D.C. Backs Nearly $1 Billion Plan for Driverless Red Line Trains by 2033

By Grace Kim

Washington, D.C.'s Metro board signed off in April on a nearly $1 billion plan that could put fully driverless trains on the Red Line as early as 2033. The project, which still faces financial and technical hurdles, would add protective platform barriers that keep passengers off the tracks — the safety feature that unattended operation hinges on.

Los Angeles is moving in parallel. Officials there voted to recommend an automated subway line beneath the Santa Monica Mountains, one of the country's worst traffic bottlenecks, and an environmental review is underway. Honolulu, meanwhile, already runs an elevated driverless line — the most expansive automated transit system in the U.S.

Both big-city projects would take years to build. They arrive amid a fierce debate over whether heavy upfront costs justify long-term labor savings, and whether automation is safe enough for public rail at all.

Why is the U.S. so far behind on driverless trains?

Robotaxis from Waymo, Tesla and Zoox have taken the automation lead on American roads while nearly every mass transit system still carries a driver. Cities across Europe and Asia, plus major systems in Canada, Australia, South America and the Middle East, already run unattended subways, metros and buses.

The record at home is thin. Detroit and Miami opened elevated driverless pilot trains in the 1980s. Las Vegas runs a monorail connecting Strip hotels. Smaller people-movers shuffle passengers between airport terminals. Memphis's automated monorail shut down years ago, and Jacksonville's driverless Skyway will indefinitely halt operations soon due to budget cuts — despite early plans to expand it.

Honolulu's Skyline, opened three years ago and expanded last year, will stretch 19 miles when completed, making it the largest U.S. automated transit system by far.

"I don't know a nice way to say this, but basically the transit world is where innovation goes to die," said Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank that advocates transit automation. "It should be much harder to automate something that's on-road, that has all of these various obstacles coming at it, compared to a fixed-rail system."

What happened after the 2009 Fort Totten crash?

D.C.'s Metro actually opened 50 years ago with some automated features. After a 2009 collision near the Fort Totten station killed nine people and injured many more, the National Transportation Safety Board blamed the crash on a maintenance problem in the automated signaling system that separates trains. Metro switched the features off, then restored the cruise control-style system on the Red Line in 2024 and on its other lines last year.

Randy Clarke, CEO of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, told the Associated Press that Fort Totten had nothing to do with the system now in use — but it stalled progress for years.

"That was a big failure, there's no question. We do not do anything like that now," said Clarke, calling the current system "highly regulated, highly documented, very proficient." He acknowledged the crash "paralyzed" Metro's automation plans.

Even with driverless trains, Clarke said, workers will still be needed to maintain tracks and respond to emergencies.

What do unions say?

John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union and a former New York subway worker, called automation "a catastrophe waiting to happen." Unions have fought off automation efforts in New York and elsewhere.

"Passengers will be left dealing with a self-evacuation, which is a disaster in a system which runs on a third rail," Samuelsen said.

Honolulu's record offers the counterargument. Vance Tsuda, the Skyline's project director, said there hasn't been a single crash or injury tied to automation. He argued even hybrid setups are riskier, because a human can miss an open door and clear a train for departure prematurely.

"If you have somebody making that decision, they could make a wrong decision," Tsuda said.

Can public transit afford any failure?

David King, an associate professor of urban planning at Arizona State University who researches automated transportation, said the public sector gets no slack. The Fort Totten crash and similar incidents set the technology back because trust, once lost, is hard to rebuild.

"We allow a certain amount of failure with private industry that we don't tolerate when the state does it," King said, pointing to the several rockets Elon Musk's SpaceX has blown up — a record he argues would cripple NASA's budget in the public sector.

In Los Angeles, the Sepulveda Project line would run shorter, more frequent trains through the mountains, connecting the Westside employment hub to the San Fernando Valley, according to Cecily Way, who oversees planning for the project at LA Metro. Like D.C.'s Red Line plan, it would include station doors shielding passengers from oncoming trains.

Feigenbaum said a major automated line in Washington or Los Angeles could open the floodgates for other cities. "It sends a signal that this is technologically doable and this is something that maybe other systems are going to want to strive for," he said.