What's Frying the Electrical Systems On BART Trains? (ieee.org)

Tekla Perry writes: Earlier this month, BART engineers shut down a substation in hopes that the closure would quiet the power surges that were frying the electrical propulsion equipment on BART cars -- a peak of 40 in just one day in February. The shutdown seemed to solve the problem, but BART officials weren't sure they'd really found the answer. Yesterday, the power surges popped up again, on an entirely different section of tracks, damaging 50 cars before BART closed off that section, rerouting passengers onto buses. Track inspections yesterday revealed nothing, and BART reports that it has reached out to experts around the country and asked them to fly in and help solve the mystery. Do you have a theory? Note: BART is the 5th-busiest heavy-rail rapid transit system in the U.S.

Comments

Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[fragMasterFlash]

Which nation-state is sponsoring the hacking crew that will inevitably be blamed for this issue?

Re: Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking which laid off hertz IT worker is getting his frustrations out

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Frosty Piss]

I think it's the Chinese.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[PPH]

I think it's the British

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[flopsquad]

Which nation-state is sponsoring the hacking crew that will inevitably be blamed for this issue?

Well dammit we'd know already if they hadn't gone dark with all the unbreakable encryptions on their iPhones!

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Robert Shaw didn't play a British character in that, did he? It's a long while since I read the novel and can't remember the remake.

Bored SF hackers, probably.

Gezundheit.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[CanadianMacFan]

Maybe they should have used that encryption on the infrastructure instead.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[frovingslosh]

Of course it's the Chinese, but we will never know for sure until we make out computers even less secure by forcing Apple to build in back doors.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Darinbob]

Yes, let's encrypt all the power lines.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my 1st thought. They stole all the info, now they're in the next phase - proof of concept disruption. Stage 3 - take down the USA.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[kenwd0elq]

Could be; especially since a similar problem is affecting the D.C. Metro trains. Perhaps the Iranians have reverse-engineered Stuxnet and pointed it back at us?

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be... ironic... if it turned out that there was some code designed to target specific seimens industrial microcontrollers in there. Cough.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[arglebargle_xiv]

Dholes. Gotta be dholes.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[AmiMoJo]

I was going to suggest North Korea, but they are screwing themselves enough at the moment. Logic suggests this one will be attributed to China.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[houghi]

So why is it connected to the Internet? And who thought that would be a good idea?

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

United States

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[mangamaster03]

Siemens is good about issuing firmware updates as these vulnerabilities are found. I keep getting emails telling me to upgrade my S7-300s. Whether BART actually acted on the firmware updates, which requires shutting down the micro-controllers is a different matter altogether. My guess as to whether they went out and updated firmware for all the controllers?...Nah...it's not that important.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[CanadianMacFan]

Yes because the bad guys are trying to hack the power lines.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Donald will have them build an isolation transformer, and they're going to pay for it.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

>Insightful

Slashdot is so retarded. I keep asking myself why I even use it, anymore.

Re:Hackers ruining our infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe it's a local group? Recently the Oakland Police had their entire communications system go down. for the 2d time.
if someone wanted to wreck havoc maybe they have found a way to do it? i.m.o too much reliance on electrical devices is dangerous.
It doesn't have to be a person with evil intent. could be a sunspot erupting. Thinking of the cooling pools for spend fuel rods,
too much is balanced too precariously. lets not forget now cars can be hacked and driven head on into walls .. like Hastings' was.

Solar flares

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar flares are my goto explanation for pretty much any hardware failure. That, and carnies.

Re:Solar flares

[ZipK]

That, and carnies.

You can't trust 'em. Nomads. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.

Small hands... short fingers.

Re:Solar flares

[kenwd0elq]

My "go to" excuse for any electronic problems is "sunspots, or stray cosmic rays". However.....

The Sun has been very quiet for the last several weeks, and Solar Cycle 24 is on a steep downward trend. I expect that we'll begin an extended Solar Minimum by the end of 2016 which may last 3-4 years (the "average" is 2 years, and the last Solar Min was nearly 3). I also expect that the next few solar cycles will be fairly quiet. Perhaps not Maunder Minimum quiet, but probably Dalton Minimum quiet, or nearly so.

You should visit www.spaceweather.com periodically to keep up to date on this.

Also; it's going to get somewhat chilly by and by.

I'm not sayin' it's aliens...

[BradleyUffner]

...but it's aliens.

Re:I'm not sayin' it's aliens...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like that thing that never happened in New York?

Re:I'm NOT sayin' it's aliens...

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's something strange in your neighborhood. Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!

Re:I'm not sayin' it's aliens...

[Rakarra]

Like that thing that never happened in New York?

Now now, we only wish Men In Black II hadn't happened.

Who stands to benefit?

[diakka]

Perhaps some party who seeks to bid on a contract to build a new transit system for the bay area?

Re:Who stands to benefit?

