezzanine to the quay) and hitting a camera in the tunnels in 2010 (the person was lucky and survived)
You're right - driverless trains can work very well. We've had them for 12 years in Copenhagen serving currently 22 stations, and they run smoothly with just 3 minutes between each train. In the first six months of operation back in 2002 there were a few problems (delays and such), but after that everything has been smooth (and no accidents to my knowledge).
I don't know about how TFL will do it, but WMATA in Washington, DC did and will employ the same number of people under automatic operation as it does under manual operation. They were mostly just there to watch for problems and open the doors, but they were still employed (which should make the union happy).
Interestingly, the crash that made WMATA stop automatic operation[1] would not have been avoided by manual operation. The operator would've seen the same suggested speed that the train did, and wouldn't have been able to stop any sooner.
Including comment from the RMT Union about how they are "deeply concerned" about driverless operation, the "lethal and cash driven nonsense of removing drivers"
I suspect that if there were an Elevator Operator's Union, they would have said the same thing when elevators became sophisticated enough to be operated by a single button press.
Pfff I can't believe they're doing this. This is taking a tiny step in optimizing it. If we're eliminating train drivers, why do we even bother with having carriages ? Why can't I just get on a train at any station I want, and have it take me to any other station I want, ideally directly to street level ?
I understand in 1798 why they went with one locomotive and lots of carriages. The engine is too expensive. One driver per carriage is not feasible. Great. All of those are eliminated. Electric motors are cheaper than "real" breaks, so every 2 wheels have an electric motor anyway. And if you have to have them, people power the train using the lots of small motors, because that means no big engine in the first carriage.
But given that you need those things, why can't we just have every carriage be it's own "train" ? Why can't every carriage just have the destination that would be most convenient at that moment in time ?
Why can't London subway be a traffic-immune taxi service ? Now THAT, I want.
Capacity. Legally we require a certain level of safety/signalling on the tube (and for good reason, given how bad a crash in a tube tunnel can be - after the Moorgate crash it took firefighters four days just to reach the front of the train). It's impossible to (legally) run trains closer than about two minutes apart. If you can only run one train every two minutes, then to take the number of people needed, you want trains as long as possible (e.g. Crossrail, which will use trains with about twice the capacity of Underground trains).
Likewise "operational separation" of different lines is key to reliability, both to ensure incidents on one line don't affect service on another, and because points are subject to a lot more wear and tear than plain track (see the current disruption to south London rail services, caused by a cracked crossover at Lewisham). Going forward TfL is trying to move towards a network of simple, self-contained end-to-end lines, e.g. by separating the Northern line into two independent lines rather than one line with five branches.
Then do what most modern systems are moving to anyway : eliminate the track. Work with just bog standard roads in the tunnels and eliminate the rails, built and maintained like any other road.
I feel all of those problems are solvable, and it would be a huge improvement. The fact that railways have multiple lines is at least half the reason I don't want to use them. Same with the tube.
Today, using the tube is torture. Constant interchanges, deep long extremely crowded hallways, and it's getting worse every year. Why can't that be fixed ?
There's nothing "bog standard" about underground roads of that length. Unsignalled vehicles would not be safe (IMO it would be reasonable to relax some safety constraints on the british railway to increase capacity - it would save more lives by taking people off the road - but that would be politically unacceptable; people respond irrationally to major disasters). Unguided vehicles wouldn't fit down the current tunnels. And vehicles with emissions would require much more ventilation than currently exists for the deep tunnels. So you'd need something like a guided trolleybusway with custom vehicles, you'd still need some equivalent of pointwork for the electrical supply, and the vehicles probably couldn't be as heavy or as fast as rail ones.
I don't think I'm advocating unsignalled. Just put the signalling into a distributed system into the trains themselves. Since those vehicles can actually see what's in front of them, that should be a lot safer, since signalling systems are effectively blind (that's where the disasters tend to happen. The central system wasn't aware of, say a broken connection that put a switchboard into an unexpected position).
I'm convinced this can be made safer than central signalling.
As for the vehicle sizes, I'm sure whatever size vehicle is necessary could simply be constructed, and the article on wikipedia for mentions that you could have battery-powered vehicles with rapid charging at stations, negating the cost of having and maintaining dynamic (moving ?) electricity connections throughout the tunnels.
