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MCStarlight t1_itqzeow wrote

I thought they will eventually phase drivers out and automate them.

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sudsomatic t1_its88jy wrote

Fast fact: they automated them back in the 70s/80s but made them manual since the accident back in 2008 (I think?). and metro decided they throw the baby with the bath water and kept them manual to this day. Sad that we’re less advanced today than 4 decades ago.

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RickBangkok t1_itrqtsl wrote

Singapore's subway is automated doesn't even have an engineers cab.

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ChuChuMan202 t1_itsot8o wrote

The system was automated when it was built. However, the automated systems failed to the point of loss of life. Now, the system is operated manually.

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mriphonedude t1_iu3b5r4 wrote

This isn’t actually true, ATO hasn’t caused any crashes

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ChuChuMan202 t1_iu3l5yn wrote

ATO is just one subsystem of the Automatic Train Supervision (ATS) system. Automatic Train Protection (ATP) is what failed that led to the loss of life.

Even still, WMATA's ATO needs some work. It doesn't work like it is meant to when it is occasionally tested. Also, there have been some roadway worker protection procedure updates that make ATO unwieldy.

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moonbunnychan t1_its999v wrote

Considering it was an automatic train control thing that caused that crash in 2009, I don't exactly trust them to maintain automatic controls to stay safe enough.

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Wonderful-Speaker-32 t1_itss7ik wrote

The crash wasn't because of ATO:

"WMATA disabled ATO on June 23, 2009 in a knee-jerk reaction after a Red Line train crashed into the back of another, killing eight riders and a train operator. ATO wasn’t at fault, but the underlying system that controls train locations and keeps them separated was." from https://ggwash.org/view/69545/metro-reasons-good-news-for-riders-computer-driven-trains-are-coming-back#:~:text=Metro%20had%20computer%2Ddriven%20trains,and%20keeps%20them%20separated%20was.

That crash likely would've happened regardless, since the drivers didn't have line of sight until it was too late, and the train operator behind wouldn't have been able to see that there was a train ahead of it any other way (because the problem had to do with the train location system).

These days, they'd likely have to put in GPS based tracking together with track-based tracking to ensure everything's going smoothly.

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