Yesterday Alstom, Bombardier, CAF, Hitachi and Siemens were invited to tender their bids to build 250 new trains for the Piccadilly, Waterloo & City, Bakerloo and Central Lines for delivery in the early 2020s. You would have thought that a step closer to the arrival of Boris’s much publicised “New Train for London” would have had LUL’s media team pulling out all the stops but it seems to have gone completely unnoticed apart from a couple of mentions in the railway press (and the Derby Telegraph). Maybe the Standard etc. were far more interested in doors opening between stations on the Piccadilly.
The announcement is pretty much the same as last time; faster, more frequent, air cooled (hopefully better than Boris’s air cooled buses) with walk through carriages but as with the advert for part time TOps there is a link for FAQs which sheds a little more light on perhaps why this announcement has been allowed to slip under the radar. As before it says that when the trains first arrive they will operate with the existing signal system – ATP for the Central, coloured light signals and trip cocks for the others – until all the old stock is replaced and the new control signalling systems has been installed. It also repeats the earlier statement by one of the Browns that once all the old stock has been replaced and the new signal system is working they will be driven under ATO with a TOp in the cab until PEDs can be fitted which won’t be until the 2030s.
What is new is that the Bakerloo will not be getting PEDs “due to interoperation of services with national rail at the northern end of the line”. If PEDs are essential for driverless operation then unless London Overground forsakes the line between Euston and Watford Junction the Bakerloo will need someone in the cab and the assumption is that the same holds for the Richmond branch of the District.
The FAQs also reveal that the reason the four lines currently operating with ATO can’t go driverless is simply that they would need significant upgrades along with PED doors. Whether the ATO signalling system Thales are working on for the Sub Surface Lines will support driverless operation isn't mentioned but even if it does the District would still need TOps for the Network Rail bit. They admit they are still considering just how driverless trains would be staffed but I wouldn't imagine a DLR-type person is going to be a lot of use stood in the middle of a train at 08:30 on a Monday morning in Zone 1.
Back in 2012 when Boris was running for mayor he gave the impression that driverless trains on the Tube were just around the corner, perhaps the lack of fanfare is to save him from having to explain that its going to take longer than he led the public to believe and that some lines cannot go driverless.
Meanwhile on the Night Tube front Unite has called off their strikes but TSSA has said they will join ASLEF and RMT. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.....
The Bakerloo runs on Network Rail metals north of Queen's Park so the problem is the same as with the District between Gunnersbury and Richmond. And while TfL can reshuffle LO and Bakerloo line services as they please, Network Rail will not be keen to (a) relinquish control of the route which can be used as a diversion in case the West Coast is blocked; (b) allow unsupervised ATO on its routes under any circumstances. I also doubt whether Network Rail would allow operating trains manually from a little panel in front of a passenger seat as with the DLR.
ReplyDeleteVery much agree with difficulties regarding putting train captains aboard crowded tube trains in the peaks. Perhaps the solution would be to have station staff doing the dispatching duties and sending a 'Right Away' signal to the train once they are satisfied all doors are shut?
If you are going to have staff on the platform doing dispatch you need to have enough staff available to cover all platforms where they might be needed (even if they aren't) and they also they need to be able to see the whole of the platform which would require monitors on Category A platforms (or somewhere like Mile End which is Cat B but gets very crowded). Obviously you'd still have to have a staff member somewhere on the train to deal with faults etc.
DeleteI agree re. full staffing at all stations. But on-train staff? The way they dealt with it in Paris is that they put in emergency response teams at every second or third station along the M1 route. The idea is that the moment a train gets stuck these teams jump into the tunnel (presumably juice must be turned off first) and walk to the train that has a problem. Would this not be sufficient in London?
DeleteThe tunnel from Stratford to Mile End is 2.83km/1.75 miles, Bethnal Green to Liverpool Street 2.27km/1.41 miles, Newbury Park to Gants Hill 2.37km/1.47 miles. I'm sure other lines have similar long tunnels, sending someone on foot to deal with a faulty train is going to shut down the job for a long time, in the peak we're running a train every two minutes or more so that's a lot of people stuck waiting and yes, the juice would have to be off.
DeletePlus the fault may not be with the train, it could just as easily be with the signal/control system, the train still won't move so someone would have to walk in and drive it manually.
DeleteFair enough - in Paris the stations are rarely more than 500m apart (except M14). Still - possibly do-able with draisines and the like.
ReplyDeleteI honestly never liked this project the minute PriestmanGoode released their video. Firstly, the whole 'I hate the unions - The sooner driver-less trains arrive, the better' from the media has masked the true facts about the breach of safety and the job losses that would incur because of UTO. The name 'NTubeFL' isn't all that is inherited from the 'NBusfL' vanity project, the concept and cost is also ridiculous. Sadly the right-wing press won't bat and eye-lid over the substantial failings from Boris Johnson. His buses do not work, are unsafe and don't carry the 1000+ promised so called 'conductors' that they were going to have. I'm surprised that Unite haven't responded to the numerous collisions in the past two years.