Modern ERTMS involves the system knowing where all the vehicles are; a centralized system will be more efficient than a distributed one if all the information is available. I don't think that's a fair characterization of British train disasters; the only one I can think of that involved a signalling failure is the Clapham Junction crash, in which the wires were connected wrong - and connecting the wires wrong will break any system.
A vehicle the size of an 800-person tube train wouldn't be able to get round the tube corners without rails, and how could you negotiate a destination that made sense for that many people?
> Why can't every carriage just have the destination that would be most convenient at that moment in time ?
Because subway lines are fixed, have little branching and your carriage can't magically jump from one line to the other? Having independent carriages would mostly be messier, for no advantage.
> Why can't London subway be a traffic-immune taxi service ?
The system you purpose would not be traffic-immune. A large train full of people is incredibly efficient. You are describing autonomous cars, which will be great and given the the size and number of roads they don't need to match the efficiency or rail lines.
Being called a "customer" instead of a pasenger makes me want to scream with rage every time I hear it, especially when I imagine the consultants and marketing gonks employed, and their fees, to push through this utterly pointless bit of linguistic chicanery. You are public transport infrastructure, not a fucking shop.
You pay to go on the tube. You can choose not to. That makes you a customer of the tube.
Far better surely that such a system is designed in mind that someone might choose not to use it than that they'll get whatever they're given. I'm not sure why you would be outraged by this.
Because it's public infrastructure. TFL is a government body. We also pay to to use the road in the form of taxes, it would not be nice for the government to call us a 'customer'.
If thats not a good enough example, there are plenty of government departments that require payment for their services and I think the same would apply. Like renewing a passport, I would hate to be called a customer.
The roads are free at the point of use, the tube isn't. There's also the idea that words make a difference to how the staff will "see" the passengers and thus how they will perform their jobs. Are they a nuisance to be herded around or are they the people to whom you owe your job security? It's the same in IT ,it sometimes says things about a person's attitude depending on whether they say "user" or "customer".
Good points; it just seems like things were better back when it was called "passenger". Unless I'm seeing through rose-tinted glasses organizations used to have a self-concept of providing a public service, of reliability, fairness, consistency.
It might come down to focus - as a Customer, it sounds like I am a cash cow, as a Passenger, the focus is on getting me from A-B.
The railways in the UK don't work well from the point of view of getting people from A-B, from the point of few of extracting a lot of money from Customers they work extremely well.
The tube is already very busy without people using it for frivolous journeys. At least it still costs people money (car) or physical effort (cycling) to use the roads.
There are cities with free transit systems however.
"The roads are free at the point of use, the tube isn't."
No they're not. They are partly funded by general taxation, just like the NHS. However, if you want to drive your car on the road, you can't just drive it. You have to first pay a specific 'vehicle tax' which is per vehicle, per year: https://www.gov.uk/tax-disc
I'll just copy this: Their business is not selling transportation but moving the population of London around to where they need to be. The government is the customer and the people are passengers.
The flip side of being a customer is the responsibility of improving your experience always resides with you. If the service doesn't fit you should shop elsewhere. That reasoning falls short for obvious reasons with most infrastructure services.
I had to call the Disney Store yesterday and they referred to me a "Guest" and their customer service staff as ... "Cast Members". That's branding going to the extreme.
The problem with the term customer in the article is that it felt like they would count the same customer multiple times (when they mean passenger). If I ride daily, I'm not 5 customers, I'm one repeat customer. But I'm a passenger 5 times.
All in all though, I think this will be a welcome change as every time I travel to London and go on the tube at rush hour, I'm thankful that I work in a nice quiet cemetery.
It's a long term and well-thought-out attempt by marketers to change the public's expectations of their relationship with public transport. This started twenty years ago with privatisation of the railways: probably the new private train operators felt a change in terminology was required to make people accept they were no longer dealing with a state-owned network and that the balance of power had shifted towards private enterprise.
Basically an attempt at using linguistics to reprogram a large population. But it hasn't worked: people are very conscious of new words being forced upon them and the result is that it makes the industry look sleazy.
You prefer being called a "usager" (a "user" in the most vulgar sense of the word) just like in France? Being called a customer sounds so much better and respectable.
