SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure' • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by rayiner » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:26 AM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #237

rayiner wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think American public servants are lazy, overpaid, and unskilled, yes. You don’t need experience running the government to know that the government sucks at its job, just like Windows users could tell Windows 95…

Once again, I will reiterate that right wing characterizations of public employees are very silly, not reflective of how most municipal agencies operate, and is intended to erode public institutions. Public employees are not inherently more lazy or less skilled than private sector employees. Their incentives and challenges are different. If the performance is subpar, look in the mirror to find the problem. Its comple…

I’m very left wing on transit. I rode the Amtrak from Baltimore to DC every day for two years, I commuted from the suburbs to various DC metro stations for years to commute into the city. The right wing characterization of transit proved true based on experience despite my strong desire for it not to be true. Don’t get mad at right wingers for simply pointing out what’s plain to see. There’s a reason Americans are overwhelmingly leaving the places that have good transit for places that have no transit—the American version that’s always slow, late, dirty, and doesn’t go where you’re going is just not an amenity that’s worth it for most people.

The problem is not funding or public policy or geography. The northeast corridor is densely populated; there is no reason in terms of geography why you shouldn’t be able to have efficient transit in Baltimore and DC. These systems are well funded and heavily subsidized by the federal government. The problem is the people, and that’s a problem you can’t fix. You cannot redevelop American cities into anything other than what they are so long as you have Americans running them. It’s a futile exercise.

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

#242

Post by madaxe_again » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 2:48 PM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #233

sidlls wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't surprise me. This city is corrupt as hell.

As I learn more about how this city operates, living here longer, I keep finding myself truly amazed at how corrupt this city is. Even if you try, you can't avoid it. It's truly everywhere.

You underestimate. The more places you go, the more you see, the more you do, the more you realise it is truly EVERYWHERE.

I honestly find it incredibly disheartening how rampant and underreported corruption and nepotism are in practically every sector, industry, everything, everywhere, always.

The corrupt are a minority - but they are global, and the impacts of their actions are damaging the entire human race in a very significant fashion, and always have.

Murder, I can forgive.

Corruption, I cannot.

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

#243

Post by asdff » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 5:01 PM UTC

nerdjon wrote: post #25

asdff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about this all the time every time I see an lcd screen in my local train stations. If people who designed them actually used transit, maybe they'd have the signs you can only see as you walk out of the station say something about the bus lines you'd transfer to, instead of when the train behind you that just departed from is set to arrive. At some stations the screens they installed don't display anything use…

I feel like almost every screen I just ignore, either it was just put there for ads or it is wrong/broken. It is now a fairly regular occurrence to have a train show up that the screen had no reference too existing a minute or two before. But yeah it feels like they were not designed or setup by people that actually use the trains and were setup by a comity thinking they know best. Maybe that is the big difference, i…

Honestly a big issue seems to be in other countries, especially ones like Japan people frequently site as the model for public transit, transit is privately run and developed more pragmatically/more profitably. There wouldn't be sense in adding useless screens with useless information, but there sure would be a lot of consideration on how we can make our station more attractive than a competing line's station, paring down overhead to its most base items to further that goal.

Whereas here in the US, its like transit departments are handed budgets generated by tax dollars but no clear direction or plan for how to maximize those dollars. So they have to turn to subcontractors who eat through the pile of money like a vulture eats carrion. This is a system that over time lobbies to further entrench and sustain itself and becomes impossible to rip out and restart. If you go advocating for privatizing the transit system you'd be likened to Judge Doom before people stop and think for a second of what that would actually look like: the shinkansen for example.

