Washington subway crash

[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.