NUREMBERG: Seated before the tram's control panel, Benedikt Hanne, 24, deftly steered the red and white wagons, hours before heading to his Nuremberg university to study for a social work degree. As an apprentice, Hanne was watched closely by a trainer, and the tram he drove had no passengers. Bu
If the situation in Germany is anything like the Netherlands, it legit is just a shortage of workers outright.
There are more job vacancies than people to fill those vacancies, so you end up with a shortage of workers.
Making tram driving more attractive by paying them more would draw employees away from other industries, who also need people to do the work.
Not saying tram drivers shouldn’t be paid more, but if the situation in this German city is anything like what we are dealing with here in the NL, then paying people more is not going to solve the issue.
That’s how free markets work, though. If there is a labour shortage, places which are important should pay more, to attract people away from other places, who either also raise wages or make do with fewer people or shutter.
This is just inflationary pressure hitting employers, like all of us. Except when it’s a person, you just have to tighten the belt, or make do with higher prices, but when it’s a company, it’s a societal problem where simply paying more cannot be the solution.
I agree with you. The only issue I have is that some “important” things have much less extra money to dedicate to raising wages than less important things. The amount of profit isn’t always in line with the importance of a thing I guess. But if it’s that important then I guess government subsidies would be able to fix that gap
I don’t think it’s a subsidy if the government was paying bills in the first place. It’s just raising wages in the public sector, which is by the way the prime driver of raising wages in the private sector as well.
German companies can go through the beurocracy of hiring and training people from abroad and they will get visas when this actually occurs. But there is nothing wrong with hiring part timers who also study at a university. The job is unattractive because of shift work. Expanding recruitment to people seeking part time jobs makes sense.
For what it’s worth 2 out of 3 subway lines are already fully automated. They started in 2008.
Trams have the same issues as self driving cars though: you need to 100% reliably detect people in front of the carriage. And you can easily find tests with Teslas which just run over a child sized doll because they didn’t detect it properly. The tech is just not there yet.
I agree with you entirely that automated trams are more difficult than automated metro systems. However I do think that trams are a most likely a more easily solvable problem than automated cars.
That is not to say automated trams are easy, or already viable. Just saying that they are probably more viable than automated cars are in the nearby future.