Chris Grayling discusses improvements to services in Stoke-on-Trent

[thenorthern]

After bumping into Chris Grayling at Stoke-on-Trent station today I wondered what he was doing there so I had a look at the local paper and noticed this.

'Driverless pods' the way forward for Hanley says Tory transport minister

Transport minister Chris Grayling visited North Staffordshire ahead of the General Election, revealing a transport "revolution" that could change the face of Stoke-on-Trent.

Speaking at Newcastle Conservative candidate Owen Meredith's office, Mr Grayling claimed "driverless pods" could make the age-old argument about Stoke Station being set apart from Hanley redundant. "A new generation of urban transport is on the way," he said. "With the arrival of driverless autonomous vehicles there will be a revolution in connections within cities that we wouldn't have imagined before."

Mr Grayling also claimed that HS2 trains would stop at Stoke-on-Trent and a feasibility study could be commissioned regards Newcastle having a station and being connected to the West Coast Main Line.

"There will be HS2 trains coming into Stoke station," he promised. "There are a number of places that will be served by HS2 trains coming off the route at the last minute and Stoke-on-Trent is one of them. There will be HS2 trains from Stoke to London. Passengers will not have to change."


Read more at http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/driv...0342929-detail/story.html#b7ObAgV62gFW4Byu.99

Given that Stoke-on-Trent is now a marginal it will get things promised to it so that it will get more votes.

I don't see how this pod thing would work though and it seems like a meaningless pledge that won't ever happen like Labour pledging to re-nationalise the railways.

I also don't understand how Newcastle-under-Lyme would be connected to the West Coast Main Line but given its now a marginal thats what the people are being promised.

 

[NotATrainspott]

After bumping into Chris Grayling at Stoke-on-Trent station today I wondered what he was doing there so I had a look at the local paper and noticed this.



Given that Stoke-on-Trent is now a marginal it will get things promised to it so that it will get more votes.

I don't see how this pod thing would work though and it seems like a meaningless pledge that won't ever happen like Labour pledging to re-nationalise the railways.

I also don't understand how Newcastle-under-Lyme would be connected to the West Coast Main Line but given its now a marginal thats what the people are being promised.

You're not going to see National Rail pods deliberately designed to move people from the station to their final destination. Instead, normal taxi services are just going to be electrified and made autonomous. As a consequence of those two technical changes, the future 'black cab' wouldn't really be that different to a deliberately-designed pod like the T5 car park shuttle today.

Autonomy basically just reduces the cost of running a taxi service. It's the information sharing bit which really makes the difference, and that's what Uber provides today. There's no reason why train companies couldn't currently offer door-to-door transport by partnering with Uber. All of the information needed to make it work is there already. Cabs could be booked so that they come to the station just as the passengers on it are stepping onto the platform, minimising time spend not earning revenue.

 

[thenorthern]

You're not going to see National Rail pods deliberately designed to move people from the station to their final destination. Instead, normal taxi services are just going to be electrified and made autonomous. As a consequence of those two technical changes, the future 'black cab' wouldn't really be that different to a deliberately-designed pod like the T5 car park shuttle today.

Autonomy basically just reduces the cost of running a taxi service. It's the information sharing bit which really makes the difference, and that's what Uber provides today. There's no reason why train companies couldn't currently offer door-to-door transport by partnering with Uber. All of the information needed to make it work is there already. Cabs could be booked so that they come to the station just as the passengers on it are stepping onto the platform, minimising time spend not earning revenue.

I don't think it would work very well in Stoke-on-Trent as its quite hilly and an autonomous driverless system would be difficult to construct.

 

[godfreycomplex]

Oy vey
I can only hope the people of Stoke-on-Trent see this for the desperation that it is.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It's easier to promise a feasibility study that actually do anything.
The only serious point he seems to have made was HS2 trains to/via Stoke.
Previously the offer was just WCML services.
With a classic-compatible fleet, you could in theory simply divert all existing services north of Lichfield via HS2 (except the Chester Voyagers).

