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DC Metro Closes For Emergency Safety Inspection (nbcwashington.com)
McGruber writes with NBC's report that Washington, DC's Metrorail system has been completely shut down for at least 29 hours, so crews can check 600 underground jumper cables:
A problem with those jumper cables caused a fire at the McPherson Square station early Monday and was also the cause of a fatal smoke incident in January, 2015, that killed one person and injured others. The safety checks could have been delayed until the weekend or conducted at night over about six days, officials said. But if the system were kept open, a public announcement about the risk would have to be made. That would have put passengers, and Metro, in the awkward position of publicly acknowledging that it was operating despite being aware of a potentially deadly safety problem. Metro also would have been liable in the case of any crashes or calamities. The shutdown prompted the Washington Post to publish an editorial titled It's official: Metro is a national embarrassment."
If we all had flying cars this would not be a problem.
Far too often these things aren't done because they are too hard. Glad to see them take it seriously and check everything out, although I feel the pain for commuters in DC.
If the first deadly accident with these jumper cables happened in January of last year, why did they wait so long to close down to inspect?
Made from privately-mined asteroid resources and powered by a space-based solar panel array?
Hmm, where is it yuo Luddites!?
In related news, I-94 outside of Milwaukee will be shut down late Friday night to allow bridge construction to continue. Seriously though, infrastructure breaks down and needs major repairs from time to time, so why is this news to the point of causing the Washington Post to whine about some repairs as a "national embarrassment." (Believe me - no one outside of DC cares one bit about this story.)
Read about Brigadier General Wherley and how he died.
Or rather, the culture that allowed this to happen.
Last January, an electrical fire caused by problems in feeder wires that provide power to the rails killed someone. The NTSB ordered DC Metro to inspect ALL such feeder wires.
Last Monday, another electrical fire was caused by a problem in feeder wires - wires that were apparently "inspected" and "passed" just a few months ago.
In other words, the previous inspections were falsified. In US Navy parlance, they were "gundecked".
My guess is a few mid-level managers and quite a bit of workers who did the earlier "inspections" are about to be fired - after EVERYONE spends 24 hours not getting paid overtime fixing the problems they previously worked hard to hide.
FWIW, the new director of DC Metro - Paul Wiedefeld - came from running BWI airport, which he once shut down for an entire day due to a crappy safety record.
WMATA did an inspection of the jumper cables back in February 2015 and then replaced around 120 or so. They probably thought the problem was resolved at that point. Unfortunately, a new fire earlier this week revealed that the problem has not been resolved.
It's an election year, so the metro is filling up with the black ooze that is the souls of congress and other politicians.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In 2014 I travelled for the first time to the United States, and I was astonished at the public transit system. It felt like stepping into a third world country. It was dirty, smelt of human urine (?!), there were people wandering around shouting loudly and insanely to no one, and the rolling stock felt like it was taken straight from 1950's, rather than being clean and modern. I found it all very frightening.
I don't know what went wrong there, but if I lived there I would try to never use that system as the experience was so wretched. Contrast with Tokyo, London, Moscow, and any number of other major cities with clean, safe, and modern public transportation systems that alleviate the need for automotive traffic which congests the lanes.
"You only have two remaining free articles for this month"
Yet I didn't notice a single free article, they were plastered with ads anyway.
(I don't have an ad blocker installed on the work computer, I guess I should install one)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
The material used for DC metro is made in Italy by AnsaldoBreda. The only other countries use these trains are in extremely corrupted countries in Africa.
I was surprised to see it when visiting DC, never had I been in a metro that is so slow, noisy, looking unsafe (moving parts, big gaps between plates) and a smell of smoldering plastic and hot soldering iron.
This company has a has a history of bad equipment and corruption:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnsaldoBreda#Controversies
The trains catch fire, run off the rails, etc.. Probably DC does run the trains slower than originally specified to prevent these issues.
Even in China the metro trains are made by Siemens/Bosch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Modular_Metro
The cables man, we are shutting down because of the cables. Moo says the sheople.
There is a serious incident on Monday, one of a number that have been raising concern. The metro decides to shut down the system to do a major safety inspection. That is somehow bad?
The summary suggests that they could have waited until the weekend, which is true or done it at night over a longer period of time, which is also true. Of course, if another incident had occurred in either of those time frames and lives were lost, what then?
Have we really gotten to the point in the US that no matter what the authorities do, even with matters of safety, it is always bad?
It's official: Metro is a national embarrassment."
The US electoral process, on the other hand, is an international embarrassment. I never watch reality TV, and even I'm keeping track of it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Since when do power cables spontaneously combust? What actually caused the fires, has there been any disclosure?
