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My post from two days ago was only a title and a photo. The title was a question in French: À quand 100% de métros automatiques ?, which can basically be translated "When will we ever have 100% automatic metros?".

For those of you who don't follow world news, I'm alluding to the public transportation strikes that have been affecting us (i.e. people in France) for the last 10 days. Forcing most of us to miss work, school, squeeze ourselves into the few running trains or find some sort of alternative means of transportation. All this because most of the 16 lines of one of the "best underground transit systems in the world" have pretty much stopped working. All but line 14, Paris's most recent and fully automated line, which has worked as usual during the strike.

Since it's obvious we have the technology (all new subway lines in France are automatic) I guess there are pretty much only two reasons why all traditional lines are not yet automatic:

1. Money.
2. Unemployment.

Indeed, I learnt yesterday in the 8 o'clock news that a regular subway line employs about 300 people and that automating a regular line costs about 480 million Euros!

Then again, I read an article today in which the government estimates that "the strikes have cost the economy up to 400 million euros ($593 million) a day."

I'll let policy makers make decisions, but apparently we're already on the right track (pun intended) since Parisian subway line number 1 should be going fully automated by 2010. This is one of the lines with the most traffic, due to its strategic (touristy?) stops: Arc du Triomphe, Champs Elysées, Place de la Concorde, Musée du Louvre, Bastille, ..., and making it automatic should improve its reliability.

According to the RATP (the Paris transportation authority), if this conversion's ROI is good enough, other high-traffic lines such as numbers 4 and 13 could go automatic too.