[pauljlucas]

The new BART cars have already been ordered and are on their way. This was finalized a while ago.

Re:Who stands to benefit?

[Z00L00K]

Considering that it's aged - don't rule out aging wire insulation that no longer does its job.

Re:Who stands to benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, Ockham. No one wants to hear your reasonable explanations.

Re:Who stands to benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly and maybe shit is just too old and not maintained the right way with right expertize..

Re:Who stands to benefit?

[dl_sledding]

{gn mode on}
AC: it's expertise. You should also learn how to use caps and avoid run-on sentences.
{gn mode off}

I-squared-L?

[swschrad]

could there perhaps be enough inductance in the multi-motor systems that it is generating its own connect/disconnect/connect surges? try isolating those DC motor controllers from both the track and the motors with some diode stacks and snubber caps.

Re: I-squared-L?

[WarJolt]

Oh come on. It couldn't possibly be that simple. I write software for a living and even I know to look for back emf first.

Re:I-squared-L?

[Archfeld]

Unless they have recently upgraded a mass of cars or track, why does it suddenly start happening now ? The system has been in use and fairly reliable for a long time. I have no proof, but the suspicious borderline paranoid inside me is screaming that someone is hacking at the electrical infrastructure that feeds the Bart system, and the problem lies outside their direct observation, and is likely with PG&E's supply system to Bart. PG&E has demonstrated the disregard for maintenance, monitoring, and the security incompetence in the last few years to allow for something like this. It will likely take some outside support for Bart to prove the failures don't lie inside their infrastructure to get PG&E to even begin to look at their own systems.

Re:I-squared-L?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, much of those tracks run along really poor areas. I know winter is over, so heating is not an issue, but in some countries in Eastern Europe the local scourge Indian minorities power mattress springs with wires thrown over 220V power lines. Those spring assemblies grow glowing hot, but the shacks they exist in get comfortably warm. The Bart guys just need to find the shop close to the lines that grows marijuana, mills gun receivers or recharges electric cars. That or the idiot who regularly dumps a bucket of brine over the power and the ground rail.

Capthca: conducts

Re: I-squared-L?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarcasm? The first step any good troubleshooter takes is checking the simple stuff.

Re:I-squared-L?

[Anonymous Coward]

AC motor control can be difficult and different kinds of situations can produce high voltage spikes that fry power electronics. Is the winding topology correctly chosen? Is the length of wiring between motor and controller too low impedance leading to too fast current changes? Is it a software fault in the controller shorting the H-bridge? (It only takes a u-second to fry a controller by shorting) could be in the transition between drive and braking. Is dirty power, rf or magnetic fields getting into the controller electronics to mess it up? Is there a destructive feedback loop between current control of the motor and mechanical oscillations in the drive train?

Why don't the drive around with some logging oscilloscopes and wait until the fault is reproduced?

Re:I-squared-L?

[MrDoh!]

Hacking sounds solid. To eliminate other things; Physical check of the power along the entire route, see if someone's tapped it for any reason or there's 'odd boxes' attached to junctions/controllers?

Re:I-squared-L?

[FirstOne]

Couple that with time and mechanical wear.. The bionding between rail segments is wearing out, (and/or being stolen for scrap metal value.) A few intermittant rail to rail connections based on rail movement, (as when a fully loaded train passes over), would inflict a world of hurt on the 1000volt DC electronics.

Re: I-squared-L?

[Opportunist]

Nine out of ten times the solution is the "oh c'mon, they can't be THAT dumb!" one.

Re:I-squared-L?

[AmiMoJo]

It's also those hippy electrons from windmills and solar panels, with their low capacity factor everyone knows they are unreliable. Throw some nukes in there, that'll fix it.

Re: I-squared-L?

[hey!]

I had a boss once who hired a consultant and was angry when the consultant told him to do the obvious thing.

"You know what a consultant is?" he groused. "Someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time."

I thought about this for a moment. "Yeah, but what's he supposed to do if you're standing there with the watch on your wrist and you don't know what time it is?"

Re: I-squared-L?

[Aaden42]

And eleven out of ten times, they are in fact THAT dumb.

(And the other time it's an off-by-one erro

Re:I-squared-L?

[BronsCon]

On one hand, if the (looks like 000 gauge) conductors connecting the rails are being stolen, that could post a problem. On the other hand, since there are 4 paddles on each side of each car (as the 3rd rail can be on either side, depending on which side the platform is on at the next station), each car maintains contact with both rails as it transitions from one to the next. Likewise for the wheels, making the ground connection for each car. Coupled with the fact that cars share power, a 10 car train will be in contact with 4 or 5 rail pairs at any given moment, a majority of the bonding conductors would have to be missing or severely damaged to cause even a minor power issue. Cars are sized such that when the front of the train is crossing a rail threshold, the rear of the train is in the middle of a rail, so good contact is guaranteed at all times unless the first or last car is severely damaged and missing at least two paddles on the 3rd rail side. Even then, the likelihood of damage is minuscule.

