Metro’s effort to fully automating the agency’s trains inched one step closer to the finish line on Friday, as the Green and Yellow Lines became the latest to undergo the transition.
Randy Clarke, who serves as Metro’s CEO and general manager, told WTOP that the transit agency is focusing on reliability and safety in getting automatic trains to run smoothly.
“Automation is our goal to get to as a system, which is kind of the world standard in big rail systems and across Asia, Europe,” Clarke said. “Honolulu is the only one so far in the United States.”
“We are way behind the rest of the world in using real, true automation on a fixed guideway system, you know, because we don’t have interfaces with other trains or cars, or things of that nature,” he added.
Metro trains were designed to run automatically, but switched to manual operation in 2009 after a Red Line crash near Fort Totten killed nine people.
A human operator will still be in the cabin during automation, but it won’t be used when there is bad weather or track work. Operations will instead switch from a hybrid automated model to a manual system.
“We also are specifically removing ourselves from this, if you will, hybrid model sometimes during weather or special events, or just times during the day, to ensure that the train will operate in both modes so everyone is very sharp on their skill set,” Clarke said.
He said that they are meeting this week to work on expanding automation to the Blue, Orange and Silver Lines.
“We’ve completed all of our testing. It was always our plan to have that up and running in June, so I think we’ll still be ready here at Metro to do that and feel pretty comfortable with that. So it’s certainly a big safety, reliability and efficiency step here for the organization,” Clarke said.
WTOP’s Nick Iannelli contributed to this report.
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