Having used some of the best and worst public transport systems in India, I wish they would consider their passengers customers. Most of the times, people who run public transport systems where their jobs are guaranteed treat you like an annoyance to be somehow tolerated, and often yelled at. I guess there is a golden median between that and something like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLfghLQE3F4).
Their business is not selling transportation but moving the population of London around to where they need to be. The government is the customer and the people are passengers.
Airlines is not selling transportation but moving the population where it needs to be in the world. You are just arguing semantics, they both do the very same thing.
Consider an empty plane where all the seats are paid for by passengers that all coincidentally were late to the airport. That's not a problem for the airline, because the tickets got sold and it was the passengers fault. However, this is a failure for the tube, for which payment is secondary.
For an airline, transportation is an unfortunate side-effect of getting paid. For the tube, managing tickets is an unfortunate side effect of transporting people.
I'm not sure I understand your example very well or what you are trying to say.
> Consider an empty plane where all the seats are paid for by passengers that all coincidentally were late to the airport. That's not a problem for the airline, because the tickets got sold and it was the passengers fault. However, this is a failure for the tube, for which payment is secondary
In both cases, the airline and the tube have fixed costs related to having planes flying or trains running. For both of them payments are necessary to offset the fixed costs and generate profits to further invest in better transports.
They key difference is that for one the volume of passengers is much higher than the other, therefore "full capacity" is defined in very different terms in the Tube vs a plane. People don't stand in a plane like they do in the Tube.
Got very excited when I saw this then noticed they won't be out for at least another 6 years. I haven't been in London long but the temperature of the tube is the worst part of the experience for me. The congestion isn't pleasant but if the temperature was bearable the congestion wouldn't be so bad.
Interestingly, when they were first brought into use they were renowned for being cold. In the intervening period the continual use has heated the surrounding ground enough to make air temperature a problem.
Well that was one part of the presentation that surprised me, I never expected the trains to not be cooled and heated. This may be simple ignorance on my part having not used most public transport systems, so is this common for underground services? How is humidity on these lines?
Part of the problem is that much of the London tube is quite deep underground. New trains on the sub-surface lines have air conditioning, but on the deeper lines it's difficult to extract the waste heat.
It can be a problem in summer. I've seen a couple of passengers faint from the heat on hot days.
I was surprised on my first visit to London to see posters advising passengers to carry a bottle of water and not travel when sick due to the heat and humidity on the underground.
We'd get on at one station freshly showered and hydrated then get off at another drenched in sweat and ready to pass out. We used the tube extensively on our visit and it was by far the most uncomfortable (from an environmental perspective) public transport system we've used.
I'm not sure what makes the London underground so different from the systems in Glasgow (admittedly very small), Munich, Barcelona or LA. Perhaps it really is so much deeper under ground.
That said, the contactless payment system was fantastic. Being able to use my credit card to move around the city without buying a separate ticket was very convenient.
It really is deeper than the others you list — only Barcelona comes at all close. The other issue is it has a few lines that are really crowded, which means what cooling ability it has is pushed to its limits. The fact the subsurface lines have had many of their historic vents closed off for above-ground development now steam trains are a thing of the past doesn't help there, either.
At least Glasgow has other environmental factors keeping it cool — the fact it's a short circle with two underground crossings of the Clyde (which keeps the surrounding tunnels cool) really helps it in the summer, as well as moderating the temperature in the winter. It does get pretty ridiculously humid in the winter compared with outdoors — I have many memories of walking into the stations just to have my glasses steam up and be unable to see anything! It's also much, much shallower than the deep level lines in London (the deepest station in Glasgow is something like half the depth of the deepest in London).
I didn't realise passing under the Clyde had such an affect, that's quite interesting. I would have thought, however, that being mixed overground/underground (on many London lines) would make air circulation an easier problem to tackle.
Ah, I do have similar memories of my (possibly rose tinted) glasses steaming up, but it was always so much cooler and I never felt that I couldn't catch a breath of clean air.
First mover disadvantage - London tube system is the first in the world. So many design choices from the 19th century made still haunt the system today.
For example I read that they only have one track in each direction - so repairs can only be done at night. That is the reason why the tube is closed overnight - as opposed to NYC which is 24/7.
> That is the reason why the tube is closed overnight - as opposed to NYC which is 24/7.