 

[PHILIPE]

Or is it another case of a politician visiting a place, promising something and then going away and forgets all about it.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I don't think it would work very well in Stoke-on-Trent as its quite hilly and an autonomous driverless system would be difficult to construct.

You haven't appreciated my point. Instead of a dedicated driverless pod system on a special roadway, these 'pods' would drive on the public highway alongside all other road traffic. They would just be normal taxis that happen to be able to drive themselves.

By the time that HS2 opens I doubt you'll see many non-autonomous, non-electric vehicles around. Non-autonomous, non-electric vehicles will be like horse and cart - still allowed on the highway, but only used for such a vanishingly small range of things (as they're so inefficient) that their problems don't really matter. Internal combustion pollution problems will be seen in the same light as the horse poop problem was back at the turn of the century.

 

[MarkyT]

You haven't appreciated my point. Instead of a dedicated driverless pod system on a special roadway, these 'pods' would drive on the public highway alongside all other road traffic. They would just be normal taxis that happen to be able to drive themselves.

Equally, pods could use dedicated lanes where that was useful to give priority and get around congestion. If the vehicles were of lightweight, narrow construction they might even share well constructed cycleways and have over/under passes included at little more cost than footbridges. I see such pods as the future for the old PRT idea. Use dedicated guideways where sensible to guarantee short transits, but be able to navigate normal roads as well to access more areas such as pedestrian zones, low speed roads where other traffic is more limited and regulated.

 

[edwin_m]

I agree autonomous vehicle technology has made the traditional PRT largely a developmental dead end. Although the use of either as an urban taxi replacement would need the issues of anti-social behaviour to be addressed.

I think the commitment to a service via Stoke is new. HS2's published Phase 2 service pattern assumes an hourly Liverpool service coming off HS2 at Handsacre to serve Stafford and Crewe (with the other Liverpool service staying on HS2 to further north). This could serve Stoke too at the cost of extended journey time and possible problems with being on the wrong track at Crewe. However I think it's more likely that one of the Heathrow paths that is no longer required for that purpose will create a new service for Stafford, Stoke, Macclesfield, Stockport, terminating for convenience in Manchester. Both Liverpool trains would then stay on HS2 as far as Crewe.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Equally, pods could use dedicated lanes where that was useful to give priority and get around congestion. If the vehicles were of lightweight, narrow construction they might even share well constructed cycleways and have over/under passes included at little more cost than footbridges. I see such pods as the future for the old PRT idea. Use dedicated guideways where sensible to guarantee short transits, but be able to navigate normal roads as well to access more areas such as pedestrian zones, low speed roads where other traffic is more limited and regulated.

I really don't think dedicated infrastructure is going to be necessary. The shift to autonomous vehicles will happen at a rate that people simply can't comprehend. The main limit will be the rate at which factories can churn them out, but these factories are being automated at the same time. Elon Musk talks of his Tesla plants looking more like alien dreadnoughts with vehicles being built at more than 1m/s on the production line. By 2030 our existing carriageways will be pretty much dedicated to autonomous vehicles, making any new purpose-built roads pretty much superfluous. New roads will still be built but there's not much scope to make them narrower than existing ones when they'll still need to take large freight traffic.

While autonomous vehicles will remove the need for a lot of road capacity improvements due to their massively improved road space utilisation, I think there's a very strong case to continue building bypasses around towns and villages. Then the road through the urban environment can be made into a shared space, with autonomous vehicles trundling along at a minimal pace. Allowing people to pop between shops and other places in their town without needing to worry about being run over is going to cause a massive improvement in people's quality of life. Children would be able to go and play out on the streets once again, rather than being cooped up inside where their parents think they'll be safe.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I agree autonomous vehicle technology has made the traditional PRT largely a developmental dead end. Although the use of either as an urban taxi replacement would need the issues of anti-social behaviour to be addressed.

