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BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

sfchronicle.com

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Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#81

Post by userbinator »

tialaramex wrote: post #9

Change Control for trains is fun, because there's lots of safety testing it can take a lot of time for a change which is either purely cosmetic or fixes something that has a well-understood workaround to actually make it to production. Several years ago the main type of train I use, Class 444 Desiro got a firmware upgrade to teach it Selective Door Operation. Meaning now it knows this platform is 8 carriages long, th…

But the firmware upgrade messed up the clock.

I'd be very curious to see what causes things like this, and especially the code... but then again, maybe seeing the code will just put me off ever riding in one.

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#82

Post by hcnews »

throwaway_17426 wrote: post #45

Is anyone else concerned about the surveillance in the new BART trains? It looks like there are 7-9 small CCTV cameras in each car. This means that there is nowhere inside the vehicle where you have private space to enter a password, or check your work email, or pull out a laptop to do some programming. For people who spend 60 minutes (or more) commuting, this is obnoxious. Also, this is another step toward pervasive…

You can get a privacy screen for the laptop.

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#83

Post by frankharv »

pizza234 wrote: post #76
qaq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are oversimplifying the issue. There are cultural differences that influence things like that too. As priorities shift things can change. So in US you have people living in large houses driving large cars and on average having crappy public transport infra. In Europe you have people living in much more modest size houses mostly driving tiny cars and often having good public transport infra. For me Europea…

I find it scandalous the perception that anything that is not a SUV is tiny. One of the most sold cars in Europe is the Volkswagen Golf; I don't see how that is tiny. Interestingly, I see that mid and large size classes (mid-size being a "large family car") originated in USA, which makes me wonder if that's a typical American perception. I'd even argue that 1400+ kg for moving around an average of 1.5 person/120 kg (…

The Golf has been a compact car in the USA since the day it was delivered to our shores in the 70's.

Are compact cars tiny? That is debatable. Compared to a 1961 Lincon Continental with suicide doors it is very tiny.

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#84

Post by dang »

moreira wrote: post #18

I think there’s a general feeling (propaganda?) that the US is a technological leader, but... there’s nothing to support that, especially when it comes to infrastructure. The US is really far behind other developed countries in a lot of ways but few people in the US notice because most Americans rarely ever look outside their culture bubble or see another country. There are big-ass tech companies, of course, but the…

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. I'm sure that wasn't your intent, but that's the probable outcome of comments like this.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547137 and marked it off-topic.

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#85

Post by dang »

luckydata wrote: post #72
chrischen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Unless you're going from end-to-end, you're unlikely to do a 60 minute commute on a BART 2) It turned out a lot of BART cameras were fake. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Repl... 3) If they got rid of cameras you'd still not be able to use your computer during your commute because you'd almost certainly be robbed within the year if you were to use it every day on the BART for a year. In fac…

That's complete hogwash. It is very common to commute 60 minutes, for example looks like half the workforce at Salesforce lives in Fremont. In the morning the train fills up right at warm springs and gets empty at embarcadero. This legend that Bart is mostly for short rides is just that, a legend. Most people using Bart have pretty long commute from Concord, Dublin and Fremont into the city.

It's great to provide correct information, but please don't call names in HN comments. This is in the site guidelines:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.)

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#86

Post by craftyguy »

bobthepanda wrote: post #65
mhb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any Ohio-sized area in the US that has a system comparable to the Swedish one?

Funnily enough, the Midwest is pretty much a spoke and hub of medium sized metro areas focused around Chicago. There’s the Northeast corridor (and its cousin the Southeast corridor going down to Atlanta). The PNW cities also are clustered like this but have difficult geography. California and the Central Valley with the Bay and LA also meet this criteria, but CAHSR is run by a mix of incompetents and constrained by t…

> The PNW cities also are clustered like this but have difficult geography.

Not really. It's pretty flat here in the Willamette valley, where the majority of Oregon's population lives, and relatively flat going north into Washington to Seattle... But the best we've got for long distance trains is Amtrak which shares the tracks with commercial traffic, where Amtrak gets basically the lowest priority on the tracks.

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#87

Post by craftyguy »

hyperbovine wrote: post #25
pmoriarty wrote: post #13

About 20 to 25 years ago, I took a trip from the US (where I'd lived most of my life) to travel around Europe by train, and I was immensely impressed by its far superior train system. The best trains of all the countries I visited were in Sweden, which had trains which were so modern that they seemed like something out of the future, even compared to the best trains I'd seen in the US by that time, Amtrak trains. The…

It’s not really a fair comparison. In terms of where people actually live (the upper two thirds of Sweden is almost empty) its roughly comparable to Ohio: about ten million people clustered in 4 or 5 major cities within a few hours drive distance from each other. Of course it will be easier to provide superior rail service there. This is not so say that Ohio has its act together as far as public transit is concerned…

I think their point is that one city (SF, not the entire US) took 20 years to get trains that Sweden had throughout their country 20 years ago. Their comparison is actually worse for the US than comparing the entire US train system (ha) to Sweden. That's really sad.

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#88

Post by mktmkr »

hyperbovine wrote: post #25
pmoriarty wrote: post #13

About 20 to 25 years ago, I took a trip from the US (where I'd lived most of my life) to travel around Europe by train, and I was immensely impressed by its far superior train system. The best trains of all the countries I visited were in Sweden, which had trains which were so modern that they seemed like something out of the future, even compared to the best trains I'd seen in the US by that time, Amtrak trains. The…

It’s not really a fair comparison. In terms of where people actually live (the upper two thirds of Sweden is almost empty) its roughly comparable to Ohio: about ten million people clustered in 4 or 5 major cities within a few hours drive distance from each other. Of course it will be easier to provide superior rail service there. This is not so say that Ohio has its act together as far as public transit is concerned…

Can we just start with Ohio? Ohio has the population density of Spain and twice the GDP per capita, but it lacks passenger rail service almost entirely.

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#89

Post by closeparen »

mktmkr wrote: post #88
hyperbovine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really a fair comparison. In terms of where people actually live (the upper two thirds of Sweden is almost empty) its roughly comparable to Ohio: about ten million people clustered in 4 or 5 major cities within a few hours drive distance from each other. Of course it will be easier to provide superior rail service there. This is not so say that Ohio has its act together as far as public transit is concerned…

Can we just start with Ohio? Ohio has the population density of Spain and twice the GDP per capita, but it lacks passenger rail service almost entirely.

Columbus has an average commute time of 21.8 minutes [0], among the best in America. Would public transit do better? Is it a good use of funds to replace what’s working well?

https://storage.googleapis.com/titlemax-media/2018/03/averag...

Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected

#90

Post by slavik81 »

pilif wrote: post #4

The Swiss national train company has their own share of issues with trains built by Bombardier. After years of delays, what was finally delivered is horribly unreliable and passengers also don't like the shaking feeling when they do run. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBB_RABe_502 Two examples doesn't make a trend, but seeing how similar the issues are, maybe there is some systemic issue plaguing them.

Kind of off-topic, but Bombardier was running a really terrible ad on TV in Canada a few years back.

It featured a couple of tourists in Europe asking a lady to take a photo for them. She purposefully waited until a train blocked the shot, so they got a photo of the train instead of the view they wanted. She then shows them the sabotaged photo and says something like, "I made that train! It's Bombardier."

I think the point of the ad was that they're an important exporter that creates good jobs and that earns international recognition. It was clearly designed for strengthening political support from the provincial and federal governments, not for selling trains. To me, though, it just made them seem like selfish assholes.

I wish I could find the ad, but Google just returns a mountain of news reports and marketing videos.

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