>>1544829In passenger operations? Highly.
Most high speed rail is 90% automated anyway with a driver acting more to monitor systems and ensure they're working right - that and being the fail safe in case something goes wrong with the automation, and taking over or engaging the emergency brake (though usually most emergency braking is done automatically).
There are entire metro systems which are fully automated, many without any drivers, monitored remotely from a control centre.
Freight? Eh...
A lot of upgraded rail corridors have some level of automation already in place, but the main difference with freight comes from the fact that usually, you don't have the same distributed braking capabilities you have on a passenger train. Things like signalling, moving signal blocks and the like already are fully automated on the busiest rail corridors, but how that then integrates with train driving varies greatly.
I'd say that most freight will be about 70% automated with a human in the loop pretty quickly. The technology is there, and the interlocking systems are already in place from passenger operations, some of which are either 90-100% automated. In some systems, all the driver needs to actually do is press the button to close the doors and then press another button to let the automation resume.
Freight yards won't ever get automated... unless multimodal containers totally take over.
