Slashdot Mirror
German Railways To Test Anti-Graffiti Drones
garymortimer writes "Germany's national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, plans to test small drones to try to reduce the amount of graffiti being sprayed on its property. The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who deface property at night. A company spokesman said drones would be tested at rail depots soon."
Graffiti is a huge problem in Germany. All the graffiti is really embarrassing when I'm in Berlin with people from abroad.
Less graffiti probably means more tourists and less service outages because the train you were supposed to take is currently being cleaned, so there you get your tax dollars right back. (Not to mention that getting caught means you have to foot the bill for the removal of your graffiti, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to get you to pay some fraction of whatever the drones and their infrastructure cost, too.)
And most important, less graffiti also means fewer people stressed from eye cancer, and possibly fewer people who think it's okay to be a criminal.
At least when graffiti is found under bridges and on old rusty depot buildings around rail roads (you'll see this in Strasbourg for example) it's tolerable, because those bridges and buildings are truly ugly, I mean depressingly ugly.
When the train cars are being vandalised this way it's just retarded.
You can't handle the truth.
Read AC's post.
Trains are fuel efficient. Right here in the US, it's been demonstrated that a train can move freight for a small fraction of the cost that trucks can move freight. The only problem with trains here, is that they are never on time. You can't send a refrigerated car filled with vegetables from Yuma to Philadelphia, because you never know when it will arrive. An 18-wheeler gets it there reliably, in 4 days with a solo driver, 2 days with team drivers. But - the COST is ridiculous.
If the idiots who manage the trains could just figure out how to SCHEDULE the damned things, we could save tons of money on everything.
Including passenger service.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I visited Germany recently and enjoyed the graffiti tremendously. While there's some utter crap, I found the graffiti to be of significantly higher quality than what I typically encounter in my home country.
Less graffiti probably means more tourists (...)
I highly doubt that - possibly even on the contrary. Graffiti is an important part of what makes Berlin Berlin.
0x or or snor perron?!
You realise that often times train delays are caused by graffiti?
The London Tube essentially killed graffiti by refusing to run any trains with any graffiti at all - panels or throwups.
Obviously, this leads directly to delays.
Furthermore, if the company is dropping 10M on cleaning per year, that's 10M on maintenance that it's (presumably) not spending..