> Labor costs are by far the single greatest expense in transit operations. This bill unnecessarily inflates these costs, ultimately shifting the burden onto riders through potential fare hikes or reducing the capacity for much-needed service improvements.

Couldn't they go ahead and put in automation for all the skilled work that the required second person would do if there were no automation, but make it so at each stop someone has to press a button to tell the automation to start?

They could then use minimum wage employees for the second person position. Would that be cheap enough to not be a significant burden?