Washington subway crash

[Undertoad]

Because it makes the roads semi-usable at rush hour? Right now my treasured Route 422 is basically a joke between 7:30 and 9am, and between 4:30 and 6 pm. They have so far failed to put a regional rail route out my way. I would pay to take cars off this road.

But then again, the regional rail they wanted to build was so damn expensive. This is the part that I just don't get. It's just goddamn rails and the rails are already there, even, but they wanted like 2 billion dollars to do it. Really? WTF! They built an entire fuckin transcontinental railroad in 1869, but nobody can add a Septa route without an ass-searing federal subsidy? What is so hard and expensive about this shit?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It's just goddamn rails and the rails are already there, even, but they wanted like 2 billion dollars to do it. Really? WTF! They built an entire fuckin transcontinental railroad in 1869, but nobody can add a Septa route without an ass-searing federal subsidy? What is so hard and expensive about this shit?

Because they must lay all new tracks for that route. Tracks you refer to are the Main Line. Roads are lousy for moving good. Rail must do that. Existing tracks must get freight from Chicago to NYC (actually Newark), Philadelphia, and Baltimore in two days. That means no train stops until it arrives. That means no passenger trains must be on that line.

And that must exist because roads are inferior for moving freight any significant distance.

To provide mass transit on the 422 corridor, new tracks must be built. And suburban towns must provide 500 and 1000 car parking lots. Everybody wants. Nobody wants to give.

Septa management, once people who came from mass transit, were replaced by business school graduates. Another major transit line goes through Gywneed Valley. A large open tract existed right next to the railroad on Route 202 - a major highway. A 1000 car parking lot, easily accessed from a highway, provided easy parking and a high speed direct access to Philadelphia. Express trains that fill up and then don't stop for the next 15 or 20 miles.

But that means one had to think like an engineer. No longer possible in an America dominated spread sheet thinking. As soon as business school graduates took over, the plan died. Now the entire large open space contains maybe 30 or 50 homes.

Another example of myopic thinking; why your mass Route 422 plan will never happen.

Well Pottstown - a major hub on that rail link, once had large open spaces to support parking for that rail link. With so many thinking myopically, Pottstown built a new town hall and other structures on that land.

Let's see. Traffic signals were failing about 8000 times every week - for at least five years - probably longer. But fixing them costs money. Requires management who thinks in terms of reality - not in terms of spread sheets. This had nothing to do with who pays for what. This is directly traceable to the same myopic reasons why that Rt 422 mass transit plan can never be implemented. People who think like myopic business school graduates. Same people who designed GM cars. People with a graveyard mentality. Cheaper was to let people die in a major train crash rather than fix the signals. Doing so made all spread sheets look better.

No difference between any of those events and the people who murdered seven Challenger astronauts. It’s not about solving problems when myopia and business school thinkers are doing the planning.

Don’t worry. Be happy. Business school graduates incapable of vision - and plenty of spread sheet analysis. Myopia. Also called political correctness. It completely justified 8000 signal failures weekly on the Washington Metro - for almost a decade without any intention of fixing it.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by tw

Because they must lay all new tracks for that route. Tracks you refer to are the Main Line. Roads are lousy for moving good. Rail must do that. Existing tracks must get freight from Chicago to NYC (actually Newark), Philadelphia, and Baltimore in two days. That means no train stops until it arrives. That means no passenger trains must be on that line.

Tracks I refer to are not the Main Line but a freight line going up to Reading. I did further reading and the line is owned by Norfolk-Southern. N-S is, for the most part, fine with passenger use on those tracks.

To provide mass transit on the 422 corridor, new tracks must be built. And suburban towns must provide 500 and 1000 car parking lots. Everybody wants. Nobody wants to give.

This is true; on the R5 Paoli, which is on the Main Line, the parking lots are 150-250 spots and they are all rated at 99% capacity every day.

Another example of myopic thinking; why your mass Route 422 plan will never happen.

I think it will. The current plan is to toll 422 with EZ-Pass, to pay for the strategic long-term "master plan" that they have come up with, which includes creating the R6 Norristown extension, improving Rt 422, improving the roads people will take to avoid 422 so they don't get tolled, revitalizing some downtowns, etc. and whatever else the hell they wanted to put in there. They paid real engineering firms real money to create real fancy multi-colored maps and stuff. It looks all scientriffic.

They figure Route 422 drivers will cough up enough money on a routine basis to pay for a $500 million bond, and they think the R6 line can be done for that, including $50M in Rt 422 bridge re-do at the Schuylkill river crossing.

The question of why did it cost $2B when the feds wanted to do it, and now costs $500M when the locals want to do it, is moot, since the federal project was shot down. It's just one of those things that makes you go Hmmmmmmmm. Senator Spector never did have the pull to make his $2B project go, but you know, I like the local people more. They're local and somehow they saved $1.5 billion dollars.

[classicman]

snark/All those graduates from those liberal schools can't think for themselves.../.snark

[tw]

Washington Metro will again demonstrate competancy. Silver line will connect the Metro system to Washington's Dulles International Airport. Rumors suggested this line terminates before gettting to the airport. To cut costs. Recently the Washington Post said system critical functions do not work. Well, we will see in July.

Meanwhile, the Metro executive responsible for making this work is resigning. Does he come from where the work gets done? Of course not. Patrick Nowakowski's education is listed as Drexel University - College of Business and Administration. IOW he is a bean counter. A business school graduate doing construction work or operating a mass transit system. We will see what this business school graduate accomplished.

In a previous example, an economics major designed the Obamacare website. Not someone who comes from where the work gets done (ie health care or computer programming). So that was flawed. A new Metro line was constructed by a business school graduate.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by tw

A new Metro line was constructed by a business school graduate.

I hear what you are saying, but this guy wasn't out there pumping concrete. He was sitting at his desk and on the phone.

The construction firm completed the line, and it was quite amazing to watch the construction. Metro looked at it and found many minor problems, and a punch list was created. The construction firm worked through the punch list and claims to have completed it. They turned the new line over to Metro for testing. And that's where we are now. Metro needs to do a few months of testing, and then they will open the line to the public.

We'll see in a couple months.

And yes, the line doesn't go all the way to the airport. Metro runs through several jurisdictions, and each jurisdiction needs to come up with funding, including the Feds and each state. The Dulles area (I can't remember which jurisdiction that is, maybe Fairfax County?) didn't want to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars right now to extend the line to the airport, so that part is on hold for now. It's pretty dumb, because extending the line to the airport is the main idea. Now it just goes to some of the neighborhoods on the way to the airport.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's pretty dumb, because extending the line to the airport is the main idea. Now it just goes to some of the neighborhoods on the way to the airport.

Cab driver lobby?

[Happy Monkey]

"Infrastructure spending is bad" lobby.

[tw]

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

[glatt]

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.

[Happy Monkey]

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.

[glatt]

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

[lumberjim]

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.

[Sundae]

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.