‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
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‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
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Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#2There's an attempt to make this all sound like a conspiracy, but it all makes sense to me.
There were accidents. They slowed the train to improve safety.
The train is about as safe as ever. Why? Many, many more people are using than the trains than before. It's harder to keep that many people safe, so more caution is warranted.
The only problem I see, if it's true, is that they classified delays stemming from maintenance under the wrong heading. And so far as I can tell, there's no real proof of that.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#3There's an attempt to make this all sound like a conspiracy, but it all makes sense to me. There were accidents. They slowed the train to improve safety. The train is about as safe as ever. Why? Many, many more people are using than the trains than before. It's harder to keep that many people safe, so more caution is warranted. The only problem I see, if it's true, is that they classified delays stemming from mainten…
But beyond a certain point slowing the trains gains little safety but (eg) pushes people back to the road where (in the UK for example) we spend 10x less to save a life than on the trains.
Thus, overcaution on the trains will kill more people.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#4There's an attempt to make this all sound like a conspiracy, but it all makes sense to me. There were accidents. They slowed the train to improve safety. The train is about as safe as ever. Why? Many, many more people are using than the trains than before. It's harder to keep that many people safe, so more caution is warranted. The only problem I see, if it's true, is that they classified delays stemming from mainten…
More importantly, they used the overcrowding excuse as a means to raise $800mm+ from New York taxpayers. If this capital wasn't necessary given the problems they cited were non-existent, this amounts to fraud.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#5There's an attempt to make this all sound like a conspiracy, but it all makes sense to me. There were accidents. They slowed the train to improve safety. The train is about as safe as ever. Why? Many, many more people are using than the trains than before. It's harder to keep that many people safe, so more caution is warranted. The only problem I see, if it's true, is that they classified delays stemming from mainten…
The story I got was rather different; first that the safety measures were implemented in a ham-fisted manner and secondly that they failed to model or recognise correctly the overall effect that the measures would have on carrying capacity, and they are still failing to recognise it.
I don’t know how fair these accusations are, of course.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#6We, collectively, seem to accept car accidents because we think we can avoid them with good driving skills. Train accidents leave us helpless, and we can’t cope with that.
The whole concept of ”bad things happen to good people for no reason” is extremely hard to bear. Somehow this reminds me of people who believe the right diet will protect them from cancer, the right prenatal care from birth defects, etc.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#7There's an attempt to make this all sound like a conspiracy, but it all makes sense to me. There were accidents. They slowed the train to improve safety. The train is about as safe as ever. Why? Many, many more people are using than the trains than before. It's harder to keep that many people safe, so more caution is warranted. The only problem I see, if it's true, is that they classified delays stemming from mainten…
But beyond a certain point slowing the trains gains little safety but (eg) pushes people back to the road where (in the UK for example) we spend 10x less to save a life than on the trains. Thus, overcaution on the trains will kill more people.
Wonder how much further you can take it. If you lose a little safety (trains) and take more people off the road, you increase the risk of a train accident. How many people go back to the roads after a train accident? Is the backlash greater (my 0 data thoughts would be that more people would return to the road then just if the train was slow). I heard somewhere that more people died through increased car accidents after 9/11 (forget time span) that would have flown but didn't.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#8We, collectively, seem to accept car accidents because we think we can avoid them with good driving skills. Train accidents leave us helpless, and we can’t cope with that. The whole concept of ”bad things happen to good people for no reason” is extremely hard to bear. Somehow this reminds me of people who believe the right diet will protect them from cancer, the right prenatal care from birth defects, etc.
Are you suggesting that different lifestyles don't result in different risks? Such as not smoking, not drinking alcohol while pregnant, not eating excessively?
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#9I spent 5 years taking the Toronto subway (Yonge line, North York Center to Union) every day. I noticed this interesting pattern.
During rush hour, any small delay on one train will almost certain impact every train down the line- there's little time buffer between trains. The bigger the delay, the more trains effected by it. The more passengers per train, the more likely that train will have a delay- loading and unloading taking too long, sure, that can cause a small delay. But consider events like heart attacks, seizures, a fight breaking out- all kinds of major-delay-causing-events that are roughly speaking a linear function from 'time passenger is on the train' to 'likelihood of major delay event'.
If you have twice as many passengers, you have twice the odds of a major delay. If a passenger spends twice a long on a train, you have twice the odds of them causing a major a delay. Delays cause more passengers per train and cause longer time-on-train for each passenger.
It's all non-linear. Any one tiny delay can spark a total breakdown and the longer that delay is the more likely it will cause more in turn.
How on earth does the system ever work at all?
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#10There's an attempt to make this all sound like a conspiracy, but it all makes sense to me. There were accidents. They slowed the train to improve safety. The train is about as safe as ever. Why? Many, many more people are using than the trains than before. It's harder to keep that many people safe, so more caution is warranted. The only problem I see, if it's true, is that they classified delays stemming from mainten…
More importantly, they used the overcrowding excuse as a means to raise $800mm+ from New York taxpayers. If this capital wasn't necessary given the problems they cited were non-existent, this amounts to fraud.
Well, fraud only if it were deliberately misleading. It seems highly likely that the MTA believes what it is saying, even if it happens to be misguided, and driven by the right motivations.