Railways, Tramways, Busways, Driverless Vehicles

The issue of lost jobs comes up time and time again in the context of new technologies, but it usually vanishes without trace.

I suggested before that railway branch lines could potentially be uprooted in order to provide a test-bed for driverless buses (it surely wouldn’t be too complicated to add an overall vehicle control system to the present design and construction of guided buses and busways). It occurs to me now that HS2, if it ever gets built, could provide a perfect test-bed for driverless high-speed trains. In fact, it would probably be possible to make an argument in favour of the idea of using HS2 primarily as such a test-bed, with the hotly-disputed economic benefits taking second place.

I think there is a difference between driverless vehicles and automated transport systems. The idea of driverless cars seems to be that the vehicle itself will contain everything it needs (sensors and computers) in order to ensure its own safe passage, whereas the vehicles in an automated transport system are controlled from a central computer, which has prior ‘knowledge’ of all other system priorities.

I believe that Milton Keynes is about to start experimenting with ‘driverless pods’ between the station and the city centre, but I have no clue how the experiment will be organised, or whether the pods will somehow be kept apart from cyclists, pedestrians, buses and cars. I believe that the original plans for Milton Keynes (50 years ago?) included a ‘monorail’ alongside every grid road, but it never happened.

I think that the development of driverless vehicles belongs in the realm of Artificial Intelligence, whereas the technology for automated transport systems already exists.

Technology can also make a major contribution to safety. Trains and boats and planes are largely managed by external control systems, even though it is still possible for an individual ‘driver’ to ignore instructions and cause chaos. The least safe transport solution is the public highway, and the people who use it are the least trained, and the least supervised. Truck drivers and bus drivers earn hugely less than train drivers, airline pilots and ferry skippers. Truck and bus drivers also (mostly) have to finance their own licence renewals, as well as their speeding fines and other employer-induced infringements of the highway and tachograph regulations.

When I was driving trucks, I really felt a need for some kind of automated system which would restrict my speed to the legal limit of 40mph on single carriageways. Most truck-owners will not allow speed limits as a good excuse for a late delivery.

Modern trucks, like many modern cars, do indeed have cruise control and also speed limiters, but they only work if the driver chooses to use them. Some modern fleets are closely tracked and monitored by their owners, and if ever you get stuck behind an HGV doing exactly 40mph over a lengthy stretch of single carriageway, then it will almost certainly belong to such a fleet (it'll probably be Tesco!). But parcels delivery and general haulage is a cut-throat business, and next-day deliveries etc are frequently made possible only because many van and truck owners and drivers are able and willing to ignore any regulation which will cost them time, and to abuse any other road user who is in their way. Of course, this also applies to other groups of road-user as well....

Speed limiters are operated electronically, and it ought to be possible for speed limit signs to incorporate a device which would remotely activate a vehicle's speed limiter to suit the speed limit at the time. In an emergency, speed limiters are instantly switched off if the driver kicks down the gas pedal, and if the driver was required to submit a formal explanation every time the speed limiter was de-activated, then it would probably hardly ever happen.

Intelligent cars are probably light years away, but there are lots of ways in which trains and boats and planes are subject to very close external supervision, much of which is automated or semi-automated. That's why it would be safer for everybody, on lightly-used rural branch lines with slow-moving 'trains' driven and managed by well-trained and highly-accountable individuals, for road-users not to be expected to wait for minutes at a time at level crossings, when they know full well that the 'train' they are waiting for is currently stationary at a nearby station.