This is a great idea and I hope it spreads to all other lines as soon as feasible. So many times you stand on a platform for 15-20 mins waiting for a train. Finally one shows, you get on, it moves a few hundred yards, then stops or creeps along. The conductor comes on and says there is a delay due to "traffic ahead." Thing is, you KNOW this cannot possibly be true on many platforms because a train hasn't passed in 15-20 minutes, and it is impossible for another train to have merged in front of you (example, local between 116th and 110th on 1 line). You KNOW the delay is because some lazy controller is not paying attention, and the conductor can't go past a red light - so you sit and wait until the lazy controller gets back on the job and allows the train to progress.
Also, the newer robocars with automated voices are nice because, shocker, you can actually hear the announcements, unlike the lazy MTA folk who garble into the PA system and you can maybe understand 10% of the announcements. I say replace ALL MTA folk with robocars and computer systems - the whole lot of MTA employees need to be downsized then maybe they will start to give a crap about doing even a mediocre job.
This is not the way the system works. The signaling system is automated and always has been - it works on a block system. If a train is occupying the block ahead, the light is red. If a switch is thrown in the block ahead, the light is red. (The switches are automated too.) No human interaction is involved.
It is possible for a train operator himself to be driving too slow and hold up trains behind, and then as passengers build up waiting on stations due to the longer waits, you get a cascading effect as trains then end up stuck in stations as passengers board. And the delays increase. So that can be due to human factors in driving the train, and it doesn't take much. But the signals have never been controlled by humans. (The "hold lights" at stations are a different thing; they're not part of the signaling system, they're the lights right next to the conductor position and they are human controlled.)
You don't know how the blocks are defined, so when you say it's "impossible" that there's a train holding you up, that may not be true. For example, I think it's on the Manhattan bridge (either it or the Williamsburg) that only one train can run at a time, even though there's clearly capacity for more. It's for maintenance reasons. The bridge is a block. If one train's at one end of the bridge, a train all the way at the other end still has to wait. This is not true of other bridges.
By the way, the reason the CBTC trains can have shorter headways is that they do away with the block system. I'm not sure exactly how CBTC maintains headways but I believe it is constantly calculating both distance and time between trains to maintain even spacing and safety. So there should be fewer starts and stops in tunnels too, because you shouldn't need to be waiting for a train to completely clear the next block ahead before you can proceed. (And that happens all the time on other lines, because the blocks are not all the same length and don't all have the same speed limit.)
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This is a great idea and I hope it spreads to all other lines as soon as feasible. So many times you stand on a platform for 15-20 mins waiting for a train. Finally one shows, you get on, it moves a few hundred yards, then stops or creeps along. The conductor comes on and says there is a delay due to "traffic ahead." Thing is, you KNOW this cannot possibly be true on many platforms because a train hasn't passed in 15-20 minutes, and it is impossible for another train to have merged in front of you (example, local between 116th and 110th on 1 line). You KNOW the delay is because some lazy controller is not paying attention, and the conductor can't go past a red light - so you sit and wait until the lazy controller gets back on the job and allows the train to progress.
Also, the newer robocars with automated voices are nice because, shocker, you can actually hear the announcements, unlike the lazy MTA folk who garble into the PA system and you can maybe understand 10% of the announcements. I say replace ALL MTA folk with robocars and computer systems - the whole lot of MTA employees need to be downsized then maybe they will start to give a crap about doing even a mediocre job.
This is not the way the system works. The signaling system is automated and always has been - it works on a block system. If a train is occupying the block ahead, the light is red. If a switch is thrown in the block ahead, the light is red. (The switches are automated too.) No human interaction is involved.
It is possible for a train operator himself to be driving too slow and hold up trains behind, and then as passengers build up waiting on stations due to the longer waits, you get a cascading effect as trains then end up stuck in stations as passengers board. And the delays increase. So that can be due to human factors in driving the train, and it doesn't take much. But the signals have never been controlled by humans. (The "hold lights" at stations are a different thing; they're not part of the signaling system, they're the lights right next to the conductor position and they are human controlled.)
You don't know how the blocks are defined, so when you say it's "impossible" that there's a train holding you up, that may not be true. For example, I think it's on the Manhattan bridge (either it or the Williamsburg) that only one train can run at a time, even though there's clearly capacity for more. It's for maintenance reasons. The bridge is a block. If one train's at one end of the bridge, a train all the way at the other end still has to wait. This is not true of other bridges.
By the way, the reason the CBTC trains can have shorter headways is that they do away with the block system. I'm not sure exactly how CBTC maintains headways but I believe it is constantly calculating both distance and time between trains to maintain even spacing and safety. So there should be fewer starts and stops in tunnels too, because you shouldn't need to be waiting for a train to completely clear the next block ahead before you can proceed. (And that happens all the time on other lines, because the blocks are not all the same length and don't all have the same speed limit.)