ReplyDeleteI am a bit of a Tube-Spotter you can say, and PED's on JLE are dull and frankly meaningless. Can they even work on 55% of the Underground Surface Platforms? is UTO better than ATO? Are drivers important? me thinks yes!
Have to disagree with you on the JLE PEDs, there hasn't been a single one under on those stations and they keep litter off the tracks so fewer signal failures caused by coke cans etc. My question would be how are you going to fit PEDs on the Central Line platforms at Bank.
DeleteThey somehow managed to fit PEDs at Bastille station on the M1 in Paris - and that one isn't much more straight than Central Line at Bank...
DeleteI found some data on this. There were a total of 153 incidents with PEDs on the Jubilee line between 1999 and 2012, with 75 of those being reported as injuries. In 2011, the Jubilee line outstripped all the other lines in terms of accidents per passenger. Fatalities in 2011 numbered 188 across the tube, none on the Jubilee where PEDs were fitted. Most injuries were escalator related and minor. The figures include 3rd party contractors which accounts for 6 of the train-strike fatalities.
DeleteI can't seem to find the news article about someone who got trapped between the PEDs and the train, though. I'm sure that's a real thing.
All in all, PEDs do save lives, improve ventilation and passenger experience. But the price of them when they are retrofitted!
There have been two fatalities involving passengers trapped between PEDs and the train, Shanghai in 2007 and Beijing in 2014
DeleteI found those. I thought we had a very close shave on the Jubilee within the last two years. A young boy, I think.
DeleteDo you mean the kid who fell between the train and the platform at Finchley Road in 2012?
DeleteI suppose I could be confusing that with another incident. The incident I'm trying to recall involved a satchel getting caught in the PED/train gap, someone going into the gap to retrieve it when they shouldn't, and it was in the JLE section. Southwark, I think. Mind you, as I say, it could be just false memory.
DeleteFinchley Road does not have PEDs...
DeleteRetrofitting PEDs on LU will be difficult as the edge of the platform is very thin and has cables running underneath - it would therefore not support the structure of the PED.
When District Line has ATO signalling and a new Control Centre, faults could be fixed remotely. Also, Central Line. Aren't a lot of the faults just train software or signal programming related? Easily fixed (in the future) just by some "train doctor" flicking a few switches in a control centre. Microsoft have had the ability to restore your Windows PC since Windows XP days. Wireless transmission is a lot stronger and more secure too.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that there are very few physical problems with trains these days. Newer stock can run for hours even if a compressor goes or with a burst and that is probably the biggest defect any stock could have had.
Managers will work the percentages and probabilities offset against Staff salaries and other costs. Big salaries (not theirs of course) and human factors will inevitably lose out to cheaper technology regardless of how "safe" that tech really is.
To illustrate this point. The present Picc line doors issue. The public arn't really bothered. Millions still been using The Tube since it happened. Public actually querying why drivers not bringing trains into service regardless of any door issues. lol. Managers will make case that door tech is safe and reliable as only a few doors flown open since allegedly 2013 out of tens of million train trips. Managers will probably also raise point that most door issues down to driver error (wrong side opening) etc etc.
Drivers really do need to recognise that the world outside of The Underground works very differently to what you imagine. Network Rail WILL at some point use the flimsiest bit of safety related "evidence" or some "radically new" piece of safety improving tech to justify that its "OK" to run driverless trains on their rails.
Oh dear where to start? With Network Rail the issue with PEDs is that obviously the doors on the new trains won’t be in the same place as the Class 378s. A bigger issue would be signalling , on the mainline they have simple track circuits whereas the driverless trains will be using some form of CBTC so unless they can find a way of integrating the two then the Bakerloo trains will have to switch north of Queens Park.
DeleteIf on-train faults can be fixed remotely then fine, we won’t know how effective that system works on the Tube until the District get ATO in 2022 (four years late). When the failure is not with the train but with the system then it’s an entirely different problem which is why the DLR have PSAs on board who can manually drive the trains to the next station.
The public aren’t bothered about the Piccadilly or anything like that until someone gets injured and only if they’re the one who was injured but we can be held legally responsible, we can lose our jobs and we can face prosecution, something people are either unaware of or chose to forget. As for “the world outside of The Underground works very differently to what you imagine” where do you think we live when we’re not at work, Planet Zog?
Do you think drivers are incubated somewhere in a LUL lab? Most drivers have worked in other industries before joining LUL and are well aware of the 'outside world'.
DeleteYou really don't see the forest for the trees, do you? All the details you and several others have mentioned are irrelevant. Indeed, when I read a lot of the minutia of the technicalities of a Driver my minds voice imagines you all sound a lot like Mr Bean or some American show stereotype of a "nerd".
