Could self-driving light rail/subway/tram trains be much shorter (fewer cars) than systems where trains need drivers?

Tech level: more or less contemporary, no tech that would put you in awe.

I'm trying to make realistic, driverless, mass-transit system. The first idea was that "driverless" implies that in each tram there is a bit more space because driver lost his job. Simple, problem solved.

Later, I started to think about this in more detail. The main reason why some trains are not so frequent but long is saving labour cost. So if there is no driver, they should be shorter. Thus passenger could be delighted that they waste less time waiting, while technically speaking the number of cars would be the same. And even metro stations could be shorter, as no one would try to stop their long train.

Then I started thinking about friction. Technically speaking many short train make more air friction than few long ones. So maybe the trams wouldn't be specially shorter? Or maybe realistic trams (even with dedicated lane) would stop so often that unable to achieve any speed where the friction really matters?

OK, the question is: does anyone have any detailed calculation showing how much such technical issues like length of tram and its speed matter for energy efficiency? (Or any idea idea how to make such adjustments for driverless trams not based on gut feeling but some more or less hard data?)

(No, no individual pods, too expensive and fancy for my setting.)

posted over 7 years ago

Shadow1024‭

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