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SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

abc7news.com

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Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#101

Post by KerrAvon »

electric_mayhem wrote: post #43
nerdjon wrote: post #10

Well... I feel slightly better about Boston constantly pushing back being able to use our phones as tickets after seeing the timeline for the transition and how just that they are still doing this. What is it about public transit in the US that it is so... bad? Inadequate funding seems to be the easy one, but the MBTA (Boston) doesn't even handle the funds it has well. Yeah it needs more funding but there is also jus…

> What is it about public transit in the US that it is so... bad? Massive money and entrenched behind preserving a car-based life. Car companies, auto workers unions, railroads can siphon off funds from promised improvements to cover deferred maintenance and give themselves bonuses for being so clever… Hell, AAA which one might expect to spend its income on serving its members instead diverts money to proactively lob…

Nonsense. There is working transit in the US and a huge appetite for more. But it takes decades to do this stuff. "China did massive infrastructure project in two years" -- China is also a communist dictatorship (for some value of those words), and we can't do that here. We could streamline things a bit more, of course, but it's never going to be cheap and easy in the US.

If you want to help, vote. Or even run for something on a pro-transit, YIMBY platform.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#102

Post by arrosenberg »

akira2501 wrote: post #96
iancmceachern wrote: post #63

I emailed them. I live I'm SF. This is the sake, solved, problem we have in the machine tool world (milling machines, lathes, etc). Similar to old keyboards, you can just buy and use a floppy emulator. They emailed me back, they said that the floppy thing makes a good headline but is really just the tip of the iceberg. It's really the whole system that's like this at every layer, it needs replacing they say.

> it needs replacing they say. It sounds like they let this problem fester until it has reached this existential end. They clamor for new technology, which they get, then they use the most risk adverse management strategy and never upgrade or change it, until it reaches this problem state. They either need significant third party help deploying and managing this system, or they should go back a few generations of tec…

> I guess the people who work on public transit aren't interested in having the best public transit system available. They're only interested in keeping it running for as long as possible with zero changes or responsibility.

Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled? Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with government.

The problem is the public and the politicians - transit employees largely do the best they can with the resources and constraints they are given. In order to succeed transit needs municipalities and states to: pay more taxes; accept that transit won't generate a profit, but does generate non-monetary public value; and gather their resolve to deal with NIMBYs.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#103

Post by gsk22 »

deathanatos wrote: post #72
compuguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this feeling that they meant 1988 instead of 1998 ....but I could be wrong? Edit: Even the news article hints at 5 inch floppy disks...which makes 1998 make absolutely no sense to me at least. https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-train-system-has-been-run... .

I'm not sure moving it back a whole decade saves them? My family's first PC in 1987 had a hard disk. The Wikipedia quote they provide lines up with that, and provides a more authoritative point of when it was introduced. And yeah, the "5 inch floppy" quote paired with a photo of a diskette. God only knows what actual hardware the system uses. But point being … the journalist doesn't seem to have found out.

There's a big difference when choosing technologies for a home computer versus a safety-critical system that will run for decades. Seems reasonable they would've chosen a proven, if slightly outdated, tech over a newer one that had less data to back up its long-term reliability.

And of course we can get into the discussion of cost: floppies are way cheaper than hard drives, especially for the presumably-small amounts of data that are needed for such a control system. A 500MB hard drive was probably overkill.

I am of course speculating, but I don't know why we should assume that the engineers working on the project originally made a silly decision. They almost certainly weighed the available options to deliver the project within the defined constraints of the system.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#104

Post by aidenn0 »

wongarsu wrote: post #61
HumblyTossed wrote: post #36

> This system was designed to last 20 to 25 years. SFMTA's director Jeffrey Tumlin said upgrading the system will take another decade and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the problem, not that they're using a floppy. This isn't web dev where you get to rewrite everything every 6 mos. Systems have to have decades long life cycles BUT THEY EVENTUALLY NEED TO BE REPLACED and that's not happening quickly eno…

Still, when you have a 20-25 year replacement cycle being 10 years behind is pretty significant. And that's assuming their estimate of needing another decade is correct. Which seems doubtful considering they don't have a contractor, they don't have the money, and the previous system probably took a decade to develop considering their choice of 5.25" floppies (3.5" floppies overtook 5.25" floppies in sales in 1988).

Right, if they think it will take 10 years, 15-20 is probably more realistic, which means you need to start the upgrade process 5-10 years after buying your system: seems very expensive.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#105

Post by akira2501 »

arrosenberg wrote: post #102
akira2501 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it needs replacing they say. It sounds like they let this problem fester until it has reached this existential end. They clamor for new technology, which they get, then they use the most risk adverse management strategy and never upgrade or change it, until it reaches this problem state. They either need significant third party help deploying and managing this system, or they should go back a few generations of tec…

> I guess the people who work on public transit aren't interested in having the best public transit system available. They're only interested in keeping it running for as long as possible with zero changes or responsibility. Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled? Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with go…

> Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled?

Do you not see this article as evidence of this fact? If you walked into any other business reliant on "floppy disks" just to take your money, would you praise their practices and efficiency?

> Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with government.

I form opinions because I try to use their services and am disappointed and often disgusted. Do you really think "experience with public transport" is particularly hard to come by? That this is all too esoteric for the "common man" to opine on? Please...

