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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?
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.)
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.
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?
Actually, WMATA's rolling stock comes from several companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Breda made the 2000, 3000 and 4000 series trains. The 2000 and 3000 series were remanufactured by Alstom in the 2000's and the 4000 series are being retired early and replaced with 7000 series, which were manufactured by Kawasaki.
I can't speak to the quality of Alstom or Kawasaki, but it seems they at least learned their lesson about Breda. Eventually.
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
talk to mr. bezos
Personally I don't read it any more because of it's decidedly screwball view of reality. #YMMV
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
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"