DeleteThe point being made further up, is that where there is a will there will be a way. There is a political will to see train services driverless and an economic will to reduce public service salaries. Almost any justification will be used to achieve this end. Including saying things are "safe" when they may not be as safe as the most qualified Health and Safety Executive may want them.
Work place safety has always been a matter of compromise, cost and management.
I didnt mention PEDs but someone else has said they have been applied to even the most difficult stations in Paris and others abroad.
Different stocks and different size trains have been arriving at the same platforms for decades on network rail.
Even with PEDs and different trains, it seems just a question of maths, measuring and just aligning the PEDs to the train with the widest doors. Please don't make me draw you a diagram to show you how this works.
Or just cutting out some doors opening. That's been done for decades too.
Your point regarding CBTC and Bakerloo line. Circuits don't have to been integrated. They can work in parallel (exclusive) of each other. I believe this is what the District Line is doing with S and D stocks at the moment.
From what I understand the latest Jubilee/Northern ATO is "in cab". The trains talk to each other. They require minimal or no interaction with the track.
You are right no one knows how it will work fixing faults remotely. But it IS possible and there is a WILL to try it rather than to keep listening to self important "professionals" saying how essential they are and that their "technical" skills are oh so important. Anyone can "trip and reset" a switch. Question is whether we pay someone to do it on a train only or someone to do it from a central location?
I was wrong too. The public ARE bothered. They just don't "get" drivers. For most of the public their work "world" is a lot different from yours.
All this talk of Paris having emergency response teams etc etc. Isn't all this talk frankly a bit absurd, surely this is just totally ideological? Is having a trained human in the front of a train just too simple as a concept? As someone else has said, ATO was trialled on the district in the 50s. 50 odd years on, S stock trains are still running around with tripcocks. UTO ain't gonna be here any time soon.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it absurd? I am very much aware that UTO is not the golden bullet in terms of ending strikes once and for all. Whatever technology you employ there will always be a group of people that are critical to service delivery who will be in a position to cripple the service if they choose to strike. Be it service controllers, platform staff, track workers, whatever...
DeleteI am only wondering what are the real barriers preventing UTO from being implemented on LU and - as an outsider - am interested in hearing what an experienced driver has to say on the matter.
The real barriers are cost, time and management. While plenty of driverless railways have been built only two have ever been converted, M1 in Paris and U-Bahn 2 in Nuremburg. I don't know much about U-Bahn 2 but M1 is about the size of the Bakerloo, it took 4 years to complete, cost the equivalent of £4bn and the whole deal was negotiated with the unions before anything was started.
DeleteMeanwhile in London Osborne has just cut TfL's subsidy which means they are looking at a huge budget shortfall from 2018, the signal upgrade for the Sub Surface Lines won't be completed until 2022, four years late and well over budget while the attempt to introduce Night Tube without negotiation has completely failed.
Line M4 in Budapest received the go-ahead to go driverless in January of this year, following about 2 years of running in ATO mode with drivers. There are no PEDs on the platforms, they have infrared sensors on the track instead:
Deletehttp://www.railwaygazette.com/news/urban/single-view/view/budapest-line-m4-cleared-to-go-driverless.html
M4 was designed to be driverless, it should only have had drivers for the first year but it seems the wheels of bureaucracy turn just as slowly in Hungary as they do in the UK.
DeleteASLEFshrugged: you're absolutely right. It's very Boris to blurt out a date and THEN set about negotiating things with the people that are going to work on the front line implementing everything. Paris pulled off the M1 automation without a single hour lost to industrial action - and we can all agree that ASLEF and RMT are very, very docile compared to their French counterparts.
ReplyDeleteU2 in Nuremburg had the added complexity in that it shares track with U3, which was still hand-operated for a while, until it, too, got converted. Took them absolutely bloody ages as well.
As far as I understand, even with the 'mountains' of dosh that LUL train drivers earn (in case you missed it, that was sarcasm), LUL more-or-less washes its face operationally. Overground is getting there, particularly after giving guards the boot from the North London Line and extending trains to 5-car. As such, it will be the buses that will bear the brunt of Osborne's axe, but then again you would expect the Tories to go after poor people in the first instance, wouldn't you?
ASLEF and TSSA have agreed to suspend strike action, RMT still holding out.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.itv.com/news/london/2016-01-21/train-drivers-union-calls-off-tube-strike-but-rmt-workers-still-set-to-walk-out/
I think that might be not so much RMT "holding out" as "holding their breath" - I suspect they want internal feedback & they want to see which way the wind is blowing, before making any final decision.
DeleteThat's the simple explanation, anyway.
Doubtless the Paris style Emergency Response Teams will be unionised too. How does this fix the risk-of-strike problem ? The whole thing is driven by spite. Boris's Tories say they love workers to be well paid but when they are they just can't stand it.
ReplyDeleteIn any case. In London £50k a year - as good as it is - buys diddley in terms of accommodation.
Tell me about it. With my 50k salary I can not even get a mortgage to cover the cost a one bedroom flat in London
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