New Tube for London
tfl.gov.uk
tfl.gov.uk
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.
I don't know how they'd do it on the tube. Presumably door closing would still require manual control.
What for? The doors can be on a timer (station-specific if necessary)
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.
> 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.
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.
Reasons I can think of:
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.
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
it was until recently headed by the late great Bob Crow http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26527325
This article says http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2007/08/29/les-suicides-du-metro-... not a single incident has been reported last year.
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'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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
The kind of thing you're describing is in operation elsewhere in London where the capacity requirements make it more appropriate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ULTra_(rapid_transit)
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 ?
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.
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?
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.
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2009_Washington_Metro_tra...
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.
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.
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 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.
Perhaps it should. Surely it must have been tried somewhere?
There are cities with free transit systems however.
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
Furthermore, if you want to drive in most of Central London during the day time on a weekday, you have to pay the congestion charge: https://www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge
The angst is because you largely don't have such a choice.
See, e.g., http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/extrahelp/.
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.
> 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.
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.
Because other mass transit systems tend to treat people as cattle herd.
Mind you, this attitude is worth a lot. Especially when confronted with "you are the product" bullshit everywhere else.
We should be so lucky. You'd get arrested if you put a cattle herd through what passengers are put through on some London trains.
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.
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.
(on the HN front page a few hours ago)
The original article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208723/Cooking-Cent...
It can be a problem in summer. I've seen a couple of passengers faint from the heat on hot days.
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.
Imagine the tens of thousands of people turning up to work like that every morning.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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...)
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.
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.
Covering it in gloop is probably better than closing the line and removing the asbestos.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/asbestos-london-underground-tube-rm...
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.
The frequency with which there is "a passenger under a train" must have a tangible effect on tube capacity.
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.
(Also, London has had platform edge doors for a while already - only on half of one line, but still)
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.)
It does. Think severals a month, more in November, with almost an hour clean-up, usually at peak times.
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.
From http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4934f824-ead3-11e1-984b-00144feab4...
> 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.
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.
Of course it would be horribly disruptive, but it might somebody be a necessity.
Former tunnel boring engineer here.
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.
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.
http://www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/for-home/furniture/about-moque...
Here's my favourite, from the best tube line in London: https://dribbble.com/shots/1642243-Tubepapers-Victoria?list=...
To me, it seemed like it would stand the test of time a lot better.
It is bizarre. Imagine if car companies did that.
Example 1: The GNU GPL, sections 15-17, http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Example 2: Microsoft Services Agreement, sections 11 & 12: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/microsoft-service...
These trains are for some of the deeper level lines that were built by using tunnelling machine to bore deep underground.
You see this on adverts for new-build flats in London too. "Comfort cooling" often just means a fan blowing hot air around.
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.
EDIT: whoops, he's dead apparently.
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.
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.
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.
[1] http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/09/london-underground-turns-150-t...
Also, consider that the "small" benefit for the local train is applied to millions of people a day. That'll add up to lifetimes.
It's nice news for London commuters, but hardly "Hacker News". Flagged.
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.
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.
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.