London's new 'Driverless' Tube trains came from Future

Plans for a fleet of “driverless” Tube trains have been unveiled by Transport for London (TfL). 

The fleet of 250 trains, which are not expected to be in service on the Tube until the mid-2020s,will start out with an operator on board, but will be designed and built to be “capable of fully automatic operation”. 

Transport for London (TFL) said: ‘We would only consider implementing full automation following extensive engagement with our customers, stakeholders, staff and trade unions.’ 

With the new design, you'll be able to walk the entire length of the train, which frees up lots of space that was wasted just from closing off individual cars in the past. The entrances are now all evenly spaced and feature double-wide doors, which means it should be a lot faster to get on and off the trains. And you won't have to "mind the gap" anymore: the cars are all shorter, which makes the trains more flexible and able to come much closer to the platform edge. 

There are smaller improvements, too, like strips of LED lights along the doors that clearly flash red to warn passengers as they're about to close. In addition, all of the advertising and signage on the cars will use digital screens instead of paper inserts, and some of the deepest lines in London will get air conditioning for the first time with the new cars. And did we mention that there will be Wi-Fi on board? Perhaps most importantly, the new trains will be future proofed to run entirely operator-free (though they'll be staffed for the foreseeable future). 

Given all the exterior glitz, much remains the same inside the new tube cars. "Familiar is good, it's moving forward and is still recognizable," Priestman says. Besides the fact that the London Underground required the same number of seats, Priestman wanted to preserve a detail that's unique to the Tube: "It's interesting that it's possible to have fabric, and they last," he says of the upholstered seats, which would never fly in a city like New York. "It says a lot about the character of the design. It's not like a jail, people have respect for it, the lighting is right. Even in Hong Kong you have steel seats on the metros." 

The new design definitely looks as if it came from future. 

New Tube for London designed by PriestmanGoode. from PriestmanGoode. on Vimeo.