GoA4
Unattended train operation — nobody on board. It is the single most over-claimed label in this atlas: GoA4 describes what a system was BUILT to do, and this page is the list of entries where that claim can be checked against who was actually in the cab.
How this list is decided. Membership is not a field an editor set: it is every published entry whose own text names GoA4, matched at build time, with the sentence printed under each row so you can judge the match yourself. 21 entries in 21 cities. For what the term means rather than who uses it, see Grades of Automation (GoA) in the glossary.
✔ Every published entry is checked against the public sources it cites before publication.
Where it appears in the atlas
The trains carry GoA4 automation — movement, stops, doors and depot runs are system-controlled — but operator CTS keeps a staff member aboard every train for emergencies, so nobody drives, yet nobody is absent either.
Trains initially ran at GoA3 with an attendant on board whose job was to supervise rather than drive; the line switched to unattended GoA4 operation in December 2019, after 195 tests of the automatic system.
Siemens supplied CBTC rated GoA 4, the highest grade of automation, but service opened in semi-automatic mode with a driver in the cab — three trainsets out of fifteen, on a 25-minute headway.
The fleet is contracted for unattended GoA4 running over CBTC, and energised automatic test runs began on the viaduct in May 2026 — with a technician in the cab, which the mayor says applies to testing only.
Alstom supplies 40 four-car Innovia 300 trains and CityFlo 650 signalling and states the line runs unattended at GoA4 from a control centre in the new capital; no independent confirmation of unattended running was found, and none of the sources checked reports staff aboard.
Opened in December 2020, Line 9 is Chengdu's first fully automated metro (GoA4, unattended): a 22km orbital line whose 8-car trains run without a driver on Alstom's Urbalis CBTC signalling, watched by thousands of onboard obstacle- and derailment-detection sensors.
Chennai's next metro corridor is built for fully driverless GoA4 running at 90-second headways — but a year on from safety clearance it's still carrying officials on trial runs, not fare-paying passengers.
Driverless cabins have shuttled above the Technische Universität Dortmund campus since 2 May 1984 with no staff on board, supervised from a central control room — the operator calls the H-Bahn Germany's first fully automatic transport system in regular passenger service, and NRW's transit portal classes it as GoA 4.
Its two GoA4 fully automated lines, Red and Green, run 89.6 km with 53 stations and no onboard drivers, controlled from a central operations centre.
Academic paper on urban-rail full-automation (FAO) systems confirming the Zhujiang New Town APM adopted Bombardier's Cityflo 650 CBTC at GoA4 in November 2010.
The M5 Üsküdar–Çekmeköy line opened on 15 December 2017 as Turkey's first fully driverless (GoA4, unattended) metro, run by Metro İstanbul under the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, using CBTC signalling and platform screen doors.
Billed by its concessionaire as Peru's first underground, GoA4-automated metro, Línea 2 opened a five-station, five-kilometre stretch in December 2023 — five of the 27 stations promised under a 2014 concession.
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'High capacity signalling' and CBTC are not synonyms for driverless operation — Melbourne's system is GoA2 (automatic train operation with a driver retained onboard for doors, supervision and emergencies), the same automation tier as many modernized European ETCS lines, not the GoA4 unattended operation used on genu…
Line 7 is the first Nanjing metro line designed to GoA4, the highest automation grade: trains wake themselves, leave the depot, run the line, berth, open and close doors and return to sleep on a timetable.
New Phase IV extensions of both lines entered service in 2026 equipped for GoA4, the highest grade of automation.
It opened in phases from 1 December 2024 to 5 January 2025: six CBTC-signalled GoA4 lines covering 176 km with 85 stations, run without onboard staff from central control rooms.
Thales supplied SelTrac communications-based train control across both lines, 37 km, 28 stations and 37 trains, and describes it as running in fully driverless mode, GoA4, designed for a 90-second headway behind platform screen doors.
Line 4 (Yellow) has run with nobody aboard since 2010, in unattended GoA4 operation, and it is not the city's: a concessionaire, today Motiva Linha 4, operates it under a 30-year state PPP signed in 2006.
Five Shanghai Metro lines run without a driver or attendant on board at GoA4, the highest grade of automation: Line 10, the Pujiang line, and lines 18, 15 and 14, the last of which opened at the end of December 2021.
Shenzhen Metro's Line 20 (opened December 2021, 8.4km) and Line 14 (October 2022, 50km) run at GoA4 — unattended, no driver or attendant onboard — independently certified by TÜV Nord against EN 50126/50128/50129 signalling and safety standards.
Taipei's Wenhu Line has run driverless since 28 March 1996, using rubber-tyred VAL trains under GoA4 unattended operation controlled from a central operations centre.
Others in this group
The whole layer
Every standard, protocol and licence the atlas names, with the open-data licence ladder in one table: Standards & licences.