The tech crowd is really big on cutting out people when the reality is that people are 1.) Pretty versatile, even in fairly routine jobs, handling unexpected events and 2.) Often aren't that expensive in the scheme of things. Even personal transportation (taxis, etc.) drivers are only about half the cost. That's certainly not nothing. But it's also not the difference between expensive and almost too cheap to meter.
It's a dream job for many people, and is an extremely skilled job when dealing with technical problems and emergencies is taken into account. There's a lot of worse jobs we should get rid of first.
A garbage truck man is also a dream job for many people. Then the reality hits. I don't think we should simply not improve something when there's an opportunity because "there are other jobs to automate". Well yeah, there are, but the opportunity is there, not with the other jobs. There are many people in the world, we're capable of parallel innovation.
Garbage men report real high levels of job satisfaction. When asked why, they’re answer is simple: everyday the job gives their life meaning - they clean up for others and for everyone. Their role is fundamentally important.
Contrast this with my job. Energy researcher. Let’s assume energy research is necessary. Odds are that in my career I won’t make a ground breaking discovery. So I get up drag myself to work knowing that most likely than not nothing I will do that day will mean anything to anyone.
Not to say that sanitation work shouldn’t be automated. But the lack of respect for ppl’s livelihoods commonly shown in HN, or in general neoliberal circles, is astonishing.
I really don't think you should call me a neoliberal (and I am not sure what it means, but I am definitely not a part of the group that is commonly described as that). I am not sure what lack of respect are you seeing there, I have massive respect for the people doing the jobs I wouldn't mentally be able to do. That does not mean we should not innovate just because (still haven't heard a single reason other than "these are prestigious jobs" which is not really a reason), especially in a case where the technology is rather simple and available for several decades, well proven. A computer (as in human profession) used to be a prestigious job as well; so was a writer.
Do you know any garbage men? Also the proper term I sanitation worker. It’s a critical job that literally keeps you from dying of highly contagious diseases.
Most of the automated trash collection services haven’t automated much. They simply moved the responsibility of rolling the bins to the curb from the workers to the residents. Now it’s my job to wake up at 5am to move the bin to the street so the grappling arm can catch it. And then move it back to the house before 8am or get fined.
I'm not going to weigh in on what should or shouldn't be automated but the trash/recycling industry is generally a pretty fulfilling place to work because you basically never have adversarial interactions with people and the impact of your work is immediately obvious. This is why many people prefer to run scrap and drive garbage trucks instead of flip burgers and drive bus.
Of course the compensation and working hours aren't as good as the six figure office jobs most people here have but dealing with refuse is pretty decent compared to other jobs of similar pay.
Answer to that question going to prove what? In my city metro drivers are unionized and paid on pair with software developers. Similar for bus. There is absolutely no shortage of the bus or metro drivers.
I am not saying it is not well paid. But when you try the work (I did for a day), you realize that you spend whole days in tunnels, mindlessly pushing a button, waiting for a computer to finally and rightfully replace you. Even worse job than being a bus driver (which is IMHO way worse than being a taxi driver).
I am sure the people who enjoy driving metro can do so in VR. Why would we forcefully hold onto a job that wastes human potential?
Maybe the issue is the difference in my understanding of human potential. There is simply so much more to do for these people that I can't see why someone would want to forcefully hold onto old ways. Why would you force a person to spend all days in tunnels?
Technology for automated metro is there for many years. Not using it is foolish. If you don't like people losing jobs, simply take the savings and employ the people elsewhere in the city, e.g. as bus drivers.
Except, not really, right? If you mean at existing service levels, then yes, of course. It's not really worth it.
Where automation really helps though is with _frequency_ of trains. If you have headways which are half as long (like in Vancouver on the Expo line the headways are every 90 seconds during peak periods) it makes a huge difference compared to something like SF's BART which has a weekday frequency of 15 minutes.
It also makes a massive difference when you're building a new line. If you can half the headway, you can half the size of the platform which makes building the line considerably cheaper. Less land to appropriate, less concrete to pour, less land to dig, etc.
There is one problem though. If you build a super convenient metro system with trains every minute or two, people will start to use that system. A lot. Vancouver's system is running into problems (particularly on the Canada Line) with massive overcrowding because even with the high frequency of trains, there's just not enough capacity.
As the article says, many metros (including the one in the article) combine automation with drivers. You only need to pay for the bit of automation that actually increases frequency and use the driver for all the fiddly bits.
The economics goes behind the limited analysis of this article. The main problem with train and metro drivers is that they need to be hired and trained to a certain level, and you also need other position like traffic regulator, etc. Here in Switzerland there is a lack of train driver creating problems as some services cannot be maintained to the expected level. In my city a suburban train line had to go from one train every 15min back to one every 30min, because of a lack of trained resources regarding traffic regulation (seems that 2 peoples were sick and another one quit), and cannot be as easily replaced.
Trains require large headway (gaps between trains, like following distance in a car) for safety reasons. This limits the number of trains you can run on a line. Which places a natural limit on the number of drivers you need.
Instead, you scale up passenger throughput by adding cars to trains. When you do this, you scale up capacity independent of number of drivers. Sort of a marginal cost of zero.
Another efficiency question, though, is bang for the buck. Trains are expensive to build. Headway limits the number of trains, and you can't make trains longer than the platform length. So you hit kind of a brick wall of scalability.
So it's worth asking whether automation could let you squeeze more return out of your investment in building the train line. Maybe it would unlock capacity increases through reduced headway. Or maybe some other way. I think it's an open question how much this can help, though.