APTA claims to speak for US transit. Strangely, it has little to say about full automation, and more specifically about driverless metros. Can we expect better from the USDOT or Congress?
Brussels-based UITP makes clear statements about the safety and capacity-enhancing benefits of full automation. The European Union has awarded $20 million to fund a center of expertise in driverless metros in Paris, with collaboration from the RATP (Paris transit authority) and Alcatel-Lucent. Bold plans are underway to ring the city-on-the-Seine with a working-class transformating driverless ring. Copenhagen plans are perhaps more advanced in a similar Ringen on a smaller Scandanavian scale.
When APTA official Charles Joseph was recently asked about APTA's attitude toward driverless metros and ATN feeding appropriate metro stations, he had nothing to say. Instead he off-shored the question to Honolulu, where construction has begun on an elevated metro that maybe will be driverless. Press releases don't mention it. Consultant Simon Zweighaft does - loudly and clearly. He helped build the Miami DPM and has done a lot in the real world of transit outside the Beltway.
Maybe there should be a T-Party -- more adept than the Tea-Party - but responding to the Beltway dysfunction that we all feel.
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