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

#244

Post by asdff » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #69

asdff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about this all the time every time I see an lcd screen in my local train stations. If people who designed them actually used transit, maybe they'd have the signs you can only see as you walk out of the station say something about the bus lines you'd transfer to, instead of when the train behind you that just departed from is set to arrive. At some stations the screens they installed don't display anything use…

For sure. I think a lot of this is just about how heavy the planning cycles are. A lot of stuff like that is developed through big, waterfall planning efforts and large outsourcing contracts. Most of the choices were made before they had their first user, and once it's all installed any revision would be a) expensive, and b) a black eye for the people in charge. And in some ways I don't blame people for doing this, b…

I think a lot of projects have adopted a ritualism around an ideal that only exist in renders vs actual learned pragmatism as well. Despite these glaring shortcomings that I really must not be the only one to realize, the system still creates new stations or other infrastructure beholden to the same shortcomings. Pro transit journalists have their work cut out for them: it's so easy to ding these builds on a usual laundry list of items, but somehow the engineers are like automatons who blindly follow prescription probably from a higher form of government and one again, never seem to test the system beyond simulation I'd presume. How do you fix this? It seems so fouled from the top authority mandating stupid infrastructure to the bottom subcontractors who are hired to implement these plans and use their influence to perpetuate such byzantine planning, where they will be the most qualified contractors to bid on future projects. The inertia of these maligned incentives seems insurmountable. Everything seems so rotten and hard to fix without a total reset.

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

#245

Post by asdff » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

xcrunner529 wrote: post #23

asdff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about this all the time every time I see an lcd screen in my local train stations. If people who designed them actually used transit, maybe they'd have the signs you can only see as you walk out of the station say something about the bus lines you'd transfer to, instead of when the train behind you that just departed from is set to arrive. At some stations the screens they installed don't display anything use…

Well and lots that don’t even take the transit they manage. It’s just so infuriating.

Metros would rather build a sprawling parking lot for their bus and train operators to park their cars in, than to ask why the local metro system is such a nonstarter to so many of the metros own employees.

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

#246

Post by aorloff » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 1:07 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #147

aorloff wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have some evidence that government is not incompetent ?

The US government created the network you used to write that comment.

As a byproduct of other efforts, not on purpose.

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

#247

Post by iancmceachern » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 6:19 AM UTC

bhawks wrote: post #123

arrosenberg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

They make money by exploiting their position not through their salary. These people are around in SF - see Mohammed Nuru, Rodrigo Santos and so on.

I live in Victor Makras' Apartment, the one that got him in trouble for the port thing.

It's hard to live in SF for long without inadvertently touching corruption, even if you actively try to avoid it.

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

#248

Post by rangestransform » Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 9:10 PM UTC

kiwijamo wrote: post #175

rangestransform wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other countries don't treat public transit as a jobs program other cities (in the east, with the best public transit) don't let unions grab the entire city by the balls government employees in other cities aren't as hellbent on extracting their pound of flesh from the taxpayer

I struggle to understand how unions/government are often seen as the problem. Some of the best public transit I've experienced have been in places with strong unions and more government-owned/managed public transit e.g. much of Europe. Some of the worst in places where unions are weak and "public" transit is largely out-sourced to private entities operating on behalf of public transit agencies e.g. the US, UK, Austra…

public/privately operated transit is a completely different topic than unionized/non-unionized staff except in the west where public sector unions have the government by the balls

Consider the cost of Singapore building with imported migrant labour vs NYC building with ~~mafia~~ union labour

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

#249

Post by JoyousAbandon » Sun, Apr 14, 2024, 5:34 AM UTC

jcgrillo wrote: post #135

JoyousAbandon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He never said it was better. He's pointing out glaring factual errors in the story.

Where is the factual error? This passage is the one we're taking about right? > Turns out that in 1998, SFMTA had the latest cutting edge technology when they installed their automatic train control system. > "We were the first agency in the U.S. to adopt this particular technology but it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive so you have to load the software from floppy disks on to the computer," Th…

[dead]

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

#250

Post by JoyousAbandon » Sun, Apr 14, 2024, 5:36 AM UTC

jcgrillo wrote: post #179

JoyousAbandon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only snark here is yours. What are you talking about with "computers in someone's basement?" He pointed out glaring factual errors in the story, which should not have made it through any kind of editorial review. For example: 25 years ago pretty much every computer had a hard drive. And the disk depicted in the article is obviously a 3.5", not a "five-inch floppy."

> glaring factual errors You keep parroting this maxim without showing any convincing evidence of an error... what's the point of that? You obviously have some affinity for factual correctness, yet your style of argument and evidentiary rigor appears to boil down to "repeating the maxim many times in many different places makes it more factually true" which is obviously nonsense. Maybe some food for thought?

[dead]