A Los Angeles Metro Red Line train arrives at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. (2020 file photo by David Klein, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Paris is hoping to teach Los Angeles a lesson in how to transport spectators to the Olympics efficiently. Unfortunately, California’s slow-moving, union-controlled public sector is unlikely to learn anything from the City of Lights.
This summer, passengers arriving at Paris’ Orly Airport will be able to use a new autonomous metro line to reach the city center and some of the Olympic venues. Driverless trains on the Line 14 subway line are scheduled to arrive at stations every 105 seconds. Two other lines of the Paris metro (Lines 1 and 4) have also been upgraded in recent years to be autonomous.
In contrast, Los Angeles International Airport’s autonomous people mover (due in late 2025) will be autonomous, but passengers will then connect to LA Metro’s K line, which requires a driver and currently runs every 10 minutes. To get to the Coliseum or Downtown LA, passengers will need to transfer to the E line.
Paris isn’t the only city to benefit from the cost savings and increased frequency of driverless train services: Singapore has two driverless subway lines, and Vancouver’s SkyTrain has been fully automated since it began operations in 1985. Montreal currently has driverless train systems at five stations, with 21 more due to come online this decade. In the United States, Honolulu has the first and only automated system that is not based at an airport, while New York City’s AirTrain JFK serves two non-airport stations and spans more than eight miles of track.
With driverless cars becoming more commonplace, the technology needed for driverless trains seems almost trivial: They follow fixed routes, rarely need to back up, and often run on dedicated elevated tracks. But LA Metro, and California transit agencies in general, don’t seem interested in driverless trains, which is a shame, since hiring train drivers isn’t cheap.
According to the union’s latest memo, starting in July, full-time LA Metro drivers will earn $37.93 an hour, up from $25.69. Drivers also won’t spend the majority of their day driving trains, taking into account state-mandated meal and rest breaks and recovery time after trips. Drivers also receive pension and health benefits worth about $30,000 a year, and are allowed to work overtime, at 1.5 times their overtime pay. As a result, it would be cost-prohibitive for LA Metro to match the frequency of Paris, which would mean running many trains with few passengers.
When I asked California transportation experts about driverless trains, they said it was a good idea, but that transit unions would never embrace it. Perhaps that assumption should be tested.
Because building new driverless lines wouldn’t result in job losses, and because conversion takes a long time (even in places that build rail infrastructure efficiently), agencies could potentially reduce operator numbers through attrition rather than layoffs.
So automation is not necessarily a threat to union members, but it is a threat to the unions themselves, since union revenues are based on the number of dues-paying members they represent.
LA Metro and other transit agencies in California should put driverless driving on the table as part of future contract negotiations. They should also enlist the support of vocal and influential transit advocates for this technology, who are always eager (or forced) to get commuters out of their cars and know that high frequency is essential to making transit more attractive. Since high frequency is not feasible with human drivers, especially in this era of tight budgets, driverless driving is the best way to get more passengers into train seats.
As for the capital costs of upgrading existing lines to driverless, LA Metro and other agencies could scale back some of their expansion plans and instead invest in making existing lines more efficient.
Mark Joffe is a federalism and state policy analyst at the Cato Institute.