I think the commitment to a service via Stoke is new. HS2's published Phase 2 service pattern assumes an hourly Liverpool service coming off HS2 at Handsacre to serve Stafford and Crewe (with the other Liverpool service staying on HS2 to further north). This could serve Stoke too at the cost of extended journey time and possible problems with being on the wrong track at Crewe. However I think it's more likely that one of the Heathrow paths that is no longer required for that purpose will create a new service for Stafford, Stoke, Macclesfield, Stockport, terminating for convenience in Manchester. Both Liverpool trains would then stay on HS2 as far as Crewe.

Anti-social behaviour isn't going to stop autonomous taxis being rolled out. I know a lot of people have an idea that autonomous vehicles will be brought to a complete standstill by jokers running out onto the road knowing that they won't be run over. I think the solution would be for vehicles to slow down, analyse the situation (remember, machine learning means being able to tell if someone's being a prat too) and then very slowly pushing forward until they move out of the way. At that speed it can stop instantaneously if it looks like the person is actually going to be injured, while people would quickly learn that the cars are programmed to actually very slowly run them over. Of course, that's only if it thinks someone is actively playing chicken with it. If it looks like someone is actually lying in the middle of the road unconscious it wouldn't do that.

One of the challenges now is that Sheffield needs its own service. 2tph to Midland is now planned, and that would use all of the Heathrow paths. One option would be to split and join all Sheffield services at Toton so that they don't use any more paths than today, and with the train technical specification that should only incur a very minimal journey time penalty. The Leeds arm was designed so that 400m peak trains would be filled south of Toton, so splitting and serving Leeds with only a 200m set for many paths wouldn't be the end of the world. The Sheffield train would also be ready to be extended beyond to other locations in Yorkshire which may justify HS2 calls, like Doncaster or Hull.

 

[Chris125]

I think the commitment to a service via Stoke is new. HS2's published Phase 2 service pattern assumes an hourly Liverpool service coming off HS2 at Handsacre to serve Stafford and Crewe (with the other Liverpool service staying on HS2 to further north).

The commitment might be new (if Grayling isn't just getting carried away), but a Macclesfield service via Stoke has been on the cards since November last year:

High speed trains could come to Macclesfield

A report on the second phase of HS2 identified the option with the ‘lowest cost and highest benefit’ would be to serve Stoke-on-Trent and Macclesfield with one HS2 train per hour via the Handsacre Junction.

The government has asked HS2 Ltd to undertake the additional work needed to reach a decision on this option.

 

[edwin_m]

Anti-social behaviour isn't going to stop autonomous taxis being rolled out. I know a lot of people have an idea that autonomous vehicles will be brought to a complete standstill by jokers running out onto the road knowing that they won't be run over. I think the solution would be for vehicles to slow down, analyse the situation (remember, machine learning means being able to tell if someone's being a prat too) and then very slowly pushing forward until they move out of the way. At that speed it can stop instantaneously if it looks like the person is actually going to be injured, while people would quickly learn that the cars are programmed to actually very slowly run them over. Of course, that's only if it thinks someone is actively playing chicken with it. If it looks like someone is actually lying in the middle of the road unconscious it wouldn't do that.

But if it's programmed to actually very slowly run them over then it's not going to stop, otherwise people would learn that it would stop anyway.

The anti-social behaviour I was alluding to is what often occurs inside taxis on Friday and Saturday nights, and when it does the driver has to take it out of service to clean it up. How will that work if there is no driver?

 

[Morgsie]

HS2 trains on the mainline through Stoke and Stockport has been talked about for a while now. Labour under Prevez when they ran the City Council wanted HS2 to go through Stoke. Currently Stoke gets 2tph London services my worry is the InterCity services will be downgraded to an Inter-Regional service once HS2 trains serve Stoke which will be 1tph via HS2 I think.

Cannot comment on driverless pods but what I can comment on is the Newcastle Under Lyme study, if there were to be a station then it would be in Madeley or Baldwins Gate as that is where the WMCL runs through and both sites would need decent public transport connections.