It is almost certainly a supply problem.

Re:I-squared-L?

[BronsCon]

And yes, I meant "pose a problem", not "post a problem". My fault for not proofreading.

Re: I-squared-L?

[UnknownSoldier]

That reminds me of an old engineering joke:

Ford, whose electrical engineers couldnâ(TM)t solve some problems they were having with a gigantic generator, called Steinmetz in to the plant. Upon arriving, Steinmetz rejected all assistance and asked only for a notebook, pencil and cot. According to Scott, Steinmetz listened to the generator and scribbled computations on the notepad for two straight days and nights. On the second night, he asked for a ladder, climbed up the generator and made a chalk mark on its side. Then he told Fordâ(TM)s skeptical engineers to remove a plate at the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil. They did, and the generator performed to perfection.

Henry Ford was thrilled until he got an invoice from General Electric in the amount of $10,000. Ford acknowledged Steinmetzâ(TM)s success but balked at the figure. He asked for an itemized bill.

Steinmetz, Scott wrote, responded personally to Fordâ(TM)s request with the following:

Making chalk mark on generator $1.

Knowing where to make mark $9,999.

Ford paid the bill.

* http://www.snopes.com/business...
* http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...

Re: I-squared-L?

[geoskd]

Oh come on. It couldn't possibly be that simple. I write software for a living and even I know to look for back emf first.

True, but as the article mentioned, the system was designed for 1/20th of the current passenger load. I suspect that the problem actually lies in the way these cars are slowed. The obvious (intelligent) way to do it would be to induce back emf into the supply, and put some of the energy back into the system in the form of increased mains voltage. In small amounts (one car at a time), this would be a relative non-issue. In larger amounts, an especially unlucky synchronization of cars all slowing simultaneously could, in theory, overload the system and cause massive transients.

The articles also mention that the cars have both DC and AC motors, but only the DC motors are getting cooked. This leads me to expect that the problem has been building up for a while, but has been below the threshold of damage to the motors until recently. The fact that it is the thyristors (used to rectify the AC power for DC use) which are failing, tells me that both the AC motors and the DC motors have been receiving severe overloads, but the Thyristor was simply the weakest component and has been failing first.

If it turns out that the back emf is the culprit, the solutions are not simple. In effect, they need to find somewhere for that energy to go other than back into the supply network. Any option they go with is either going to A) significantly reduce the efficiency of the system or B) require additional expensive hardware be installed onto every car.

Re:I-squared-L?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because the whole state is bankrupt, and some provider in the electrical chain to BART skimped on something they shouldn't have?

Re:I-squared-L?

[Archfeld]

That is a good thought, but you would think that a mass part replacement like that would have jumped out to any semi-competent maintenance staff, or if it had been occurring over a long period of time, the failures would have gradually increased. I don't really know but they had better solve it soon, any extended disruption of Bart is going to turn an already shitty commute into a disaster.

It might be a tumor.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's naaahht a tooomaaahhh.

You can't defer maintenance forever

[hawguy]

BART already tweeted the reason behind the breakdowns:

From @SFBART:
BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life. This is our reality.

BART has been continually expanding while deferring maintenance on the rest of the system, and that policy has finally come home to roost -- much of their infrastructure is over 40 years old and they can't defer maintenance forever. But by continually expanding, they've made themselves too big to fail (and they've gotten more counties on the hook to keep the service running), so they'll get bailed out one way or another.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

But by continually expanding

The number of people a transit system serves is determined by the choices of those people, not the administrators of the system.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, just think if actual personal automobile costrs were directly born by the users, they would run screaming.

Instead it gets widely subsidized in invisible ways.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[bill_mcgonigle]

BART already tweeted the reason [nytimes.com] behind the breakdowns:

That's not a reason - it's a complaint (and a beg for more money). Maybe they do need more money, but if the cause of the surges remains a mystery, then by definition they don't know the reason.

I'm sure they don't have any SCADA systems exposed to the Internet (right?), but "old stuff" is just a guess. And there are some good "old stuff" guesses elsewhere on this story.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that almost every single adult in the country drives, well, the cost of driving is spread over the people using it. Now, there are the deliberately ignorant, but most of us understand that property taxes pay for schools and roads, state income tax pays for roads and schools, and that federal taxes pay for 400 types of welfare, defense contractors, and interstate highways.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[bhiestand]

Given that almost every single adult in the country drives, well, the cost of driving is spread over the people using it. Now, there are the deliberately ignorant, but most of us understand that property taxes pay for schools and roads, state income tax pays for roads and schools, and that federal taxes pay for 400 types of welfare, defense contractors, and interstate highways.

I can't tell which side of this argument you are on.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Bruce Perens]

If it's anyone's choice, it comes down to the number of jobs that are created in the region. Use of highways and transit systems is an implication of that.

