To think the RMT strike will actually push network rail etc to automate more, not less?

[InChocolateWeTrust]

If I was the management of the railway network today, I'd be looking for ways to reduce my reliance on people who might strike, instead of this pushing me to stop plans to automate, I'd be accelerating them. AIBU to think the RMT have been a bit short sighted here?

The idea is they are electrically monitored.

Guards have made mistakes with this in the past , some people think that a member of rail staff has never made a mistake. Automation is safer.

Shows that you were just listening to the government-led propaganda about what the DOO strike was about, and haven't appreciated the full implications of having trains without guards. There's an awful lot more to a guard's role than closing doors.

Now that Southern services can run unstaffed, who puts the ramp down for a wheelchair user to board at an unmanned station? On the last train on a Saturday night who calls an ambulance for the person who has overdosed? Who keeps the other drunks from fighting while the paramedics do their job? Who waits past the end of their shift with a foreign elderly tourist who missed the connecting replacement bus, phones Control to arrange a taxi, and waits with him? Who liaises with Control to get connections held to minimise delays to passengers? Who chucks perverts off of the train? Who gets yobs to remove their feet from the seats and turn their 'music' down? Who spots the person with their hand trapped in the doors? Who locks a murderer away from the other passengers? Who safely evacuates trains and summons help when all goes wrong?

All of those scenarios are real. Many of them happen frequently. You wouldn't be allowed to fly planes with flight attendant ratios of anything like the ratio of staff to passengers on trains, do you really want to reduce that further? Aircraft virtually fly themselves, yet there are still two fully qualified pilots on the flight deck, in addition to the cabin crew of up to 20 or so. Can one person really take responsibility for the safety of up to 2,000 people?

This is what happens when the driver is on their own during disruption: www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-02-2019-self-detrainment-of-passengers-onto-lines-that-were-still-open-to-traffic-and-electrically-live-at-lewisham and www.gov.uk/raib-reports/uncontrolled-evacuation-of-a-london-underground-train-at-holland-park-station

These are many incidents which have happened primarily as a result of reliance upon technology (CCTV and obstacle detectors) instead of human eyes to spot passengers trapped in the doors:
www.gov.uk/raib-reports/person-trapped-in-a-train-door-and-dragged-at-jarrow-station-tyne-and-wear-metro
www.gov.uk/raib-reports/passenger-accident-at-hayes-harlington-station
www.gov.uk/raib-reports/dangerous-train-door-incident-at-bank-station
www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-14-2018-passenger-trapped-and-dragged-at-notting-hill-gate-station
www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-15-2018-pushchair-trapped-in-tram-doors-and-dragged-nottingham
www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-03-2019-train-dispatch-accident-at-elstree-borehamwood-station
www.gov.uk/government/publications/safety-digest-012022-passenger-trapped-in-doors-at-wood-street-station
This is an accident report where the RAIB stated that the victim's injuries were significantly mitigated by having a member of staff on the platform:www.gov.uk/raib-reports/passenger-dragged-a-short-distance-by-a-train-at-holborn-station

Every time I travel on the GWR to London (monthly-ish) my ticket is checked on the train. It was checked in both directions when I travelled to Glasgow recently too.

No. Won't happen, though automation is always the wet dream of management.

To be sure so many jobs can be done by AI/computers. The question is, which ones do we "want" to be done by humans. This same bogeyman was constantly touted about teachers and schools, yet Covid saw that one off.

By the way, what's your job, OP?

More immediate, most people have learned how to work from home for the odd day so a train strike has very little impact on half the population, leaving the roads clear for the other half who physically need to go into work.
The rail unions may discover they strike and no-one actually notices.

Network Rail has been in my opinion a failure right from the start. Who operates the trains should be the same company that manages the track and stations. London Underground has them separated (the PPP) and when that ended, the number of line closures at weekends reduced a great deal.

Costs could be reduced I think if there was more use of week long closures (as happened with the line to Brighton from Gatwick), especially as more people have the option to work from home some of the time. I understand part of the RMT argument is about payments for night and weekend working, and so reducing that could save costs without ending longstanding pay and conditions.

