The United States is far behind in the use of driverless trains, but new projects could open the floodgates
Even though automated vehicles such as robotaxis are becoming more prevalent in the United States, almost all public transportation systems still require a driver or operator on board. Two major cities are looking to change that.
Officials in Washington, D.C., recently proposed a project that would allow computers to fully control one of its subways, and Los Angeles is seeking to build a new, fully automated line. Honolulu already has one.
The Washington and Los Angeles projects, which would take years to implement and still face financial and technical hurdles, come amid an already fierce debate over the safety risks and benefits of automated trains and whether the substantial upfront expense is worth the long-term savings in labor costs.
Supporters say the initiative is long overdue, pointing out that U.S. cities lag far behind many places around the world that operate unattended subways, subways or buses, including several cities in Europe and Asia, as well as major systems in Canada, Australia, South America and the Middle East.
“It should be much more difficult to automate a highway system, facing all these various obstacles, compared to a fixed rail system,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, managing director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank that has advocated for mass transit automation. “I don’t know a good way to say this, but basically the transit world is where innovation is going to die.”
Large-scale transit automation has been slow to develop in the United States
Only in recent years have on-road vehicles from companies like Waymo, Tesla and Zoox taken the lead in automation in the United States, ahead of mass transit systems using a rail line. In fact, although operators have always been a part of the Washington, D.C. Metro system, trains ran with some automated features when it opened 50 years ago. After a fatal accident in 2009, these were turned off and then restored over the past two years.
Officials in the nation’s capital today renewed their push for automation of the Metro Red Line. And an environmental study is underway in Los Angeles for an automated track for a new underground line of its heavy rail system that would traverse the rugged terrain of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Honolulu already operates a driverless elevated line – the most extensive automated transit system in the United States. It will stretch 19 miles when completed, surpassing the driverless Detroit and Miami elevated trains that opened as pilot projects in the 1980s, a monorail connecting Las Vegas Strip hotels and smaller systems that carry passengers between airport terminals.
An automated monorail that once operated in Memphis, Tennessee, closed its doors years ago. And the driverless Jacksonville Skyway will soon cease operations indefinitely due to budget cuts, despite initial plans for an even larger automated system.
Crash hampers automation efforts
After nine people were killed and many others injured in the 2009 train collision near the Fort Totten station on the D.C. Red Line, the National Transportation Safety Board blamed the accident on a maintenance problem with the automated signal system that separates trains from one another.
Randy Clarke, CEO of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, stressed in an interview with The Associated Press that the problem at Fort Totten had nothing to do with the cruise control-style system that was restored to the Red Line in 2024 and other Metro lines last year. He acknowledged, however, that for many years the accident “crippled” Metro’s plans for further automation.
“It’s been a big failure, there’s no doubt about it. We don’t do anything like that now,” said Clarke, who called the current system “highly regulated, highly documented, very effective.”
Trains could likely run without human workers inside the cabin as soon as 2033 under the nearly $1 billion plan backed by Metro’s board in April to upgrade the Red Line with safety features, including protective barriers that keep passengers off the tracks.
Clarke said that while workers are not needed to physically operate the trains, they will be needed to maintain the tracks and respond to emergencies.
Unions have criticized automation. John Samuelsen, a former New York subway worker and now international president of the Transport Workers Union, said unions have fought automation efforts in New York and elsewhere, calling them “a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Passengers will face self-evacuation, which is a disaster in a system that operates on a third rail,” Samuelsen said.
Honolulu touts an unblemished record with its automated Skyline
To ease huge traffic bottlenecks for commuters, Honolulu opened its Skyline automated light rail system three years ago and expanded it last year.
Vance Tsuda, project director of the system, said there has not been a single accident or injury associated with the automation. Even hybrid systems are less safe than a fully automated system, he said, arguing that a human is much more likely to forget something like an open door and prematurely allow a train to depart.
“If someone makes that decision, they might make a bad decision,” Tsuda said.
But David King, an associate professor of urban planning at Arizona State University who has studied automated transportation, said the success rate must remain perfect to maintain public trust. That’s why the Fort Totten accident and others involving automation put technology so far behind, he said.
“We allow a certain amount of failure with private industry that we don’t tolerate when the state does it,” King said, citing the multiple rockets blown up by Elon Musk’s SpaceX — a record he said would cripple NASA’s budget if it happened in the public sector.
Los Angeles rolls out safety plans for a subway under the mountains
Perhaps the most ambitious mass transit automation effort in the United States is the subway line that Los Angeles officials voted to recommend under the Santa Monica Mountains. The area has one of the nation’s most notorious traffic problems, with mountains separating the bustling Westside employment hub from the San Fernando Valley.
There is already a subway system under the same mountain range, near Hollywood, but this one has a driver on board. The new proposal, which is undergoing an environmental review, would use shorter, more frequent trains, said Cecily Way, who is overseeing planning for the Sepulveda project for Los Angeles Metro.
Like the Washington project, the new Los Angeles line would feature station doors to protect passengers on the platform from oncoming trains.
The Reason Foundation’s Feigenbaum said automating a major transit line, like in Los Angeles or Washington, could open the floodgates to other cities.
“This sends a signal that this is technologically feasible and that other systems may want to strive to achieve this,” he said.
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