AFAIK, this is changing and a number of lines are planning to go 24/7.
> So many design choices from the 19th century made still haunt the system today.
You're right but the expansion since the 19th century has been enormous. It's not only decisions back then that are affecting service today, but decisions in the intervening years not to modernise the system and make it more comfortable. (I'm not discounting the upgrades which have taken place, just pointing out that there have been opportunities over the last century to make it even better).
As an aside, the Glasgow Subway was also constructed in the 19th century (opening 1896). It was a good 40-something years after London, and is much smaller in scale (most rail - which is extensive in Glasgow - is overground). Living in NE Scotland right now I miss a having modern, reliable public transport system and realise how much I took it for granted.
> AFAIK, this is changing and a number of lines are planning to go 24/7.
Only 24 hours on Friday and Saturday, actually. And lines often close partially or fully on weekends to allow for maintenance. 24/7 running wouldn't stop that.
I did have this thought. I figured people must just accept it (like people living in humid countries might), or shower at work (if they have those facilities). Or perhaps it's only that bad during some months of the year.
Up until now at least they didn't have a way to get rid of all the heat from that depth. Either they've fixed that now, or it's just air blowing around.
Yeah, I doubt it's going to make a huge difference but any improvement is welcome. I was reading something recently (may have been on HN) about the difficulties of removing heat from that depth. Maybe they've come up with a solution.
District line does not have those trains, as these trains are aimed at the (much smaller) deep level tube tunnels. The subsurface lines have the luxury of much more space for air con, wider tunnels to carry away waste heat, and sections out in the open.
I think he was referring to the S8 stock currently on the Hammersmith & City, Circle and Metropolitan lines (and being trialed on the District line https://twitter.com/jamescun/status/516498515963695105) which have air-conditioning.
Personally I hate the dust in the stations. Also it seems nothing ever gets cleaned there. Stations in Taipei were perfectly clean.
Also, the seats in the carriage are designed for goblins. The London population grows not only in quantity, but also in height. It would be nice to have just few seats for taller people.
>> "It would be nice to have just few seats for taller people."
Why bother? How often do you actually get a seat. Personally I think things would be so much easier if they removed seats altogether. People would have more space or they would get more people on. I know this isn't feasible as there are people that require seats but those people are low in number so maybe there could be a dedicated car with seats on each train for those people.
Personally I do not use tube for daily commute, just once in a while and try not to travel peak times, so getting a seat works for me. Although I mostly try stand after 8 hrs of sitting at work.
The Taipei metro began operating in 1996, whereas the London Underground began operating in 1863. You can't really compare the two. The newest parts of the Underground, such as the Jubilee Line Extension that opened in 1999 are very clean, modern and spacious, but it's impossible to retroactively improve the rest of the network to the same standards while it's being constantly used by millions of people every day.
Note that the deep-level lines (specifically those with smaller tunnels) are not included in this development. The central line has very small tunnels and will continue to be hot and cramped.
The new trains, platform-edge doors, and air-cooling are being introduced for the Central, Bakerloo, Waterloo & City, and Piccadilly lines. The tunnels and trains will still be small, there's not much that can be done about that, but they will be cooler, safer and hopefully a little less cramped, due to the extra capacity provided by walk-through carriages.
I did read the article, so must have suffered some kind of mental failure. I don't expect any real improvement in temperatures on the central line. There is nowhere for the heat to go.
(Surely puzzlement is the appropriate response to a blatant factual error, not "wrong, wrong, wrong!". I mean, I know HN is a hangout for intolerant geeks but still...)
You can, but cooling the line means cooling far more than just cooling the train cabins - passengers only accounts for something like 5% of the heat dumped into the underground, the vast majority is things like braking. And so costs of standard AC is an issue.
You also need somewhere to dump the heat, and part of the problem is actually that even re-opening existing vents is tricky and/or costly to do when many of these lines for most of their distance are 20m below some of the most expensive real-estate in the world.
I couldn't agree with you more. I wish they'd sorted the heat issue on the new Routemaster Buses. Even with the 'cooling', they were unbearable this summer.
Wow, it's about time the Bakerloo line got some new rolling stock. It's still using stock from 1972. Even the Picadilly line's '73 stock is miles better.