And it happens that we haven't yet dealt with retarded policies that don't just allow, but depend upon, continuous growth.

If this happened in your body, it would be diagnosed as cancer. Put it in a region, and we kid ourselves that it's progress.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone assume they use digital controllers?

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

he is 90 degrees to the line of the argument

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[LynnwoodRooster]

And those ways would be? The last study I saw, from the DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, was that automobiles were a net contributor (more revenue than expenditures on roads), and actually subsidized transit.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

They look great when you ignore externalities, sure.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

BART is about equally priced to driving for a single person, and significantly more expensive for multiple people (i.e. versus carpool). People use it because, despite it's various frustrations, it's genuinely more convenient than driving, not because it's less expensive.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[LynnwoodRooster]

OK, so what are those external costs? And how about the external - and direct - costs of mass transit?

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

“Our system was built to last about 45 years and we've reached that limit,” said one tweet.

Damn you, planned obsolescence!

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[rossz]

When I could BART to work I did so because I could sit back and read instead of gritting my teeth in traffic. The trip time was about the same, but it was no longer wasted time.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[arglebargle_xiv]

So he's imaginary?

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Princeofcups]

BART is about equally priced to driving for a single person, and significantly more expensive for multiple people (i.e. versus carpool). People use it because, despite it's various frustrations, it's genuinely more convenient than driving, not because it's less expensive.

BART is the only way to get across the Bay during rush hour without waiting at least 2 hours to drive across the bridge. That's NOT an exaggeration.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[DarkSabreLord]

It's not just that - BART was simply never meant to be operating on the scale it does today. When BART was built, the creators envisioned a system that would serve about 100,000 people per week and choke points such as the Transbay Tube were built accordingly. Naturally, as the population increased, upgrades had to made. This worked for a while, but eventually lack of funding for serious overhauls caught up with the
constantly increasing ridership. Maximum capacity is heavily influenced by the fact that sections like the tube are single line, with no easy way to expand to double or triple. BART could theoretically be a 24/7 system, but as things stand now their engineers need every minute of the nightly downtime they have to service a rapidly aging rail system.

The rails already in place are almost at capacity, with a train crossing over them every 2 minutes. With the tech booms of the last decades, there's been an even bigger spike in these numbers. Over the last decade alone, passenger alightings at some stations have more than doubled. On busy days, the BART system now serves 25 times more riders than originally envisioned. There's some money for additional trains, but that can only do so much. Eventually, we are going to need to spend money on either more parallel tracks, cars, and bigger platforms or just a new system altogether.

Their administrators are simply being realistic about the situation we're in

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Alex Zepeda]

BART has been continually expanding while deferring maintenance on the rest of the system, and that policy has finally come home to roost -- much of their infrastructure is over 40 years old and they can't defer maintenance forever. But by continually expanding, they've made themselves too big to fail (and they've gotten more counties on the hook to keep the service running), so they'll get bailed out one way or another.

Bullshit. The substation that was first identified as a problem is a mere months old. Granted, BART is terrible at money management seeking to replace the existing Oakland Airport bus shuttle with a half billion dollar cable car (because reasons). Turns out they don't even have the money to do basic track maintenance.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Dahamma]

But by continually expanding

The number of people a transit system serves is determined by the choices of those people, not the administrators of the system.

It's obviously both, but in this case THEIR wording does refer to the administrators since by "expanding" they mean "adding additional stops". Kind of a "duh" comment, really...

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Externalities relate to escaped costs, those created by use but not completely covered by related payments. In context this means pollution. Leaded gas, corrosion to roads and other vehicles from exhaust fumes, air pollution causing acid rain and green house effect.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[thegarbz]

A 40 year old electrical system? Oh woes me!

Seriously though while you may be right electrical systems, especially the always on kind which don't cycle can last for a hell of a long time much longer than 40 years. But there are some peculiarities though. Taking maintenance into account a lot of failures are very overt and instantly show the source of the problem through arcing or flashovers in the piece of failed gear. Typically you know straight away where the source of the problem is, and the simplicity of electrical systems means their integrity can be easily verified.

My guess? They've introduced something the system wasn't designed for and can't pinpoint the exact source of their problems. This happens frequently in mass transit systems.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Hognoxious]

Plus congestion and the lost time it causes.

In that respect, public transport has a positive externality due to the fact that most people riding the subway aren't simultaneously driving a car.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[sociocapitalist]

BART already tweeted the reason behind the breakdowns:

From @SFBART:
BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life. This is our reality.

BART has been continually expanding while deferring maintenance on the rest of the system, and that policy has finally come home to roost -- much of their infrastructure is over 40 years old and they can't defer maintenance forever. But by continually expanding, they've made themselves too big to fail (and they've gotten more counties on the hook to keep the service running), so they'll get bailed out one way or another.