"An EU study found that automating trains could increase the capacity of existing rail networks by as much as 44%, while a separate study in the US estimated that US rail capacity could increase by as much as 50% if newer systems are employed, the WSJ reports."

enterprise.press/stories/2021/10/14/are-robot-trains-the-answer-to-backlogged-supply-chains-55760/

Automated trains can help with supply chain issues. Japan has had an automated line since 1981 whilst France was the first in Europe to do so. Germany will have it in Hamburg this year whilst Egypt has plans of their own.

Point is, automated railway technology is increasingly more likely. Fewer people will be needed by companies in future, but some current roles will be retained until technology renders them obsolete.

Automation in farming has been proven to increase crop yields, similar to increasing rail capacity. This is important in a world where the global population is increasing and will be much bigger than today. More people = needing a more efficient way to work.

The question is when wide scale automation comes to the UK railway industry. The pandemic has increased the need for it in other countries.

The question is when wide scale automation comes to the UK railway industry.
It won't. It's too expensive. They can justify it for projects like Crossrail, Thameslink and HS2 where you do want to use the line very intensively but it's just not worthwhile for most of the country. In order to have automatic train operation you need to install ETCS. Even then you need someone in the front to watch out for foreign objects (trees, tractors, animals etc.) on the line. The Victoria Line and Crossrail still employ an equivalent of drivers to do this so you don't save much.

We still have 300 or so mechanical signal boxes up and down the country, most of which don't have a planned closure date because the savings from amalgamating the areas they control into computer workstations don't cover the cost of actually doing the work.

Most businesses when they are in financial trouble reduce costs and make people redundant in order to save the business if possible. The RMT are not living in the real world, the railways are losing money and what they are doing is just speeding up their demise

But railways are a unique business that also provides an essential service. In fact if you applied a simplistic “does it lose money” test, a lot would close immediately - but we all pay through taxation to keep them running.

I'd hope that there is a sensible agreement to be reached whereby the RMT modernise some working practices and agree to the closure of some (but definitely not all) ticket offices, and in exchange get a pay rise that is closer to inflation.

Not sure our current government is capable of orchestrating this, though.

The DLR is automated because the tracks were built to accommodate it. If you seriously think you'll see automated trains in the next 20 years you're living in cloud cuckoo land. It would involve configuring every single mile of track, which would cost billions and take decades. Not to mention the cost of replacing each train, which would also run into billions.

The railway is partly digitalised anyway which is why the gov want to close ticket offices.

I don't doubt automated trains will be the norm one day but not in my lifetime.

Indeed, I fully expect to see some mechanical signal boxes still in use on the national network when I retire in 40 years time. The cost of resignalling is far greater than any savings in manpower will achieve over the lifetime of new equipment.

Extending ATO to the remainder of London Underground (say 150 miles of route not already done) would cost £7bn. How much will it save in staffing? By my reckoning, converting LU to the same Grade of Automation 3 as DLR would save £55m/year. In other words it would take more than a century to repay the capital. If you did go the whole hog and implement Grade of Automation 4 (unattended trains, you'd better pray that no passengers electrocute themselves if they have to evacuate unsupervised), you'd still only save £200m/year and take 35 years to repay the capital.

Extrapolate that to the 20,000 miles Network Rail control, only a few hundred of which are currently earmarked for fitting ETCS, with the added complication of needing to make level crossings and fences completely idiot-proof, and you are coming close to £1tn in capital expenditure.

If the government is planning on spending a few £bn in capital in an effort to reduce operating costs and maybe boost income too, they need to electrify. Diesel trains are maintenance intensive, guzzle fuel, pollute, and accelerate slower. Electric trains on the other hand are fast, clean, and economical. The Treasury needs to pull its finger out of its arse and start spending. One of the few good things to come out of Holyrood is the plan to electrify all Scottish main lines (basically everywhere except Fort William/Wick/Stranraer). Time for Westminster and Cardiff to follow.