Driverless trains

Published: 24 June, 2010

• BRIAN Coleman is absolutely correct in asking Boris Johnson to make the trains on the Northern line driverless.

This is the model that is being rolled out on the Paris Metro to much acclaim.

The key is that all stations must have doors on the platforms preventing people from falling onto the tracks.

Bob Crow of the RMT union carefully misses a point when he notes that drivers put emergency procedures in place during the 7/7 bombing.

If another bomb went off there is no guarantee that the driver would not be incapacitated.

There could also be significant advantages in that when a train breaks down in a tunnel the driver will make strenuous efforts to restart it.

These efforts can go wrong with the result that passengers are occasionally stuck on trains underground for up to an hour.

I assume that with a driverless train, the moment it stalls, the power is shut off and the emergency services start to evacuate passengers by walking them along the track.

I would rather suffer the inconvenience of finding a line shut down than be trapped underground for an hour.

The whole world will be watching the Paris experiment with baited breath since it could lead to the end of strikes on the Underground.
CLLR JONNY BUCKNELL
Conservative, Belsize ward