What’s Sacred About Driverless?

After weeks of public uproar over the proposed Green Line commuter train between Norwalk and El Segundo, there still is no clear answer to the very first question: Why did Los Angeles County Transportation Commission directors override the recommendation of their well-regarded professional staff that the trains have drivers?

It may now be too late to stop the uproar. But the commission’s only hope of shaking the controversy is to ask the staff again what it thinks about driverless trains.

If the staff’s answer has not changed--and there is no sign that it has--the commission should scrap its $1-billion plan to buy automated cars and start over.

As Times staff writer Mark Stein made clear in a report Monday, it is a technical judgment call that cannot count on learning much from automated trains already in operation. For what it comes down to is that when they work all right, they work all right. The biggest attraction is that trains without drivers are cheaper to run more frequently, cutting commuters’ waiting.

But it took time to get the bugs out of each of the several major systems across the world that run without drivers. And there is no guarantee that the Green Line would not wind up with the worst of both worlds, like the BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area: It is automated, but its trains also carry drivers--people who actually drive only if computers fail--because so many apprehensive riders have told BART they want it that way.

The original decision to build an automated Green Line was based on saving money: Extra trains wouldn’t mean more crews.

But cost overruns already have overcome the expected savings, and the need to buy specialized cars in smaller numbers rather than large numbers of interchangeable cars would drive costs even higher. Moreover, not only would the driverless technology cost more, the Japanese firm that won the bid is under fire for not being willing to hire more Americans.

In addition to the steady rise in estimated costs, the Green Line project is already behind schedule. In regions with a tradition of commuting by rail, delay would be less bothersome than for Southern California, which must overcome a serious automobile habit. The sooner it can start, the sooner we will see the long-range benefits of good overall transportation planning.