10-31-2023, 01:16 PM
As a hypothetical sidebar, I wonder what it would take to buy and commission autonomous LRT vehicles. It seems that it would help address the operating cost concerns at least. I know it would never happen given all of the regulatory hurdles, but it seems like it wouldn't actually be that difficult from a technical perspective since the trams are running a simple route on rails. It seems like the only difficult part would be needing to program them to avoid pedestrians and to wait for traffic lights.
Modern autonomous trains (I'm thinking of the Vancouver Skytrain) rely on the train network and remote communication to instruments in the tracks to keep things running smoothly, but I think that if Waterloo's LRTs were made to be self-driving, they would be locally controlled from some sort of on board sensor suite, similar to a Tesla or something. Maybe when the rolling stock is replaced in 50+ years, we could see something like this included. Probably just wishful thinking!
Modern autonomous trains (I'm thinking of the Vancouver Skytrain) rely on the train network and remote communication to instruments in the tracks to keep things running smoothly, but I think that if Waterloo's LRTs were made to be self-driving, they would be locally controlled from some sort of on board sensor suite, similar to a Tesla or something. Maybe when the rolling stock is replaced in 50+ years, we could see something like this included. Probably just wishful thinking!