Personally I much prefer the Bakerloo. The seats are much more comfortable than anything more recent.
The Bakerloo is pretty low down the list of an upgrade, apparently. Counter-intuitively this is because the trains need substantial refurbishment within the next few years - unfortunately this will be necessary before new stock will become available, so it makes sense to refurbish and then run for longer.
I overheard a TFL employee saying that the Bakerloo line is filled with asbestos which they cover in glue every year, no way they can ever remove it. Does anyone know if this is true?
It's kind of crazy to think that the platform-side doors will increase service capacity by removing the ability for people to commit suicide in front of trains.
The frequency with which there is "a passenger under a train" must have a tangible effect on tube capacity.
It's not just that - it's the delay whilst people hold the doors, get their bags/umbrellas/coats/legs stuck in them, etc. With the (over)tight scheduling of the timetable, one train being delayed by a minute can cause a knock-on for a considerable time.
I guess (though I don't use the tube, I can't verify) that the platform-side doors help control this kind of behaviour.
(There was a link going round a year or two ago about (IIRC) New York improving service reliability by reducing the flow and introducing slack into the timetable but I can't currently find it. Lots of academic research into this topic though.)
One of the side effects is that it allows people to queue in the right spot (rather than guessing and lining the platform) which helps even out the number of people trying to get in one set of doors. Adding a bit of predictability helps streamline things.
You see this behavior in the Tokyo metro system. Even better the doors are numbered so people will learn which car is closest to the exit they need. This provides a clean stream of passengers heading to the nearest exit.
I guess if you also annotate the platform with "queue here" lanes (I've a vague memory that some Jubilee stations have this?) then you can try and keep the queues from blocking people leaving the train.
There are white squares on certain Hammersmith & City and Circle and line platforms that line up with where the doors stop, people don't seem to know this though.
Platform overcrowding is also an issue, and passengers are often held back in the ticket hall or outside, because of how dangerous it would be to put more people on an open platform.
With platform-side doors, you don't need to stand behind the yellow line.
It isn't just one-unders, but the fact that the train can't safely move off when there are passengers right up against the train.
Canary Wharf station has platform-side doors but it still closes the entry at ticket hall level every now and then. One advantage for me is the line formed in front of the platform doors which allows me to wait in front of it for the next train and find a free seat every day.
I remember being blown away by the platform side doors for the shinkansen bullet train in Japan: the incredible precision with which the train doors align with the platform doors.
Not sure... one of the Tokyo stations I think. It was still an open air platform, but had doors on the edge of the platform around man-height that aligned with the train doors.
It definitely has a tangible effect. For example the National Rail going east of Liverpool Street runs equidistant to the Central (to zone 4) and District lines, and has more 'person under train' incidents. Whenever such an incident occurs, both those tube lines plus the National Rail line which runs alongside the District are swamped.
The flip side is that it's not enough to prevent suicides on your line - you'll still get unusual peak capacity issues if it happens on a neighbouring line - but at least you can keep your own trains running.
Northern line trains on the Charing Cross branch only go south of Kennington at peak times. This is shown on the map of the Northern line but not on normal Tube maps.
My guess is that there are equal numbers of trains via Charing Cross and via Bank, but the morning trains in via Bank are much more crowded, as more people work there. More capacity would help, either way.
I wonder what the cost would look like to widen the tunnels on old subway systems like the Tube to make for wider trains. The first thing that hit me about the Tube when I used it is how narrow the trains are (especially the older lines). It's not a surprised when probably most of it was dug out by hand, but running a modern tunnel boring machine down the line and laying new track and using the kind of ultra wide trains used in Asia would move far more people.
Enlarging an existing line is very unlikely to be cheaper than building a new line - you'd need a one-of-a-kind special TBM to handle the lining of the existing tunnels, you'd still need to re-lay the track and electrics, you'd still need to enlarge the stations meaning you'd still need worksites on the surface and possibly knocking down buildings to dig access shafts and so on. And you'd have to shut down the existing line while you were doing it, which there isn't usually spare capacity for.
Newer lines (i.e. Thameslink, Crossrail, Crossrail 2) are being built for mainline-sized trains; I don't think there'll ever be a new tube-diameter tunnel under London except for short extensions to existing lines. But we're going to be stuck with the ones we already have for a while yet.
