International Construction Law Review
DRIVERLESS TRAINS – GETTING TO YOUR DESTINATION
BY ANDREW CHEW, PARTNER AND ELLA POPE, ASSOCIATE
Corrs Chambers Westgarth
1. INTRODUCTION
By 2050, more than 6.4 billion people – almost 70% of the world’s population – will live in urban centres, with the demand for urban transport services expected to triple. As a consequence, there will be increased demands on transport infrastructure, in particular, rail networks.1
In the last 20 years, there has been a considerable and exponential expansion of metro systems and transport infrastructure around the world. Currently, the highest share of metro infrastructure is in Asia. Shanghai and Beijing boasts some of the world’s largest metro systems – in excess of 500 km and Tokyo is host to the busiest metro network in the world, accounting for 3.6 billion passenger journeys each year.2
As information technology and systems become more sophisticated, increasingly, we are seeing the roll out of automated trains on metro rail lines.
As at July 2016, there were 55 fully automated metro lines, spanning a total of 803 km, in 37 cities around the world; a 14.2% increase on the 2014 figures. It is projected that by 2025 there will be 2,300 km of automated metro lines in operation and that metro systems with automated trains will triple in the next 10 years.3
1 UITP and A Little, The Future of Urban Mobility 2.0, Jan 2014. http://www.uitp.org/sites/default/files/members/140124%20Arthur%20D.%20Little%20%26%20UITP_Future%20of%20Urban%20Mobility%202%200_Full%20study.pdf (last accessed 9 February 2018).
2 UITP, World Metro Figures Statistic Brief 2014 Outlook and Focus on Automated Lines http://www.uitp.org/sites/default/files/cck-focus-papers-files/UITP-Statistic%20Brief-Metro-A4-WEB_0.pdf (last accessed 9 February 2018).
UTIP, Automated Metros: A Rapidly Growing Global Technology http://www.uitp.org/news/automated-metros-rapidly-growing-global-technology (last accessed 9 February 2018).
Alliance pro Schiene, 1 billion travellers on Europe’s automated metro systems, https://www.allianz-pro-schiene.de/en/pressemitteilung/overview-automated-metro-systems-europe/ (last accessed 9 February 2018).
Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, Trends – Transport and Australia’s Development to 2040 and Beyond, https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/publications/files/Trends_to_2040.pdf (last accessed 9 February 2018).
3 UITP, Observatory of Automated Metros, Annual World Report (2016), http://metroautomation.org/about-the-report/ (last accessed 9 February 2018)
Yihui Wang, Miao Zhang, Jiaqi Ma, Xuesong Zhou, “Survey on Driverless Train Operation for Urban Rail Transit Systems”, Urban Rail Transit, December 2016, Vol 2, Issue 3–4, p 106, https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40864-016-0047-8 (last accessed 9 February 2018).
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