That's a political answer to justify asking for more money - it is not a technical answer that should be accepted on /.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[serviscope_minor]

Unless those services are priced well below actual market costs - then it's "buying" riders.

It's amazing that people (a) ignore that roads are subsidised and (b) the free market is not a magical solution which solves the preoblem of limited space in any sane way. If you don't have mass trasit, then you rely on roads and when they get full, things block up and you start to lose serious amounts of productivity. Fortunately the city administrators who you so hate have a job of keeping the city running rather than worshiping at the alter of a fals version of free marketism.

In other words, BART is too big to fail in the same way that the roads are too big to fail.

Anyone who thinks that you can magically separate mass transit from the rest of the road system should be sentenced to have to drive through Tooting Highstreet (an area of south London relatively poorly served by trains) during rush hour every day for a year.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[serviscope_minor]

OK, so what are those external costs? And how about the external - and direct - costs of mass transit?

It's people who cause costs. Why not save money by closing the city and forcing everyone to go elsewhere? When you understand why that would be a bad idea, you may begin to understand why simply analysing the costs of things is a poor idea.

Eventually you may begin to understand why cities work better with mass transit, despite it being a "cost". Hint: you may want to consider things that cause and reduce productivity to offset costs.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Conservatives hate talk about externalities. Their so called free market relies on you not noticing, and God forbid holding them accountable for, pollution, congestion, oil subsidies and tax breaks, a huge military devoted to guarding overseas private assets (oil wells and shipping lanes), poisoning of water supplies, seizure of land for private gain, mandatory insurance at predatory prices (which is somehow not ok with healthcare, except for the predatory pricing part), inefficient use of resources (automobiles in daily service won't last 40 years), and the list goes on and on. The ones who demand you pay and pay and pay for every last thing never actually want to pay their own way, but they sure like to make you think they do.

But they'll complain mightily about public transport being subsidized, particularly when it involves things like rail systems, and especially when it's because rail systems tend to cause good externalities like reduced traffic congestion, better energy efficiency, etc. After further review, busses still suck though.

I love my car, but I live in the South where they make sure public transport is slow, inconvenient, and only for poor and minority people. It's kind of alien to me when I visit a place where people from all walks of life use it. I've discovered I like not having to use a car for everything.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

"BART is about equally priced to driving for a single person, and significantly more expensive for multiple people (i.e. versus carpool)."

If youre driving into the city, this is not true at all unless your employer has free parking. Most of the cost of diving into the city is paying for parking, which is anywhere from $30 - $80 a ~day~.

The vast majority of BART ridership and hell-like experience is into the city in the morning and out again in the evening...if youre traveling from any other BART stop to any other, its not that bad at all.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead it gets widely subsidized in invisible ways.

Sorry, but if you look at the budgets and revenues, it's quite clear that drivers pay for the infrastructure they use.

The real problem is that a lot of money is actually taken from revenue like the highway trust fund and used to subsidize public transportation.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

Leaded gas,

Hasn't been used in many years.

corrosion to roads and other vehicles from exhaust fumes,

Those are not "externalities" since they are costs drivers themselves bear and pay for.

air pollution causing acid rain

Acid rain comes overwhelmingly from power plants, not automobiles.

and green house effect

Personal transportation is only a small contributor to atmospheric carbon, and the difference between trains and cars is fairly small. With electric cars, cars are actually better than trains.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

Plus congestion and the lost time it causes.

That's not an "externality", since it's the drivers themselves that bear the cost of congestion.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

Conservatives hate talk about externalities.

I don't know about "conservatives", but free market advocates like talking about externalities and how externalities are the result of exempting large parts of the economy from market forces. Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and progressives are all guilty of this.

Conservatives hate talk about externalities. Their so called free market relies on you not noticing, and God forbid holding them accountable for, pollution, congestion, oil subsidies and tax breaks, a huge military devoted to guarding overseas private assets (oil wells and shipping lanes), poisoning of water supplies, seizure of land for private gain, mandatory insurance at predatory prices (which is somehow not ok with healthcare, except for the predatory pricing part), inefficient use of resources (automobiles in daily service won't last 40 years), and the list goes on and on.

Those are all bad things. And they are almost all caused by government intervention, not free markets.

I've discovered I like not having to use a car for everything.

Everybody likes not having to use a car for everything. Public transportation is nice. But it's also too expensive compared to alternatives.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

Eventually you may begin to understand why plantations work better with beautiful carriages and stables, despite it being a "cost" paid for by the slaves working in the fields.

FTFY

Why not save money by closing the city and forcing everyone to go elsewhere?

