UK government again plugs strike-busting dream of driverless subway trains

It’s strike season on the London Underground, and that means one thing for the UK’s interminable Tory governments: time to rev-up the driverless hype train. Conservative politicians have long called for a fully-autonomous metro. In 2012, then-London Mayor Boris Johnson said Britain’s capital would have driverless trains within 10 years. A decade later, he claimed the switch would free people from being “prisoners of the unions.” The government reiterated the case during recent funding talks with Transport for London (TfL), which operates the local underground network. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps made working towards driverless trains a condition of the bailout. Shapps…

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