First some lines run within metres of one another so you couldn't expand because there just isn't space.
A back of the napkin plan if you were to go ahead would look like this:
1) Shut down the line completely
2) Remove the tracks
3) Design, build and then get underground some new boring machines which need to be capable of removing the metal lining, digging through earth and concrete then relaying the lining.
4) Rebuild platforms which would inevitably be damaged
5) Relay tracks
6) Design, build and get to London new wider trains
Realistically you're looking at 3-5 years (at least) per line to widen them.
I don't know if you live in London and are therefore aware how much we Londoners rely on the tube - even if they only widened one line, having it out action for that long would have devastating consequences for communities and businesses and every day Londoners' lives.
Modern TBM's usually line the tunnel with prefab concrete sectional rings, which are built by a human-controlled hydraulic arm at the front of the TBM's trailing gear, immediately behind the cutterhead chamber.
As far as I know, cutting heads that could bore soils/rock could not also bore through metal lining. This is limited by the material properties of the cutting surfaces, typically hard metals or coated ceramics. Heads with acceptable wear rates in hard rock or soils will likely have unacceptably high wear rates against metals.
And 3-5 years is probably a drastic underestimate of project duration.
> A decade later, the Jubilee line cost £36m per mile to build and its extension in the 1990s 10 times as much. The tunnels for Crossrail, the newest underground railway connection in London, are budgeted at almost £1bn per mile.
I don't have evidence but I always assumed they do it to mask wear and dirt - the odd geometrical patterns make it less obvious how old and dirty they are, compared to a single clean colour.
I don't even know why they have seat cushions to begin with. It just seems like they're breeding grounds for bacteria and would be difficult to properly clean.
I'm curious on how responsibility works in this case, e.g. a driver can be held accountable for causing an accident, but who is accountable for bugs causing accidents? The software house? I can only imagine the price of civil responsibility insurance for this...
The software industry has a tradition of inserting a "Disclaimer of Warranty" and a "Limitation of Liability" into all licenses. Do those hold up in court? I don't know.
Didnt the tube just get a bunch of new trains in the last couple years? I seem to remember there being a big deal about it because some of the long serving train drivers retired rather than learned how to work the computerised ones.
Different lines have different trains. The shallow level lines got new trains recently, because the lines were built using cut and cover (like in NYC), they were easily able to add air conditioning.
These trains are for some of the deeper level lines that were built by using tunnelling machine to bore deep underground.
Yes, on the lines that are not so deep, like the circle, metropolitan etc. Cooling these trains down is significantly easier than the very deep lines, as the heat from the AC can be chucked straight out into the open air. Deep underground there's nowhere for it to go.
The sub-surface lines (Circle, District, Hammersmith&City) are getting new stock (same sort of features - walk-through carriages, little bit taller). In the past few years automation was introduced on Victoria, Northern, Jubilee and I think Piccadilly lines that basically reduces the driver's role to opening and closing doors and emergency stops. This allows trains to run at higher speeds with less delay between seeing a signal and starting the engine.
It's impossible to have actual AC on the trains, there's simply no space, and there's no real way to make space. Furthermore, you have the issue of venting the hot air 20m underground.
>The trains will be designed and built to be capable of fully automatic operation. When the trains first enter service, they will have an operator on board. We would only consider implementing full automation following extensive engagement with our customers, stakeholders, staff and trade unions.
We are committed to having a fully-staffed Tube network, on hand to assist customers and ensure safe operations. Given our existing train fleets, all drivers currently working at London Underground will be able to continue to drive trains for the remainder of their careers.
And so, the battle lines are drawn. They seem keen not to annoy Bob Crow and the unions too much, considering there's an election next year. I'm sure he'll react calmly, like he usually does.
Notice how careful they are about pointing out that all drivers currently working will be able to keep working out their careers. They're basically counting on attrition to defang the union opposition. Which is far enough - when you see the time horizon for their investments anyway.
Mobile phone network, for 2g and 3g. Stockholm has them, so surely it can't be that hard.
I know this doesn't affect the trains directly, but surely it's something they have to take into consideration, especially during their announcement of their plans until 2060 god damn it.
London keeps boasting "best city in the world, best city in the world", yet its citizens are under increasing work pressure, and simultaneously cannot send or receive emails during their daily commute.
