Studious Girl
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Oooh. Aaaah.
Florida is set to launch the US's first private 'high speed' rail line.
This is something that's actually been over a decade and half in the making (no thanks to the Florida State government), and to be honest I'm really skeptical about how successful it will be as a piece of mass-transit (the company will probably make money on the real-estate).
That aside does anyone have any insight as to how these private rail services tend to work in other places?
I think they usually don't owing to the prohibitive upfront capital costs.
There are miles and reams of pretty schemes in this world we can't do because money has to be paid upfront and it takes time to and there is no guarantee of it paying off.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Studious Girl
So I've been thinking about the new MTA open gangway cars, and while they would help overcrowding, there are potential problems with having one long, continuous car. Like we've all found a suspiciously empty car where there turned out to be a drunk guy wandering around, or the overwhelming scent of urine, or something else you don't want to deal with on your commute, and then quickly scrambled to the next car. The fact of the matter is that the NYC subways aren't always safe and sometimes you want the crazies walled off from the rest of us.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20171212_42/
Looks like Nagoya Station has some trouble with one of the Shinkansens. A first for it.
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An Amtrak train derailed outside of Tacoma, Washington.
Seventy-eight passengers, five crew members and one technician were aboard when the train derailed about 40 miles south of Seattle before 8 a.m., Amtrak said. An official who was briefed on the investigation also says preliminary signs indicate the Amtrak train may have struck something on the track before going off the track.
edited 18th Dec '17 7:48:13 PM by Blueeyedrat
Heard about that. Shame that safety violations were seen, last I heard.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180116_38/
The Singapore-Malaysia is about to come true...
A pedestrian was hit and killed by an Amtrak train in Gaithersburg, MD.
The Amtrak train was heading from Chicago to D.C., but was making a detour in Rockville because a passenger had a medical emergency on board. EMS units were waiting at the Rockville station for the passenger, officials said.
As the train was heading to Rockville, it hit a pedestrian crossing the railroad at South Summit Ave. and East Diamond Ave, near the Gaithersburg Station, just before 2 p.m. The unidentified victim was pronounced dead on the scene, officials said.
I almost went out there to go trainspotting, but decided not to for some reason either while or after getting lunch in While Flint. I feel kinda dizzy now. I don't know if it's related.
United Earth
So long as you don't trainspot from the friggin' track, you should be fine.
It takes a special kind bad luck or idiocy to get hit by a train.
But one carrying a patient on an emergency run? What's this, Real Life trolley problems?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Yes, a train with a medical emergency aboard will go to a station to offload the passenger(s) involved. Perhaps it passed a signal at danger, hence the collision?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I should add that it wouldn't have necessarily been a "detour", as that train stops at Rockville anyway.
Sadly, this was bound to happen eventually. I've seen several people cross the tracks as the train is already barreling towards the crossing just to save time. Some people even walk on the tracks to get to wherever they need to go. A lot of people either don't know that trains can't stop like cars do (it takes several seconds for a train to come to a complete stop when traveling at track speed) or think the reward is worth the risk.
Also had I gone to Gaithersburg, I would've filmed the train from the parking lot to the right of the tracks.
edited 23rd Jan '18 2:38:05 PM by PhysicalStamina
Sadly people always do stupid shit at level crossings.
United Earth
My God, such spirited competition for the Darwin Awards!
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Speaking of near-misses, I recall one instance where not only did a car cross the tracks after the gates came down (the driver was already in front of the gates by the time they stopped), but someone was walking down the track the train was on as it sped towards him. It wasn't until the train was just behind him, the engineer whaling on the horn, that the guy moved out of the way. And then he continued to walk down the tracks after the train passed.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-20180520-story.html
Not sure if anyone can read this, but LA Times ran a story where BYD buses ran into a lot of trouble.
There was also some stuff that happened behind the scenes.
FYI, BYD also sold electric buses to Japan in Kyoto.
Oh, bother.
Ethiopian Airlines crash: inquiry to explore how 'excellent' pilot was unable to avert disaster
Ethiopian flight 302: second new Boeing 737 to crash in four months
The crash had no survivors, and the fact that this is the second new Boeing 737 to crash in just four months seems to be hinting that there's something very wrong with Boeing right now.
Disgusted, but not surprised
The Wanderer
Plane crashes may be rare... but that's cold comfort when your number's the one that's come up.
Beginning Of The End Almost Here For NYC's MetroCard:
The transit agency has dubbed its new system "OMNY," an acronym for "One Metro New York." The name is derived from the Latin prefix "omni," meaning "all" or "of all things," the MTA says.
" We believe that transportation is an essential service that connects communities and brings the diversity and energy of New York together," the transit agency says. "OMNY is the newest way to experience all that the region offers."
The new system will let straphangers pay for a ride by tapping a cellphone or a contactless card rather than swiping the flimsy and often fickle MetroCards. Transit systems in other big cities such as London, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles already use similar technology.
The OMNY system will go through final testing starting in March before it's unleashed for straphangers starting in May, the MTA says. That's when riders will be able to pay with a tap on the 4, 5 and 6 lines between Grand Central Terminal and Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, and on Staten Island buses, according to the transit agency.
Oh, bother.
While plane crashes are rare, the fact that this is the second one of a new model that has crashed within just four months seems to hint that something is wrong at Boeing.
Picked this headline from Hong Kong today:
The rare disruption on a network used by nearly 6 million people every weekday brought services to a halt between the stations of Central and Admiralty, rail operator MTR Corp said.
"The repair will take quite a long time and the service between Central and Admiralty ... will not be available for the whole day," its operations director, Lau Tin-shing, told a news briefing.
An investigation into the incident has begun, although the trains carried no passengers at the time of the collision during the trial run of a new signal system.
The drivers of both trains were taken to hospital, the network operator added, urging commuters to use other forms of travel or different rail routes.
Shares of MTR fell more than 1 percent in early trade, lagging a gain of 0.3 percent in the benchmark index.
Cape Malleum Majorem
I remember a You Tube video of a super-stretched limousine that got stuck on a level crossing directly in the path of an oncoming freight train. The limo driver kept trying to wave down the train, and eventually followed the locomotive a mile or so down the track, after it completely demolished the limo and finally ground to a halt.
He said to the engineer: "Didn't you see me!?"
The engineer replied: "Sure, I saw you. But I've got a ten-thousand-ton freight train here, and they don't exactly stop on a dime."
Duh...
Edited by pwiegle on Mar 18th 2019 at 8:08:47 AM
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
That is far less common knowledge than you might think. People honestly think that trains can just stop, like cars do. So they treat railroad crossing like they treat intersections, then blame the railroad/crossing when someone gets hit.
I can say that personally I've never thought about that. I mean, I'm wholly unsurprised now that I think about it. This is basically why buses always stop at train intersections even if they have the right-of-way.
Edited by Protagonist506 on Mar 18th 2019 at 4:39:16 AM
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
See, that I always thought was due to an arguably outdated rule from a time when crossing gates/lights hadn't been invented yet.
Not that, as I've seen plenty of times while trainspotting, such inventions have deterred people.
Passenger trains don't stop on a dime, either. Iirc, the stopping distance for a TGV is about 3 km (not so surprising when you consider its travel speed is around 300 km/h). On the other hand, there are no level crossings on TGV lines.
Oh, bother.
Star Fox 64 of all things got it right. The good way to beat the train boss in one level is to hit switches throughout the level that reroute the train tracks into a munitions depot. The conductor desperately hits the brakes, but the train is unable to stop in time.
Disgusted, but not surprised