The only "force" that is involved here is the fact that federal, state, and local tax payers are forced to subsidize a transit system that most don't benefit from and will never use.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong on every count. Even the gas (see prop airplanes). Road damage from increase use is borne by all city and county residents whether they use the roads or not, so payment comes from more than the drivers. Acid rain is caused by nitrogen oxide, and traffic is a major contributor when examining where it occurs. Try to read this time.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Hognoxious]

An individual driver doesn't cause congestion for himself, he causes it for everybody else. And as I already pointed out, people on trains aren't causing it at all.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

An individual driver doesn't cause congestion for himself, he causes it for everybody else.

We're discussing whether drivers pay for the costs that their choice of transportation incurs. They do, as a group, even when it comes to congestion, since the cost of congestion balances out between drivers (if I slow down your commute, you slow down my commute, so I do pay this "externality").

Of course, congestion would be almost non-existent if it weren't for government mismanagement of transportation and roads in the first place.

And as I already pointed out, people on trains aren't causing it at all.

Trains cause numerous externalities, including congestion, noise, and pollution. More importantly, though, they are heavily subsidized, which isn't so much an "externality" as simple crony capitalism and corruption.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[serviscope_minor]

FTFY

I think the main problem is you're a complete and utter smeg head. There's no equivalence to those two things.

The only "force" that is involved here is the fact that federal, state, and local tax payers are forced to subsidize a transit system that most don't benefit from and will never use.

Oh I see you're one of those very silly people who think they live in an isolated island where nothing outside affects you. Even if you never use the train, it takes a lot of cars off the roads which makes the roads better for you.

Everyone directly or indirectly uses the roads in the bay area, therefore everyone benefits from BART.

The main problem is idiots who are incapable of getting beyond thinking that "free market! libruhls!" actually constitutes logical thought and reasoning.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

Everyone directly or indirectly uses the roads in the bay area, therefore everyone benefits from BART.

Everyone would benefit even more if the subsidies that currently went to BART would be invested in road upgrades and new highways.

See, robbing me at gunpoint and then giving me back $5 to catch a bus home doesn't mean that I'm better off than if I hadn't been robbed at all.

I think the main problem is you're a complete and utter smeg head.

You are a testament to the quality of a modern Oxford education.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[serviscope_minor]

Everyone would benefit even more if the subsidies that currently went to BART would be invested in road upgrades and new highways.

[citation needed]

And tell me, where would those highways go?

See, robbing me at gunpoint

Taxes are a thing. Don't like them? Go live in the Libertarian Paradise of the Congo.

doesn't mean that I'm better off than if I hadn't been robbed at all.

Then try moving somewhere there are no taxes. See how much better off you are. Toodles!

You are a testament to the quality of a modern Oxford education.

They teach Red Dward quotes at Oxford? News to me...

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[hey!]

That's a bit simplistic. If you expand a system, it will automatically attract more riders if the cost to the rider remains the same. And therein lay the rub. The rational basis of the decision to expand the system is a cost/benefit one, even if the system is publicly subsidized. The rationale for public subsidies is based on there being market externalities, but once you factor in those externalities the benefits have to outweigh the costs.

That's where politics comes in. Service expansion is popular, but rising fares and taxes are not. Fortunately the public has a short memory, so what you do is expand service and "pay" for it by deferring maintenance. You get the credit as a genius, and your successors get the blame. It's what economists call an "agency cost".

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Aaden42]

Nope. Just on a tangent.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[LynnwoodRooster]

I see you've never sat around waiting for a train to clear the road... I time my commute in the morning to avoid the trains, since I cross the tracks 3 times.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[LynnwoodRooster]

You do know that buses are much more damaging to roadways than cars, don't you? Damage goes as the fourth power of weight, and since an average bus weighs something like 12 times that of a car, a single bus does the damage of thousands of cars - and yet, it cannot carry thousands of people. So perhaps we need to charge buses with the externality of damage to the roads, not cars.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[LynnwoodRooster]

What are the subsidies of roads? Remember - gas taxes are supposed to be going to road maintenance (even though they tend to be used to subsidize mass transit). And where have I stated anything about hate? Hyperbole much? I'm just explaining a way that BART can buy customers and thereby guarantee its own existence - yes, too big to fail (like the fantasy high-speed rail from LA to SF).

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

And those ways would be? The last study I saw, from the DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, was that automobiles were a net contributor (more revenue than expenditures on roads), and actually subsidized transit.

Bzzt! ERROR, ERROR!

The phrase above is "actual personal automobile costrs" which aside from the minor typo, means you need to cite a source that specifically concentrates on personal automobile, not all. That means, for example, all those semitrailers full of goods? Would be considered a subsidy towards that personal automobile usage, as they would be excluded. Also ambulance and fire service. Or buses even. Since you didn't link to that source, though, I can't say if it does make such an examination.

But no, if you're referring to gas taxes, they're in a deficit, and not covering highway costs, and in fact, expenditures on roads, highways and bridges are considered to be a bit insufficient. Of course, you could argue that it's the big semitrailers that cause the most damage, so they should pay more, but that's another problem.

