Cab driver lobby? :haha:

"Infrastructure spending is bad" lobby.

Except for one thing I want you to think about: it's not that they are subsidized so much as people thinking they should be as the natural order of things. Once you think of that, you question whether it is indeed the natural order or mere habit, however longstanding.

Are you talking about roads? Because I think there would be an outcry if you charged a toll for every road.

Apparently something that sounds eerily similar resulted on a subway crash in South Korea last Friday.

Another death on the DC Metro system yesterday.

An electrical arc on the tracks caused a tremendous amount of smoke in a station and surrounding tunnels, and the power loss disabled a train in a nearby tunnel.

Metro's slow response had the train sitting there in a cloud of heavy smoke for about an hour. Poor communication from the train driver to the passengers allowed fear and panic to set in among the passengers, and the smoke and panic caused one woman to have a heart attack and die. Many others were treated for smoke inhalation. Two more are still in serious condition in the hospital.

Pisses me off. One of Metro's biggest weaknesses is an ability to respond quickly to an incident and get information to the passengers. Normally, it's just irritating, but this time a woman died.

I carry a smoke hood to aid in an evacuation. A couple actually. I've discussed it before here. But my smoke hoods are not designed for sitting on a fucking train for an hour in heavy smoke. They are evacuation hoods.

Apparently this happens a couple times a month, and the driver followed the proper procedure for a normal electrical arc event, but this one had much more smoke than usual, so the procedure was no longer proper.

The arcing is not uncommon. I've seen it happen in person once. Years ago, we drove right past some arcing and nobody but my wife and I noticed, and we said nothing. All the other passengers either didn't notice it, or assumed the very bright arcing light was just a light in the tunnel. We rode right past and continued on our way as if nothing happened.

There needs to be a balance between training the drivers to behave in a predictable way when confronted with an issue, and throwing the book out the window when they need to make a decision on the ground. Once passengers lose faith in the leaders during an emergency, they take matters into their own hands, like the ones who self evacuated this time before they knew the power was turned off to the third rail. It's fortunate that nobody died doing that. But Metro is to blame for letting the passengers get that panicked.

There wasn't a lot this driver could do on a dead train, but the drivers should be trained in making announcements, even when they don't have any concrete information from Central Control to relay. Something as simple as acknowledging the smoke and suggesting passengers sit on the floor where smoke would be less thick. Reminding the passengers that the tunnel is made of concrete and can't burn. That it's most likely an electrical fire, even if the driver can't see that, they should have the experience to know that. And a reminder that the third rail carries a high current and will fry them if they get off the train before it's turned off. Cover your mouth with a jacket or something and just sit tight until help comes.

You can't make the assumption the driver is rational, logical, or knows anything more than how to drive the train. The liability risk of having drivers make the decision of what/how much, to tell the passengers is huge. Even bigger for instructing them. As for advising them to stay or leave the train, fugetaboutit, just declare bankruptcy.

Your Honor, he said sit on the floor, so I sat on the floor thinking it would be ok. He didn't say we had to do anything else, so I didn't.

translation;
I'm so stupid I have to be reminded to breathe, gimme a million dollars.

I've never been able to understand what the train driver is saying. The sound quality is for shit, and they talk too fast, and I'm not even sure it's English.

Nothing said over a public address system is in English.
Trace your ancestry back to before William the Conquerer (our version of the Mayflower)? You will still be incomprehensible if you a making a platform announcement on the Tube.

Even on a coach - although most of them are driven by miserable Geordies anyway - no-one will understand what you've said. Even if there isn't a noisy woman yapping on her phone. Which there will be.

In all my years of travel/ commuting on the Underground I never felt the need for a smoke hood, or indeed had any occasion to use one. A rolled up newspaper for twatting people about the head would have been more appropriate, had I ever dared use it.

Hmmm, that doesn't sound completely unpleasant. :blush:

It was actually the London Underground terrorist bombing that made me decide to start carrying a smoke hood. I figured it was only a matter of time before DC got hit.

London, 7/7/05
Attachment 50096

Had they been accessible (had I been old enough too) during The Troubles I'd have had one. I wasn't mocking. But as the IRA didn't hit the Tube my only concession to Underground travel was always to have water with me.

By the time I was back living in London after the Tube attack I was only ever on tourist routes.
Bombers don't bother with them usually.

I understand. And the odds of trouble are still low anyway.

With this DC incident, It made me wonder how I would deal in the heat of the moment. People were really hurting. Would I put on my mask and just sit there watching others die because they couldn't breathe? Not sure I could live with myself. But then why carry a mask at all? I need to remind myself that I have to keep myself alive for my family. They are counting on me. Put on my mask and let the strangers deal as best they can without one. They could have carried one too, but they chose not to. I'd need to be cold.