In Canada Via Rail increasing security after receiving threat
Sniffer dogs and RCMP being deployed at some stations
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
rewriting history since 2109
This is absolutely true. I have to exit the Metro at the downtown Bethesda station most work-days, and the escalators are worrisome, to say the least. On a fairly regular basis, one of them stops running suddenly, with a loud clang, jolting everyone on it. Then WMATA workers are seen scrambling around to direct people to wait in the station until they can get it restarted, or to take the elevator instead (which is a SLOW process, as the one elevator only holds 8 people or so at a time).
Within 10 minutes or so, they usually seem to get it restarted just by having an authorized person flip the tripped circuit breaker in the control room. You have to wonder what's REALLY wrong, causing it to kick off like that, though?
They promised all new escalators would be installed at that station, but they've been working on that, piecemeal, for months and months now. The middle escalator has been out of service since 3rd. quarter 2015 or so, and so far, no signs they've even got the replacement metal steps put back in yet.
As for the metro train cars themselves? They still use quite a few of the cars that are almost as old as the metro system itself. (I think the only model older is the type that doesn't even have an LED signboard on the outside telling you where it's going, but had a paper sign that flipped, instead. They still use one of those retired cars as the money collection car when they have to service the ticket machines in stations.) But yeah ... they're old, worn out looking, and really need to be taken out of service. The cars one model newer added the feature of telling passengers, on the inside, what the next station stop would be on a display. But every time they connect up one of the older model cars to those, it breaks that functionality -- so then the signboard is stuck simply displaying the name of the metro line during the whole trip. They're constantly mixing and matching them so 3 out of 4 times, that feature is broken.
They just started putting new cars in service, but I only see one of them circulating right now. I understand they had some fiasco with the new ones where the doors weren't opening and closing properly, and they didn't think to buy them with a service agreement that included techs coming on-site to adjust or fix them. So they actually have to send the cars back to Japan to be adjusted properly!
They also recently had some issues with robberies happening on the trains. So what did they do? Wasted a bunch of money putting together a committee to discuss the problem and come up with possible improvements. Their suggestions at the end of all that? Real no-brainers like "Have more police ride on the metro cars." Duh! We *pay* people for those ideas?
... why mass transit will never defeat private individual/family transport in the US. People who've experienced freedom do not like to be at the mercy of morons or jerks and they hate being inconvenienced by bureaucrats who do not plan well, do not provide sufficient advanced warnings of service interruptions, and do not have good explanations for the inconveniences.
It's already very problematic that mass transit:
1. does not meet you at your point of origin (so you must waste time and energy getting yourself to a station)
2. does not deliver you to your destination (so you must waste time and energy getting from a station)
3. does not travel on your schedule (so you must waste time leaving earlier than necessary on every trip and probably waste time at your destination because you arrived too early)
4. forces you to be in proximity to strangers (mass transit, by definition, packs a bunch of strangers into compartments where they are stuck for the duration of the trip) who may be dangerous or nuts (governments love to pack the government-dependent mentally-compromised onto mass transit)
5. Puts you at the mercy of the frequently poorly trained, possibly incompetent, often lazy and distracted vehicle operators
But, HEY, What's not to like?
The ONLY mass transit systems likely to partially succeed in the US are automated systems like Hyperloop, and self-driving cabs. Each of these eliminates several of the issues listed above, and Hyperloopp adds crazy speeds with fewer people per cabin. Normal subways, trains, and busses suffer from all of them.
The Metro's first priority in hiring is race, not competence.
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
http://www.foxnews.com/politic...
corruption and culture of ignoring the rules? no wonder maintenance doesn't get done.
I used the DC metro back in 1994 and it was awesome. Granted, I'm sure a lot has changed since then...
Both had similar failures - one of the AC-power lines had over-heated at the (automotive "spade" connector), singing the cable insulation until it shorted out elsewhere. Inadequate jointing design. One cable I replaced, another - where a plastic-bodied time clock was physically close - I took the clock out of the circuit, leaving the thermostat operating.
Same vendor. I left it to my father to choose whether to report the (common) fault. Both devices failed safe. Dad understands the situation and implications - it's up to him whether to report the (common, design) fault. We both suspect "built-in failure," as failure of the devices (see above - failed safe) would typically lead to replacement of the device instead of investigation of the fault. In which case the likely respones would be "here are new ones, can we have the evidence for evaluation" (for cases of "evaluation" identical to "destroy the evidence").
Tesco probaly hate people like us who deny them their extra #40 of sales for 1 hour of investigation and repair. I get the feeling that we're not meant to do this.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"