Then there's the costs of treating various injuries (see a more recent Slashdot article on the subject of bus injuries being so low they could be increased to improve service) that are folded into overall healthcare expenditures, the pollution aspect(both noise and atmospheric), and even the policing issues. Yes, the police who have to deal with traffic problems are paid invisibly through other means, so you don't notice what it costs.

But it's a price.

And how about the external - and direct - costs of mass transit?

And since you mention this later, you already brought that subject up, so you're just repeating yourself. The thing you didn't note was the application of that process to other activities.

So next time you set foot on the road, just think about how many other people it had to benefit for it to be affordable to you.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[bmxeroh]

No mod points today, so all I can give you is an lol.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Local roads are also a benefit to all of the city and county residents whether they use them or not. The food they consume, mail they receive, garbage hauled away, and government services, fire, police, and ambulance, are all delivered on those roads. Personally I would love to have roads paid for exclusively by taxes and fees by those using them in proportion to the damage they cause, also for fairness you wouldn't be able exempt some vehicles (looking at you buses) from the roles. That becomes a big problem so having things like vehicle registration fees and fuel taxes are reasonable but only work at a state level. In my state at most 60% of some of that income can go towards roads while the rest goes to pay for mass transit. Similar things happen with the federal gas tax. Also do not misconstrue this to mean that currently roads would be fully funded if it weren't for some of that revenue being diverted but mass transit isn't the panacea that it is made out to be either, especially for someone like myself who has a 30-40 minute commute each way by car but if I were to use mass transit it would take 2.5 hours each way assuming no problems or missed connections. The only time I have had a car commute that long was one time when there was a huge snowstorm during the work day and I had things that needed to be done and couldn't get out early to avoid the big mess. Even then the buses were taking longer than usual and who knows how long of a delay I would have had if I had to change buses.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Electrical surges affect the whole circuit, not just the oldest part of the circuit.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Bob the Super Hamste]

The only "force" that is involved here is the fact that federal, state, and local tax payers are forced to subsidize a transit system that most don't benefit from and will never use.

I find this somewhat amusing given my experience when Metro Transit went on strike. I found that when they were on strike traffic improve slightly during my commute times. That may have been better planning on people's part or because of the lack of giant mostly empty buses getting on and off of the highway.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[EndlessNameless]

It makes sense to put out a statement like that when you've been warning people for years that the system is overgrown, decaying, and in need of massive investment.

Intermittent problems are always the most difficult to diagnose, so I'd expect it to take some time.

But the public will expect an immediate statement, because no one has patience in the face of engineering challenges.

So I agree in principle with them for making the statement and also with you for stating that it does not belong on Slashdot. There should be a post about this in a month or three when they figure out what the problem is.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

[citation needed]

This post summarizes cost per passenger miles quite well and provides sources: http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=8...

And tell me, where would those highways go?

Ripping out BART and replacing it with roads and buses would be a start. There is plenty more space.

Then try moving somewhere there are no taxes. See how much better off you are. Toodles!

I have no problem with paying taxes per se (that means "by itself"). I have a problem with rent seeking, corruption, waste, and forcing people into poverty.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[dyslexicbunny]

I hated having to use my car to go everywhere in Atlanta but MARTA goes fucking nowhere and it's too damn hot in the summer to wait for buses. And it's a city that could benefit from expanded service because the connector sucks ass pretty much all the time.

Conservatives replaced the HOV lanes with variable price toll lanes that no one wanted to use because it's bullshit so they tanked the prices to try and get people using them. Even then, I bet they're still gonna take a loss on them and they can't undo them as Federal money was taken and spent but can't be repaid.

But that's the free market for ya.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[mangamaster03]

Why wouldn't they use digital controllers? It's a natural assumption they would be. It doesn't necessarily require internet connection, but it does require a private network to be run along the length of the tracks.

A digital controller can manage all aspects of running the train, it can be monitored remotely, and it can be upgraded easier than an old analog electric control panel.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Gas taxes *do* go to road maintenance. They don't cover *all* of it, though. The rest is covered by things like property taxes, sales taxes, etc. via revenue pulled from the general fund.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[BronsCon]

gas taxes are supposed to be going to road maintenance (even though they tend to be used to subsidize mass transit)

The irony being, if they make mass transit attractive enough that people actually start using it, the gas taxes dry up.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always choose to have the Semis on the road instead.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Your calculations are off, mostly because you're not thinking of the full costs of automobile operations. Pollution, for example, and accidents, but also congestion and even parking. But it's actually trucks that do the greatest share of roadway damage, far more than buses.