Sure they have wifi in the stations, but by the time you login (assuming you're paying because see, it's not free) you train has arrived.
I remember my holiday in Tel Aviv. I was skyping on the beach, on public free wifi.
Then I return to London, and nope, back to being offline, while on my way to a high tech job. And we're supposed to be a cutting edge city? Explain how.
I'm no expert, but I imagine the most cost effective way to do this would be to have wifi along the lines rather than on the trains themselves - even if I'm wrong about that, installing wifi onto a train isn't something that needs to be built into the train from conception, and is something that anything they plan into it now will probably be obsolete in its tech standards by the time these trains launch in ~10 years.
On the subject of current station wifi - who has to pay? Certainly for me (Vodafone customer) I get it free, it's still provided by Virgin but they give a semi-whitelabelled login page for Vodafone (I don't have to login, it just takes 10 seconds when it opens the authentication page and verifies me on the network). I also find it great (albeit not as great as solid coverage all along the line) to be able to hook back onto the network as I travel through stations. It doesn't require me to re-auth each time, so essentially every minute or two my phone can sync emails, twitter, whatsapp, etc. leaving me the actual driving time between stations for reading/responding as needed.
2G/3G/XG is kinda becoming irrelevant and is provider-dependant.
They should have WiFi hotspots in each train so you wouldn't be reconnecting every 5 seconds as the train moves. Also it's probably easier to connect train to whatever central network pipe.
I'd be okay with wifi on the trains (even the pay WIFI they've got), but I don't want phone service on the train because as soon as you hit "above ground" and everyone pulls out their phone and starts making phone calls it becomes annoyingly loud.
Standing carriages! Seats take up too much room. I think the forward 2 or 3 carriages should be standing only. And admittance based on the speed of which you walk.
By 2060: get rid of the trains, track and signals altogether and turn the tunnels into roads. Connected to the road network but exclusively (so they can go as fast and close together as safely possible) for electric self driving cars with shared ownership, on demand booking and door to door service. That would be progress.
When creating trains for a service that is growing in usage on a consistent basis you can either future proof it (i.e. make it bigger/better than it needs to be right now so that it can survive X years of growth) or you can not future proof it (i.e. make it exactly what's needed right now and a year later you're wishing you could upgrade it). It's the same reason when you buy a computer you think about the next year or two of use rather than your previous year or two of use.
Why is this top of HN? These trains, even modernised, are years behind other underground systems like Hong Kong... And this won't even be out for years.
It's nice news for London commuters, but hardly "Hacker News". Flagged.
And the Hong Kong MTR was designed by the same architect that worked on some of London's line extensions. They had a huge amount of experience and learnt lessons to pull from over the hundred years London's underground had been running.
Also, I don't know what Hong Kong is like, but London has been a major city for about 2000 years, and under the surface contains not only rail lines, but sewers, tunnels, underground rivers, burial pits, bunkers, luxury belgravia basements, and the detritus of two millennia of occupation.
Trying to dig anything under London now is a huge effort because of all this.
This is very much a 'move slow and try not to break anything' environment.
Case in point: the Crossrail tunnel through Tottenham Court Road has about 85cm clearance both above and below it, and had to be constructed with the Underground tunnels around it still in active service.
Building new lines through relatively soft clay is really hard when you have hundreds of notable historical buildings that you cannot afford to have any subsidence (like, millimetres is enough to cause really damage), and then when you don't really even though where half the other underground pipes are exactly (many of them are hundreds of years old, and some we simply don't know exist)… It's a real challenge.
Cars started 100 years ago. Are we going to announce every new Ford model? This is just a new train design similar to the trains they already have in place on the Victoria and Jubilee lines and others.
The only reason this article got to the top is because of some misplaced enthusiasm by miserable British commuters. I can understand and even relate to that as a former London commuter myself, but it has no place on HN.
Including comment from the RMT Union about how they are "deeply concerned" about driverless operation, the "lethal and cash driven nonsense of removing drivers"
Well... driverless operation may be "cash-driven", and TFL s often focusing on savings over performance (e.g by removing staff from ticket and information booths) but "lethal" sounds like a slur. Driverless trains work well enough on the DLR in East London, and are probably an inevitable step in 21st century London.