301–310 of 365 posts
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I am not familiar with European train, but it seems that they did? > The international trains are not affected by this failure. > The night trains can still run.
That isn't useful for 99% of passengers. He obviously meant run a reasonable percentage of trains, like 25-50%.
I think it’s worth mentioning that while the IT system couldn’t coordinate the trains safely, it was a management decision to stop them from running. Coordination can happen myriad ways. For example, trains could operate according to their normal schedule, and if one needed to deviate they could radio in, and an operator could let downstream trains know to proceed accordingly. Maybe simple cell-phone GPS pings could…
About the only thing they could maybe have done was to fall back on back-and-forth shuttle trains between major node stations. But that would only provide a very basic service, with incorrect train materiel being used for the normally expected number of passengers. It would be just enough to get passengers and personnel home. I would like to see something like a pen-and-paper schedule that they can fall back on, but they don't have it. (They did something like that at the first corona lockdowns, although with more planning involved.)
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A much more efficient automation. For instance, running high speed rail without computer signalling would be a huge risk there's no sense in taking ( due to the speeds involved, by the time you see anything of issue like a train or damage in the tracks in front, it's too late to stop).
I think that's a bit of a leap from what I was saying. I didn't imply that all software and computation is bad. Obviously, a human cannot live handle any control system that needs even remotely fast operation. The point is that due to scaling issues, we're removing humans from systems where humans excel or could serve as backups in the event of failure (and actually vice versa). Scale creates problems that are partia…
Another example I love, that is even less ambiguous, is restaurants (traditional, not fast food) that require waiters to take orders on touchscreen PoS systems, instead of taking the orders on a notepad and inputting them later. The touch screens are incredibly slower on a bigger party ordering appetizers, a main course, drinks and desert - it takes forever to navigate back and forth and find the right item, and usually has to be done again and again for each diner. By comparison, a notepad allows the waiter to write down exactly what they hear, often just making small extra notes to indicate duplicate items.
Of course, this particular one could be improved by arranging the menus more naturally for someone taking orders, and several other conveniences (such as always keeping the current order on screen, to easily tap to add "oh, and another beer for me", "I'll have the same desert as her" etc).
The fact that it happened on a Sunday suggests to me that this is the result of a service outage gone awry. Realize that the trains failing on a Sunday is really not a big deal. However, if the trains don't run for Monday morning rush hour that is a big deal. I bet they made a change Saturday night and something broke Sunday morning. It's now Monday morning here and the trains are back to normal in time for rush hour…
I have to say that I do find this framing which says "well, it didn't affect business, so no big deal" to be somewhat distasteful. It's completely dehumanising. Why run the trains at all at the weekend, if a weekend outage is no big deal?
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The Dutch railways said (in Dutch) themselves that it was a problem with the scheduling software which also has a role in safety. Apparently this is also used to route around for example a stopped train, so when it's not working it's not safe to operate anything but a handful of trains. There was a lot of extra impact because this system also feeds the passenger information so their app, website and information scree…
There is no correlation between the schedule you see at Dutch train stations monitor screens, and the actual schedule of Dutch trains:-) You might see this is an ironic comment, but it is as much that, and as much a technical statement of fact. Sometimes the trains arrive at the correct time ( +/- 10 min) so they correlate to what you are seeing on the screen. But unless it's a delay of 1 hour or more, neither trains…
It might be that what you heard only applied to international trains, those have generally lagged behind technology-wise (though nowadays there's certainly also real-time schedule information for them).
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That sounds unrealistic given the size of the problem.
They did it before the whole thing was automated. Surely they can do it again.
[0] Extremely rough off-the-cuff estimate. They were obviously automating as they went along during the years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Dutch railways said (in Dutch) themselves that it was a problem with the scheduling software which also has a role in safety. Apparently this is also used to route around for example a stopped train, so when it's not working it's not safe to operate anything but a handful of trains. There was a lot of extra impact because this system also feeds the passenger information so their app, website and information scree…
There is no correlation between the schedule you see at Dutch train stations monitor screens, and the actual schedule of Dutch trains:-) You might see this is an ironic comment, but it is as much that, and as much a technical statement of fact. Sometimes the trains arrive at the correct time ( +/- 10 min) so they correlate to what you are seeing on the screen. But unless it's a delay of 1 hour or more, neither trains…
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An absolute legend! My favourite of his jokes: "when I moved to Sweden from Norway, the average IQ went up in both countries".
Take a bit time to understand this joke. Crazy. Especially the new host would not be very appreciated of that la.
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That isn't useful for 99% of passengers. He obviously meant run a reasonable percentage of trains, like 25-50%.
Maybe we have different definition of fewer trains, because I wouldn't expect more than 10% at most, realistically 2-3%. And those trains are probably already 2-3%.