Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?
> considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars
10-20 years from now isn't exactly "almost"
‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
101–110 of 243 posts
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Drivers go even slower than 45mph because the train is automatically stopped when going faster (as you would want to do if there was a train ahead) instead of just giving a warning and letting the train keep going. Is there any protection system that allows the maximum speed to be exceeded with just a warning? Certainly all those I can think of (TPWS, TVM, PZB, or something more modern like ETCS) have a given maxim…
That, and considering a speed limiter instead of stopping the train when traveling too fast. What good does it do to stop the train when going too fast instead of limiting it in the first place?
I think the idea is that if the operator is incapacitated or the control system is malfunctioning, stopping the train is the safest solution. While true, a multi-shot timer would be equally effective in detecting such a situation.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
About 8 years ago there were a few house ads in the cars that were effectively gaslighting riders. It was one of the craziest things I'd ever seen as a consumer -- borderline antagonistic. The agency, and the workers to some extent, can be pugilistic when criticized. http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/176/files/2010/03/f...
For those of us who aren't familiar with the price history what's the lie here?
They're comparing a single-ride fare to a monthly-pass fare. A single ride fare cost $2.00 in 2008[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_transit_fares#Fa...
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Drivers go even slower than 45mph because the train is automatically stopped when going faster (as you would want to do if there was a train ahead) instead of just giving a warning and letting the train keep going. Is there any protection system that allows the maximum speed to be exceeded with just a warning? Certainly all those I can think of (TPWS, TVM, PZB, or something more modern like ETCS) have a given maxim…
There are... one of them is given in the article—which calls the current system "one-shot"—there exists k-shot variants which allow for at least k opportunities/warnings before automagically braking. The (apparent) reasoning behind the MTA not putting these (for some number k>1) was "safety," but the article states that, in general, the timing circuits are much more complicated therefore resulting in a higher cost.[0…
Indeed, this is my understanding of how most non-US high-speed-rail controllers work - the driver sets a target speed, the physical location on the track has a maximum speed, and the traffic system looks at the cars ahead and sets its own maximum speed (e.g. zero when another train is right in front of you). Instead of stopping the train when the driver exceeds the speed limit, it just uses the minimum of all the target speeds.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#105they must have installed one of these single-shot timers on the uptown A between 50th and 59th. it always crawls through 50th, stops in the tunnel, then crawls into 59th. didn't used to until a couple years ago.
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is management unionized? The article makes it sound like the engineers themselves are frustrated with this system.
You can't just stop the gravy train by removing management. Bad culture is at all levels.
Bad culture is at all levels, but management control the factors that turn culture bad.
If you'd like to see a fine example of how changing the management and the management philosophy can turn a place around, look at NUMMI. There's a This American Life episode with extensive worker interviews: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#107This article has a lot of text before getting to describing the problem. Summary: Train wreck 1995 and a installation of a safety-first, CYA response that slows down the trains and does not increase safety. Longer Summary: Train wreck in 1995. Maybe driver was asleep. Start installing new signals that not only automatically stop the trains when there is a train ahead (good idea and already in place), but also when go…
>Trains used to go up to 55mph with no systemic problems.
During the age of steam, express passenger trains regularly exceeded 55 mph. For example, during the 1930s the Burlington Zephyr regularly exceeded 85 mph. For example it made the Chicago to Denver run in 1934 in 13 hours rather than the 18 hrs it takes today.
Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/05/stop_th...
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#108I think the topic of a declining/slowly collapsing society needs serious research. How do you definitively measure if a society is progressing or regressing? If you measure by infrastructure the US probably hit its peak in the 60s and has been declining since then. https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/
Step one is defining a target condition. The problem is that people have different target conditions. The enormous rise in inequality since the 1960s [1] makes clear that some people have a target condition of "I personally own everything".
[1] http://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e201a51...
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#109This article has a lot of text before getting to describing the problem. Summary: Train wreck 1995 and a installation of a safety-first, CYA response that slows down the trains and does not increase safety. Longer Summary: Train wreck in 1995. Maybe driver was asleep. Start installing new signals that not only automatically stop the trains when there is a train ahead (good idea and already in place), but also when go…
>Trains used to go up to 55mph with no systemic problems. During the age of steam, express passenger trains regularly exceeded 55 mph. For example, during the 1930s the Burlington Zephyr regularly exceeded 85 mph. For example it made the Chicago to Denver run in 1934 in 13 hours rather than the 18 hrs it takes today. Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/05/stop_th...
This makes me sad about missed potential. I've taken the ski train from Central London to the French Alps - was great. With high speed rail it should be possible to get a 8hr overnight train from Chicago (or Dallas & Houston) to Winter Park CO. I'm guessing it'll never happen
Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
This will be the hardest thing to accept about self-driving cars. If the US goes from 37k auto deaths per year to 1k deaths, but some of those are "my Tesla sped into a brick wall at 200mph with little Susie in it," how many people grab the steering wheel?
For Susie parents it's basically: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
It's not just that.
Look, let's say a Tesla, oh, just as a random example, careens directly into a clearly visible truck because its cameras can't distinguish white trucks from bright sunny skies, killing "my daughter Susie." In this hypothetical, this is a truly autonomous Tesla, and overall, these truly autonomous Teslas are less crash-prone than the human average.
As Susie's dad, my argument is that this accident was caused by Tesla. Yes, Tesla may have also saved some other people, under different circumstances, circumstances which are harder for humans to deal with and easier for cars to deal with. So what? That doesn't change the fact that Susie was killed by their product misbehaving in a way that a basically competent human driver wouldn't have. It's not like Tesla previously saved Susie's life, and at least she got to live longer than she would have in the counterfactual -- it's not like all the Susies out there in the world are all essentially doomed to die in auto accidents today.
If Susie went to a doctor with a mild infection and he gave her an inappropriate drug and it killed her, you had better believe that I would sue the shit out of him and also want him prosecuted, even if in the year before that he saved 37 other kids' lives from other illnesses.