The Marriage of Automated Metros and Self-Driving Trains

Automated Metro Operations: 

Opportunities, Challenges and Conversions

As we emerge from the pandemic and embrace the "new normal", urban transportation faces a number of new challenges and opportunities related to efficiency, economy, technology and changing travel behaviors.

As we adapt and upgrade our cities, one proven technological opportunity to reduce the costs of providing high capacity transit systems while also dramatically improving service quality can be considered.  The coordination of existing, but underutilized, unattended metro train operations and the emerging prospect of self-driving trains offer the opportunity improve service while reducing operating costs.

The presentation on January 9th will cover the proliferation of unattended train systems around the world, the conversion of legacy systems to unattended operation and the emerging opportunity to apply self-driving car autonomous technology to the rapid transit environment.  

I hope you can attend. 

If not, CLICK HERE for a copy of the presentation.  

102nd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board
Committee on Rail Rolling Stock and Motive Power

Monday, January 9, 2023, 15:45 – 17:30 ET
Capitol Room (M4) Marriott Marquis Hotel Washington DC

David O. Nelson, Senior Consultant, 

Jacobs Engineering, 120 Saint James Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02110

david.nelson@jacobs.com  +1 978 360 0449

Announcing the Annual Meeting of the Commuter Rail Subcommittee

2023 Annual Meeting of TRB's Commuter Rail Subcommittee

Tuesday, January 10, 2023. 15:45 - 17:30
Mint Room (M4), Marriott Marquis Hotel,

Washington DC. 

All are Welcome!  

Be prepared to discuss how the commuter railroad you know best is responding to the new "Work from Home" travel market. 

Click Here for Preliminary Agenda

Concerning the Post-2020 Commuter Railway

The public health crisis of 2020 and beyond had dramatic effects on our society and culture.

Some aspects of our collective culture will be changed forever.  One public service that may never be the same is the commuter railways that have carried office workers from their suburban homes to their downtown workplaces for more than century.  

Responding to the social distancing imperatives required by public health concerns, office workers and their employers exploited the latest commerically available tools for telecommunication to establish a new mode of "Working From Home".  WFH turned out to be big success that will likely endure long after the other painful memories of the pandemic eventually fade.  

Work from Home will likely change urban travel forever with dramatic effects on peak demand for commuter rail transit service to the urban core.   Click here for more thoughts on this transformative change.