Dynamics of Innovation: Full Train Automation and Human Agency on Line 4 of the São Paulo Subway

Abstract

I take the subway as a complex communication system, comprising both technological devices (that constantly send out operational messages to keep the trains running) and people (riders and transport workers, who interact with each other and with mechanisms). Subway communicative circuits are hybrid arrangements of interfaces that shape a media environment where technology and human agency incessantly imbricate. In my ethnographic research, I explore the reconfiguration of communicative circuits in the context of Line 4 of the São Paulo subway, where fully automated, driverless trains were introduced. In the situation of full automation, the technological component of subway environment is emphasized — human train operators are replaced by onboard computers under the supervision of a control room, mechanisms are introduced all over the building, and station personnel tends to be reduced. Another sort of materiality is shaped in the subway environment with the prevailing of remote operations stipulated by digital technologies. In the case of Line 4, however, the project was not completely fulfilled. There are more station agents than the project initially established, and the more surprising presence of agents on the automated trains, which were supposed to run completely unattended. In this paper, I explore interviews with subway professionals on the issue of assistance in the subway facilities, focusing on the case of the onboard agent. I also examine, relying on my participant observation and on interviews with riders, its developments in the everyday routine of subway rides. The tension between the project and its realization has been playing a significant role in the complex dynamics of social reception of innovation in the Line 4 of São Paulo subway.

Keywords: Innovation. Communicative circuits. Subway (São Paulo).