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Hit by worker shortage, German city gets students to drive trams (www.channelnewsasia.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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[–] 32 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

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. Only solution is to either decrease the number of open positions (which usually only happens in a recession, which is not great), or to increase the number of people who can do the work (for example through immigration)

Edit: A possible solution specifically in the case of trams could be automation (self-driving trams), which would relax the overall demand for workers.
There are already transportation system without drivers that have been operating since the 80s (e.g. the London DLR)

It's probably a bit more tricky in mixed traffic, but since trams are on predictable rails it would be easier than automating cars.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Making tram driving more attractive by paying them more would draw employees away from other industries, who also need people to do the work.

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    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.

    • Trams are restricted to their track, so the number of unique situations in which they can end up is more limited.
      Because of this you can model the environment in more detail.
    • Trams are large, heavy and commercial vehicles. So you can justify shelling out for more detailed sensors such as lidar etc, whereas on a Tesla you have to make due with merely a camera sensor.
    • You could potentially hire a dedicated person in a central location whose job it is to remotely get trams out of tricky situations.
      This would not remove the need for drivers outright, but could reduce the number of drivers you need per tram.

    That is not to say automated trams are easy, or already viable. I'm just saying that they are likely more viable than automated cars will be in the nearby future.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Automation and driving

    People are really apprehensive of that still. I agree, but we're going to need more people becoming accepting.

    I'm not arguing with the job shortage. I just can't get my head around the migration.

    There were always people filling lower paying job (I'm not advocating for less than deserving compensation). Now there isn't?

    Maybe the same jobs exist, but new higher paying jobs have appeared that weren't around before (new technology, more corporate,.etc), so people just skilled up, moved up, and left the lower jobs vacant?

    I think most developed countries where this happens just replace these less desirable jobs with immigration (not advocating for an idea of a lesser population)?

    Maybe there's not as much immigration in some of these places?

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