Japan Shows Us How It's Done (again)

I found an interesting puff piece on Youtube showing off Keikyu Railway's method of supervised train dispatch on their 87km network on the Miura Peninsula south of Tokyo.  Similar in feel to Chicago's CTA or the NYC Subway, the dispatch system shuns centralization and computerized control for the sake of service quality and fault tolerance. 



The line is divided into 20kn sections, each with a master tower located at a segments' most important station.  The interface is a second generation unit lever panel (not N-X) and the well trained operators are able to achieve an astonishing level of throughput that includes dynamic trainset management.  Through operational skill and a signaling system that doesn't get in the way, train movements are scheduled down to the second.  The video also describes how the human-focused system has a high degree of fault tolerance because each master tower has the surge capacity to adapt to all types of failure that would tend to overload a remote dispatcher or dispatch office.  Still, a remote chief dispatcher is available to assist and coordinate if the need should arise.  The result is Keikyu having the one of the highest on time performances in Japan.

Of course in North America we don't care.  Traffic levels are low and delays are typically seen as a cost of choosing transit. Our levels of training and operator competency require technical guard rails like PTC and fixed trainsets that further reduce efficiency.