> You need some combination of high-ridership and low-personnel-cost.
Driverless (GoA3) and completely unattended (GoA4) rail operation is possible, which could help with personnel costs:
Driverless (GoA3) and completely unattended (GoA4) rail operation is possible, which could help with personnel costs:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_syste...
Existing drivers could be moved to customer service roles on the trains (driver+conductor on 1 train -> one coductor on 2 trains), or moved to non-autoamtable roles (buses, trams).
I don't know how to solve this problem, but making people aware of it is a good first step. It helps people who are in favor of transit yell at all politicians who are not helping them. Blind party allegiance is never a good thing.
People hate unions too when they're directly affected by them. Case in point, the dock workers strike from a while back. When people realized their Chinese made slop Amazon christmas presents would be delayed because of the dock workers strike, they suddenly stopped empathizing with them and hating them for it.
Inter-class solidarity isn't much of a thing. If one worker class starts breaking things in society/the economy to get a better deal for themselves at the expense of the other classes, even if they're on the same level, the others will hate them for it.
Another example would be if airline workers would go on strike for better pay and working conditions ... during summer. Imagine how many people who paid for holidays would empathize with them. We are an individualist society.
Also, the culture for whatever reason seems to emphasize enabling gamesmanship around overtime, special duty pay, etc. as opposed to paying a good steady rate for a normal day's work.
In sydney they built a building which cost $100M to be filled with software engineers just to watch and monitor one and now two driver less trains.
Guess which cost more, the building and 100s of software technies and managers or a few dozen drivers ?
Its a very large building, theres no way that could cost tens of millions.
google: metro OCC building cost how many millions
> Depending on which specific transit control facility you are referring to, the construction cost ranges from $72 million to nearly $300 million:
The OCC in Tallawong is only for metro, all other trains are run from Alexandria.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/bigger-and-better-than-n...
Thats the Alexandria HQ which runs non metro services.
> This would require employing about 100 drivers, allowing for normal working hours, holidays and other leave. Based on the cost of employing a driver, including administrative overheads, being about $150,000 a year, the savings from replacing drivers on this line is about $15 million a year.
...
> Assuming a 5% rate of return on the $500 million cost to automate the line, this saving is offset by the $25 million a year in opportunity costs on the $500 million line conversion.
Spend $500M to automate to save $15M on driver wages.
Is that a sensible trade ?