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."
At first glance I was extremely excited to hear about anti-gravity trains, but then my joy was quickly destroyed by graffiti.
"Germany's national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, plans to test small drones to try to reduce the theft of small drones introduced earlier. The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who steal property at night. A company spokesman said drones would be tested at rail depots soon."
Raise your hand if you read that too.
Paint me disappointed :(
Simply turning off the fucking floodlights wouldn't just save DB a fortune on juice, it makes vandal highly visible. You can't tag if you can't see; any light is a give-away. But since DB can count on continued tax money and political support -- and because no bureaucrat or middle manager ever got ahead by reducing waste or head count -- they'll spearhead the use of drones. The justice ministry and police will follow.
We can stop essentially all crime, or at least prosecute it after it happens by installing surveillance everywhere. We need to decide where we are willing to use this technology. This particular application seems pretty harmless - as long as the railway companies don't decide that now that they have the drones they might as well monitor employee efficiency.....
I'm not German, but their railway is very good.
A group ticket for five people for a 120km journey last week (on a week-day) cost EUR35. We were over an hour early, due to a tail-wind on the flight, and were surprised that the booked ticket was still valid for the earlier train.
A similar journey in the UK (where I live) would have cost a *lot* more, like EUR15-20 each, and we couldn't have got the earlier train without buying new tickets. However, the British train would probably have been longer (more space) and faster. (The German high-speed ICE is faster than the British intercity trains, but the German local trains seem to be slower than normal British trains.)
Oh, and the German trains and surroundings definitely have more graffiti. So does Germany in general.
I like the American solution better. Its been shown to reduce recidivism.
Have gnu, will travel.
People can be overly critical of a good system on a bad day if they have high expectations from it.
and give the vandals a taste of their own medicine.
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.
Or hire human guards. You know. Employing a few people to politely escort the kids out of the train station. I would do that job. Would have no problem detaining the ones that would not politely leave.
It doesn't happen in the train station.
Its actually when the trains are parked that they get spray painted. Some of this Graffiti are elaborate works of (misplaced) art, that take hours to apply.
Railroads are starting to fence off their switch and storage yards, and put cameras high up on polls, which makes far more sense than a drone. One guy can watch 50 cameras, but each drone takes a separate operator to fly and monitor.
Drones are a stupid idea.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It's the same north of Germany. We see a lot of cable copper theft, I don't think anyone cares about the graffiti - this sounds like someone tried to find an angle for the story but knew jack shit about the situation. A camera on a stick is equally good at spotting thieves and vandals.
... whatever
People can be overly critical of a good system on a bad day if they have high expectations from it.
Believe me, I know. I'm British, and live in London.
On holiday in Germany, my friends mostly complained about how bad British [everything] was in comparison, which gets old pretty quickly. I think it's worse than the general complaining -- without comparison -- back in Britain, since at least there I can pretend people haven't travelled much and don't know any better.
Next move is to install some of the "other" Rheinmetall products on the drones and the grafitti problem will be solved fully automatically >:->
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?!
One guy can watch 50 cameras, but each drone takes a separate operator to fly and monitor.
Depends on how autonomous the drones are. An autopilot system running them around defined points (and allowing you to take manual control to get better view if you see something happening) shouldn't be too difficult.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Save the money on drones. Legalize it. Reward the more artistic ones. Televise the awards, add commercials, Make money off them.
But won't that just make graffiti worse? NI! I say Ni! at you!! It will make the folks doing graffiti STOP. They won't want to be seen as "working for the man" and all that jazz.
Remove the challenge, don't escalate it. The taggers already out-do each other to get to tag even more insane spots without getting caught. If anyone can just spray paint anything, no one will.
Sorry, but WTF Deutsche Bahn???
There have been 3 trains that derailed in Stuttgart last year, and one runaway train that luckily didn't kill anybody because it happened at 4am.
Stuttgart is the city that gave you Mercedes Benz, Bosch and Porsche.
They seriously have better things to do than to care about graffitis.
If you want those bridges to be painted, then go through the appropriate channels. There is never an excuse to illegally graffiti.
sure there is. first off it's cheap. second, sometimes it's funny. third, it's convenient since going through "appropriate channels" is boring, takes years and results in boring shit being approved.
just plain boring gang tagging on the other hand or embarrassingly ugly IRA murals etc shit..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Can you back that capacity claim up with some hard facts?
I've done some calculations based on the main London-Bristol line in the UK that runs close to where I live. Based on a 500 seat train passing every 5 minutes during the peak, that's 6000 passengers per hour*. Compare this with cars traveling at 100km/h, each 10m apart carrying 1 passenger, that's 10000 passengers per hour. (*My guess for the train seems to be more or less in line with the offical UK stats at http://assets.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/rail-passenger-numbers-and-crowding-on-weekdays-2011/rail-passengers-crowding-2011.pdf that show's approx 5000 passengers per hour at Bristol, of which my main line is only one of 4 routes into the city)
As for the power, suffice to say that if the politicians can sort out the renewables then that won't be an issue.
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..