 

[NotATrainspott]

But if it's programmed to actually very slowly run them over then it's not going to stop, otherwise people would learn that it would stop anyway.

It could come to a complete stop and then actively decide to start moving forward. It kinda takes the fun out of playing chicken to know that the thing will stop before hitting you and then be in full control of what it does next. 'I know you can get out of my way so I'm going to keep moving until you actually do get out of my way'.

I think the novelty of autonomous vehicles will wear off pretty quickly anyway, and it's the novelty factor which would make pillocks do it.

The anti-social behaviour I was alluding to is what often occurs inside taxis on Friday and Saturday nights, and when it does the driver has to take it out of service to clean it up. How will that work if there is no driver?

I don't think it's really as hard as you're making out. The cab interior will be fitted with CCTV cameras which are also processed by the AI to work out what to do. Using the wonderful ability of computers to see well beyond the visible spectrum I can't see there being any sorts of stains it wouldn't be able to identify visually, while there is plenty of work being done in designing smell sensors. The next user of the cab would be able to report any problems if, somehow, it went undetected and they would then just have a replacement one dispatched instead. Another factor to remember here is that you can't exactly pay a self-driving cab in cash, so a credit or debit card (and thus links to personal ID) will be involved in the transaction. Uber allows for drivers to report damages and since everything is recorded in a central database there's not a lot you can do to hide. A wide-spectrum cab photo before and after your ride is complete would provide pretty compelling evidence that your group needs to be billed for the cleaning charge.

There's plenty of scope for automation, at least in the long term, of normal cab maintenance and cleaning tasks. For one, the companies that build self-driving taxis will focus on making them easier to keep clean and not damaged. That's no different to today, where certain vehicles are favoured over others by cab and taxi drivers for that reason amongst others. As autonomous taxis become more common we're also going to see a shift to automating the cleaning process too, as it will then make financial sense to invest significant amounts of money in automating this sort of typically human task. A robot arm could be fitted with various hoover and cleaning attachments and then methodically go around the cabin of the vehicle whenever a clean is required. When there are going to be tens or hundreds of millions of these vehicles around the world it really isn't that ridiculous an idea. The cost of building the second robot cleaning station is only the marginal cost of building that second unit, while the massive cost of designing and building the first can only be worthwhile if spread across millions of units. Basically just like any other advanced technology then. Before these robot cleaning stations are ready or make financial sense you'll just see people employed to do nothing but clean autonomous taxis.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

I think the solution would be for vehicles to slow down, analyse the situation (remember, machine learning means being able to tell if someone's being a prat too) and then very slowly pushing forward until they move out of the way.

There was a driver in Newcastle-under-Lyme who did that a short while ago and killed the pedestrian. He is currently in jail. My copy of the highway code does not allow anyone to 'nudge anyone else out of the way'. Indeed pedestrians have the right to use the highway, motorists require a licence. Where driverless vehicles fit into the legislative framework has yet to be determined.

As for some politician spouting off to gain votes, yeah whatever. We do seem to have a higher profile since the recent by-election, everyone wants to visit Stoke all of a sudden.

 

[NotATrainspott]

There was a driver in Newcastle-under-Lyme who did that a short while ago and killed the pedestrian. He is currently in jail. My copy of the highway code does not allow anyone to 'nudge anyone else out of the way'. Indeed pedestrians have the right to use the highway, motorists require a licence. Where driverless vehicles fit into the legislative framework has yet to be determined.

As for some politician spouting off to gain votes, yeah whatever. We do seem to have a higher profile since the recent by-election, everyone wants to visit Stoke all of a sudden.

From what I can tell that 'nudge' then involved actively driving over the victim. An autonomous electric car would be in a lot more control over the situation than that, and without emotion. What I'm describing is a <0.1m/s slow crawl, far too slow for anyone to be injured (as the car would stop if it saw that the person would then be unable to get out of the way, by falling over or whatever). It's just a feature to stop people purposely standing in front of autonomous vehicles to stop them moving at all, as they would get pretty bored of walking at that pace in front to stop the car getting ahead. Without a human to intervene at the wheel there would need to be some mechanism by which these idiots wouldn't be able to bring the roads to a halt, and this one seems like it might just work.

