Probably just a ploy to privatize the whole thing. Nothing to see here, move along.
SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
111–120 of 252 posts
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#112Earlier 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…
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…
> 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?”.
Who are "the folks at the top"? Transit agency executives in California make less than software engineers (though if you put in your time, you get a nice pension to make up for it) - how are these people getting rich? If you mean the politicians, sure, I've already said they're half the problem.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what happens when the repercussions for poor performance/failure is more money. Privatization, with some regulations, and reduction of monopolies, seems like a good idea. But, the system will never choose to harm itself.
The current engineering ecosystem is largely private, and it's poorly functioning, costing us way more money than just hiring engineers as public employees rather than paying a contracting firm to do initial and final design on each rail system segment. Just go look at the RFPs and responses each municipality has four expansion of their current system. It is all outsource to private industry, at great cost compared t…
I would claim that the problem is that they're doing it for government, which is what makes the chain of accountability lead to nowhere.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#114Does no one at the organization know what a GoTek FlashFloppy is? Sounds like they are using the floppy as an excuse to push for an upgrade that has nothing to do with the floppy drives.
The entire system has reached the end of it's design life and the floppy is just the shocking bite to get people to click through. Really this is the regular replacement of an old system with a newer control system that will make the trains run better and more reliably.
Why will a new system make the trains run better? It could also make it run worse, if they don’t cover all the current cases.
I’ve ridden Muni in SF for years, drivers control most of the decision making.
There’s a handful of single track tunnels/sensors/necessary software-based coordination, but as another commenter pointed out, the doors cause more issues than signal problems.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#115I 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.
the state-of-good-repair grift will continue until the morale improves! SelTrac is fine. and if it ever actually breaks (dubious) they can fall back to block signaling which comfortably handles more trains than muni is capable of running. the MBTA does just fine with it on the green line, and when the MBTA is making you look incompetent you've got to question where it all went wrong.
this is the agency that brought you the central fucking subway, a $300M sewer project masquerading as some red paint on van ness, that picked the already-mostly-grade-separated M Ocean over the N Judah to subway-ify and that is incapable of flicking the traffic preemption switch on the rest of the T to the on position without a decades long pedestrian detection LIDAR project for the unique in the world needs of san francisco.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#116Remember when, less than 3 years ago, SF projected a $108M surplus for the next two years? Woulda been a nice time to clean up some of this technical debt! Or how about the SF Emergency Sirens, taken offline in late 2019 for a "2 year" upgrade plan that officeholders implied was already in place? In August 2023, with no progress whatsover, with the Maui fire disaster fresh on their minds, Mayor Breed & Supervisors Pr…
Sirens don't even need to be that complicated. A motor, a noise generator wheel (basically just a big spinning squirrelcage fan), and a horn. You could toggle them on/off with a simple relay/contactor.
These "sirens" actually need to be able to play spoken announcements - something they did easily since about 2005, before the fumbled 2019-2024 shutdown/upgrade.
More history, through January 2022, via JWZ's blog:
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/the-reason-the-tuesday-noon...
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I looked into this last year, a significant part of the cost is in new hardware, both on the vehicles, but also sensors spread through the system. They all need commercial grade RF systems that allow for 2 way signaling communication and integration into the vehicles control systems.
also they need to be rated for the operating environment. you can't stick any random part from newegg in there.
Tesla used non-automotive grade touchscreens in some cars and so they died early: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...
Automotive grade has very high requirements:
> Grade 0: High Temperature Operating Life (HTOL): +175C for 408 hours. High Temperature Storage Life (HTSL): +175C for 1,000 hours. Temperature Cycling: -65C tp +175C for 500 cycles
And generally speaking transit agencies aspire to buy higher-reliability, longer-lasting equipment than your average consumer car.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#118I 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…
It reads like you are conflating newer with better.
It was more than a few years ago, but I remember the posts on Slashdot where tech people were wringing their hands over the fact that election offices were not adopting touchscreen ballots fast enough. Some posters were also promoting things like internet voting. How did that work out?
Sometimes it actually is better to move slowly instead of adopting something new just because it is new. With old equipment and older technology, we know the failure modes, we have the procedures in place for addressing them. Whether it's floppy disks, paper ballots, (or human beings,) older does not necessarily mean worse.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#119My company provides new compute modules for another major global city's infrastructure that still relies on Intel CPU's from the early 80's. That is, we are building them brand new boards populated with chips that are over 40 years old. They haven't shown any interest in updating the system. It works, they can get service, and get "new" replacements for things that go bad. What they might not know though is that ther…
Are you hiring young engineers who want to learn the old stuff?
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#120My company provides new compute modules for another major global city's infrastructure that still relies on Intel CPU's from the early 80's. That is, we are building them brand new boards populated with chips that are over 40 years old. They haven't shown any interest in updating the system. It works, they can get service, and get "new" replacements for things that go bad. What they might not know though is that ther…
One of my older jobs relied on ancient hardware, and the life of the company was measured by parts in the warehouse and vendors who still cared. From their perspective they'd have a modern system as long as your company delivers.
> hey haven't shown any interest in updating the system.
So expensive to update that there's a calculated end-of-life to the system. They'd love to know about your engineer situation. That'd trigger plans put in place a while ago.
Your company could do a last big batch for the city and send the old guy out with a nice bonus.