> transit employees largely do the best they can with the resources and constraints they are given

Perhaps they should earn those resources competitively instead of being given them? Otherwise, this seems like a perennial chicken and the egg problem that swallows tax dollars with no worthwhile result.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#106

Post by strangattractor »

markus_zhang wrote: post #45
HumblyTossed wrote: post #36

> This system was designed to last 20 to 25 years. SFMTA's director Jeffrey Tumlin said upgrading the system will take another decade and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the problem, not that they're using a floppy. This isn't web dev where you get to rewrite everything every 6 mos. Systems have to have decades long life cycles BUT THEY EVENTUALLY NEED TO BE REPLACED and that's not happening quickly eno…

I'd like to see a breakdown of that "hundreds of millions of dollars" and which companies provided the quotes, plus who owns the companies and who are their husbands/wives/uncles/nephews/nieces/etc.

The cost is distribute across all the PowerPoint, Word, and Excel spreadsheets created to give the illusion that people are doing actual work. Go read a couple of the SFMTA PDF's linked to by a commenter. They are totally enlightening justifications like - reduced congestion blah - better monitoring blah. No meat whatsoever. No analysis backing anything up - just pretty pictures.

I rode Muni for 10 years almost every working day. Do you want to know what reduced congestion the most. Buying new muni cars because the old muni cars door mechanism had been repaired so much they did not open or close %50 of the time and people had to use other doors to get on and off a train on a daily basis.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#107

Post by DowagerDave »

akira2501 wrote: post #96
iancmceachern wrote: post #63

I emailed them. I live I'm SF. This is the sake, solved, problem we have in the machine tool world (milling machines, lathes, etc). Similar to old keyboards, you can just buy and use a floppy emulator. They emailed me back, they said that the floppy thing makes a good headline but is really just the tip of the iceberg. It's really the whole system that's like this at every layer, it needs replacing they say.

> it needs replacing they say. It sounds like they let this problem fester until it has reached this existential end. They clamor for new technology, which they get, then they use the most risk adverse management strategy and never upgrade or change it, until it reaches this problem state. They either need significant third party help deploying and managing this system, or they should go back a few generations of tec…

or they're not immune to the same urge all SW devs have to rewrite - it's a lot easier to start from scratch than (a) figure out how an existing system works, (b) figure out how to upgrade or modernize

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#108

Post by jandrese »

iancmceachern wrote: post #63

I emailed them. I live I'm SF. This is the sake, solved, problem we have in the machine tool world (milling machines, lathes, etc). Similar to old keyboards, you can just buy and use a floppy emulator. They emailed me back, they said that the floppy thing makes a good headline but is really just the tip of the iceberg. It's really the whole system that's like this at every layer, it needs replacing they say.

This was my thought. Floppy emulators are a dime a dozen thanks to the retrocomputing community. Emulators for the custom boards full of discrete logic, opaque ROM chips, PLAs, and so on from long dead companies are going to be a much bigger challenge.

If they had good schematics for all of the parts it might be possible to keep the the system running for a long time with a couple of smart EEs who are comfortable with the scope and soldering iron, but eventually they're going to run out of some obscure part and be up a creek.

Or maybe they could replace entire boards with home designed versions condense all of the old logic down to one chip and a handful of support components and start in-place upgrading without a total system revamp. Still an expensive process, and one that requires some hard to find engineers on staff, but theoretically spreads out the upgrade process over many years. It also loses out on functional improvement opportunities while your system is made up of a hodgepodge of old and new hardware.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#109

Post by arrosenberg »

akira2501 wrote: post #105
arrosenberg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess the people who work on public transit aren't interested in having the best public transit system available. They're only interested in keeping it running for as long as possible with zero changes or responsibility. Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled? Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with go…

> Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled? Do you not see this article as evidence of this fact? If you walked into any other business reliant on "floppy disks" just to take your money, would you praise their practices and efficiency? > Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with government. I form opinions bec…

I don't think the article is a reflection on efficacy of the public agency. If their budget for new software is $0, how exactly are they supposed to upgrade it? It's certainly possible that the agency has been utter shit for 25 years, but this article doesn't give the information to conclude that.

> Perhaps they should earn those resources competitively instead of being given them?

How? They're a public agency. There is no profit motive - if the public wants nicer stuff, they need to pay for it. That includes both the software costs and the higher salary costs to hire people capable of those types of projects.

Again, you come off as someone running their mouth with no actual experience interacting with public agencies. It's very frustrating to know how to fix a problem without being given the resources or permission to do so, which is often the case in transit. Add to that most transit agencies have a tiny budget for IT, and I'm not sure how you expect this to get solved without a big public push.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#110

Post by madaxe_again »

arrosenberg wrote: post #102
akira2501 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it needs replacing they say. It sounds like they let this problem fester until it has reached this existential end. They clamor for new technology, which they get, then they use the most risk adverse management strategy and never upgrade or change it, until it reaches this problem state. They either need significant third party help deploying and managing this system, or they should go back a few generations of tec…

> I guess the people who work on public transit aren't interested in having the best public transit system available. They're only interested in keeping it running for as long as possible with zero changes or responsibility. Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled? Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with go…

Transit employees are not the same people as, nor have the same motivations as the politicians who manage transport agencies.

Of course the employees work hard. It’s the vocation they’ve chosen. I’m always amazed by the diligence of TFL and rail employees in the U.K., for instance.

No, the guiding principle for the folks at the top is “so, how can I make money for myself out of this before I fail upwards?”.

I’d wager the SF situation is just the same old looting by the Very Important People who run the show, leaving employees and actual managers with a shoestring and two peanuts to make it all work, while the head honchos bathe in gravy.

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