 

[The Ham]

From what I can tell that 'nudge' then involved actively driving over the victim. An autonomous electric car would be in a lot more control over the situation than that, and without emotion. What I'm describing is a <0.1m/s slow crawl, far too slow for anyone to be injured (as the car would stop if it saw that the person would then be unable to get out of the way, by falling over or whatever). It's just a feature to stop people purposely standing in front of autonomous vehicles to stop them moving at all, as they would get pretty bored of walking at that pace in front to stop the car getting ahead. Without a human to intervene at the wheel there would need to be some mechanism by which these idiots wouldn't be able to bring the roads to a halt, and this one seems like it might just work.

If there were people delibritly obtructing the progress of a vehicle then there are a few things to consider:
- The vehicle is likely to have cameras so that anyone doing that would be recorded
- The vehicle could verbially ask the people blocking its way to move out of the way
- Assuming the above it wouldn't be hard for the computer to "report" the incident to the police by requesting a human to veiw the images who could then either a) take control of the vehicle and back it up and drive around and/or b) report the incident to the police. All of this could happen in "realtime" so that the vehicle could still be trying to move around the obsticals whilst the human is reporting it to the police and the vehicle could still be atempting to work its way around the people and requesting that they move out of the way when the police are on route.

The problem is that you could end up with pods caught up in protests/marches, however these should be able to be picked up by the companies software and route around. Even if not a planned march (which could be overlaid onto the mapping so as to know not to route anything along those roads until clear, either by static cameras or by deploying empying pods to monitor whilst they charge).

 

[Mollman]

First Bus currently operate up to 12 buses an hour between Stoke station and Hanley - wouldn't it be cheaper just to improve bus priority.

 

[NotATrainspott]

First Bus currently operate up to 12 buses an hour between Stoke station and Hanley - wouldn't it be cheaper just to improve bus priority.

Autonomous taxis will cost about the same to buy as a non-autonomous one, while having significantly lower operational costs, so it won't really be an 'investment' in the traditional sense of spending more money to try to make measurable improvements. There's no need for the government to spend any of it, really. Uber et al will be able to borrow billions to fund new self-driving fleets at ultra-low interest rates because the banks know that they're going to work, and spectacularly well so.

On a corridor like this where there are a lot of buses we will not see taxis replacing everything else. Autonomy just means cheaper taxis, and taxis already exist on the public transport spectrum. Taxis are the most convenient method as they go door to door but they necessarily cost the highest amount, while buses are slightly slower and have a rigid stopping pattern but are then significantly cheaper. Further along that spectrum you have metro systems, trains and planes. Improved technology really just makes it easier to provide the optimum type of transport for every possible use case, as there are many journey requirements somewhat inconveniently in the gap between existing modes. Dial-a-bus services are currently relatively uncommon but they present a huge amount of potential, as they can be made much cheaper without a driver (as the number of passengers decreases, the proportional cost of employing the driver increases) while the internet and smart devices make it easy to dynamically arrange schedules, pick-ups and drop-offs.

For instance, what you could do as part of booking a door-to-door journey is indicate how willing you are to share the vehicle with other people and in what circumstances. The people who want the cheapest possible journey could arrive by train at the station together, as normal, but then instead of having to either spend money on a taxi or wait for a bus that won't take them exactly where they want to go, all of the people will be grouped together (automatically, without them arranging it) into a big taxi/small bus that takes them as close as possible to their final destination without slowing down other people's journeys. Everyone wins, with the lowest possible journey prices and times while the number of vehicles on the road and their energy consumption is minimised.

 

[rebmcr]

There's no need for the government to spend any of it, really. They're going to work, and spectacularly well so.

Both excellent points and very correct. Evidently why Grayling is so keen on the idea -- but this time rightly-so.