Could San Francisco Automate Strike-Threatening Train Drivers?(techcrunch.com) |
Could San Francisco Automate Strike-Threatening Train Drivers?(techcrunch.com) |
Is it possible politically? That is the real question. Perhaps not, but let's not pretend it has anything to do with technology.
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The progress of automation will certainly result in complex social issues, and the entire concept of employment may have to be rethought.
But keeping a small number of people pointlessly in their old jobs is not the right solution. Why should a few people receive $66-92k per year in welfare just because they used to drive a train, while other unemployed people and the homeless do not? It would be more fair to share the tax funds between all unemployed, regardless of whether it was due to a new automated train system or not.
creative destruction might be better for the system as a whole,
that's different than saying there aren't winners and losers, only winners
the further we go down the wormhole of automating away work, that's a question we shouldn't just blow off
Since 1985, Vancouver has had a 100% automated metro system ("SkyTrain") which has expanded to three lines (soon 4) and about 65 KM in track (soon to be closer to 80).
Almost any metro system could be converted to be automated but SkyTrain was built to be 100% computer-controlled from the get go. To switch from manual to electronic control would likely lead to enormous interruptions and it is unlikely that the unions in charge would accept it. It also isn't a matter of just updating the trains but it also means building sensors at all stations to detect intrusions and it also means changing signal controls. Needless to say it would be a bad idea and likely would just cost money.
In 2001, we suffered a prolonged transit strike that stopped all local bus and ferry service. However, the SkyTrain system continued to operate as normal albeit without any staff at any of the stations.
Google hasn't done that (yet). http://googleblog.blogspot.hu/2012/08/the-self-driving-car-l...
BART employees and their unions say salaries are too low for the (high) cost of living in the area, and should be increased by 23% to correct that. However, BART (and increasingly, the public) argue that BART jobs require no technical skills or education (beyond a HS diploma) and are benefitted and secure jobs already paying far above the average wage for jobs of similar (low) skill levels; and in light of the context (economic and otherwise), only a 4% raise should be granted. The percentage raise rates have gone back and forth on both ends, but that's the general gist.
source (on the 68-77% strike disapproval): http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2013/10/10/bart...
You could replace the entire staff with San Francisco homeless and it couldn't get any worse.
I'm not sure how this came up in conversation.
The requirement of having that human operator is typically born strictly of labor requirements first, and not necessarily the need of having someone's hand over the "Oh shit" button.
The human driver instead serves as a sort of last-ditch assurance that the transit company values human life sufficient that a jury wouldn't destroy them in the event of an accident. He performs a sacrificial function by being the first one to die in the event of a crash, at which point it becomes a tragedy for the operator company, milliseconds before the people behind him die, at which point it becomes a tragedy for the passengers. There is no point, therefore, at which a disaster can be seen as a tragedy for the passengers but not the operating company, a position which is fraught with political-legal consequences in the US corporate and municipal environment, ever obsessed with liability. The driver's failure to respond adequately is implied to be at least partially the fault of the late driver, sufficient to draw fire until the panic dies down.
Absent liability issues, we would all be riding perfectly safe labor-less cars and trains, which were perfectly safe because we insisted on using them once they were mature enough to be safer than individual automobile drivers, and learned from each crash that happened afterwards, and improved our algorithms iteratively. Instead, every time we have a crash we blame the algorithm's existence rather than tweak it, switch to using a more human-intensive mode, let the automated infrastructure rot, add weight to our trains, and decry the tragic no-fault coincidence of driver inattention and algorithm failure that doomed the driver and the passengers.
The DC Metro was designed for full automation. Rather than implement the automation and improve on it over time, the predictable initial failures resulted in scaling back the automation partially and later fully and now it's not even a realistic capability, the infrastructure has degraded.
"BART was one of the first U.S. systems of any size to have substantial automated
operations. The trains are computer-controlled via BART's Operations Control Center
(OCC) and headquarters at Lake Merritt and generally arrive with regular punctuality."
Plus, the author may not have initially known much about how hard it is to run a train, but they weren't expressing their own opinions -- they found experts and asked them how hard it would be.
It's lazy and disingenuous to pretend anyone involved in the article was expressing opinions about things they knew nothing about.
so how are they better off?
I wanted to travel between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, where my family is. Driving, that takes about 2.5 hours depending on traffic. In theory, the mass transit way of doing things is to take Caltrain from SF to San Jose and then a bus over highway 17.
Here are some of the problems I encountered.
- Caltrain leaves once an hour. This is forgivable, but incredibly inconvenient, and the express train (same distance, half the time) leaves much less often. It would matter less than it does, except...
- I once arrived at the station on time, saw people being let through the gate, bought a ticket, and was turned away from the gate by the guard. The people I had just seen were clearly visible on the platform, walking to the train. But hey, why not make me sit in the station for another hour.
- Multiple times I experienced indefinite delays as the train just sat on the track in the middle of nowhere, unmoving. No explanation was given.
- Caltrain arrives at (and leaves from) Diridon roughly once per hour. The highway 17 bus leaves from (and arrives at) Diridon roughly once per hour. They've been anti-synced: the bus leaves about ten minutes before the train arrives, and the train leaves about ten minutes before the bus arrives. The only explanation I can even imagine for this is that whoever set the schedule specifically hated the passengers.
The upshot is that you spend the better part of your day on what would have been a 2-2.5 hour drive. It's not even feasible to make the trip both ways in a single day.
Whether the Caltrain schedule matches the highway 17 bus's schedule is not solely the fault of Caltrain -- it's either a 2 way street, or else they're both neglecting it, unless you have proof otherwise.
I have ridden MTA (NYC) and BART when they have stopped the trains in unpredictable locations for various reasons. For short stoppages, they don't say anything, but for stoppages more than 30 secs, they typically say something.
You're talking about a bus route with two stops. The only thing it does is travel between Diridon station and downtown Santa Cruz. I'm assigning responsibility for the station's scheduling to the station, which is Caltrain.