Got to do a full workup for the spreadsheet, not drill down to a single comparison.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

The whole idea that BART ridership increases in the past five years have been caused by limited service expansion over the past two decades is pretty dubious. Public data and statements from BART make it pretty clear that it's the core downtown SF/Oakland stations, and certainly stations between Concord/Fremont and Daly City (that is, original stations from the '71 - '72 openings) that have seen the most ridership growth. That growth in ridership has occurred because of wide spread economic and population growth in the Bay Area, not expanding service to past residents.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

The argument is that adding a few more outlying stops over the last 10 - 20 years has caused doubled ridership at downtown stops in the past 5 years, which happen to coincide with major economic and population booms in the region. It's pretty clear that the latter, rather than the former, is causative for the increase in system load.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

I find this somewhat amusing given my experience when Metro Transit went on strike. I found that when they were on strike traffic improve slightly during my commute times. That may have been better planning on people's part or because of the lack of giant mostly empty buses getting on and off of the highway.

Dunno which MT you're referring to, but the Bay Area sees crippling traffic slowdowns during BART service interruptions such as the strike three years ago.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

Ripping out BART and replacing it with roads and buses would be a start. There is plenty more space.

You're shockingly ignorant of the greater SF Bay region if you think that statement makes any sense. It would mean multi-deck city streets, extensive car tunnels under existing roadway, and so forth.

I have a problem with rent seeking, corruption, waste, and forcing people into poverty.

Right...accessible transit is forcing me into poverty...by making it at all possible for me to get to work.

Re:You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

Agreed. This thread has a lot of uninformed comments from folks who've never lived or worked in the Bay Area, making ludicrous claims that eliminating BART to "make space" for "more roads" would solve all our problems.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

You're shockingly ignorant of the greater SF Bay region if you think that statement makes any sense. It would mean multi-deck city streets, extensive car tunnels under existing roadway, and so forth.

There is plenty of space for more highways on the peninsula, even apart from replacing BART by roads. Just better connectors between 280 and 101 would do wonders.

Right...accessible transit is forcing me into poverty...by making it at all possible for me to get to work.

Obviously, you are on the side of the greedy, privileged minority who enrich themselves at the expense of other tax payers. I mean, who wouldn't have half their transportation costs paid for by other tax payers and then get a special right of way for his troubles?

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[reve_etrange]

There is plenty of space for more highways on the peninsula, even apart from replacing BART by roads

You admit that "replacing BART track with roads" was at best a non sequitor, and then refer to subregions not served by BART. OK, then.

the greedy, privileged minority

Right, it's the people who don't own cars that are the rich and privileged. You need to get out more.

half their transportation costs paid for by other tax payers

Does making up arbitrary numbers to suit one's ideology fly in your line of work? Interesting.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[ooloorie]

Right, it's the people who don't own cars that are the rich and privileged. You need to get out more.

No, I said greedy and privileged. And "not owning a car" these days is less a sign of poverty and more often a sign of an ability to live and work in expensive neighborhoods connected by public transportation.

Does making up arbitrary numbers to suit one's ideology fly in your line of work? Interesting.

The fact that BART is heavily subsidized follows from their own budgets; I suggest you look at them. The situation is even worse because, as discussed here, BART themselves admits that even with the massive subsidies they are receiving, they can't even perform necessary maintenance, so in order to keep the system going, they need even more subsidies.

Re: You can't defer maintenance forever

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah...no.

as a civil engineer who specializes in roadways, your numbers are complete BS.

Awe, come on now

[s.petry]

I don't buy that one for a second, it makes way too much sense. I think it's people urinating on the 3rd rail, and we need another season of Mythbusters to prove it!

Re:Awe, come on now

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't have a cow man.

Free trade

[Areyoukiddingme]

Damn those Chinese capacitors! Damn you to hell!

I suspect ...

[PPH]

... some sort of interaction between filter/power factor capacitors in the new substation and the inductive reactance of the tracks and distribution system. Transients caused by the inherent imperfect third rail to car contacts causes a ringing (oscillation) in the system which, with the new substation on line, happens to be on or near a frequency that some of the rolling stock motor controllers don't like.

Throw some power quality analyzers on various sections of the track and watch the system's transient voltage response with power sources in various configurations.

Re:I suspect ...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Transients caused by the inherent imperfect third rail to car contacts causes a ringing (oscillation) in the system ...

Oh, sure - blame the homeless.

Re:I suspect ...

[gopla]

Seems most probable cause.

I don't know the technical details of BART systems sitting in India. Is it supplied by 60 Hz AC and the rectifiers are installed on the cars that run on DC motors? Usually these power electronics devices build in 1980s are robust enough. We have gained experience now and toughened the circuit in modern drives, but I doubt it be the case in 80s. Any adverse interaction with filters or may be some kind of ferroresonance can cause high voltage and damage such equipment.

Throw some power quality analyzers on various sections of the track and watch the system's transient voltage response with power sources in various configurations.

This is the best way to investigate such problems. I am sure the real experts are doing already doing it. There is nothing mysterious or sensational like hacking going on here. Just plain overvoltage problem causing weak old power-electronics to fail.

Re:I suspect ...

[BronsCon]

This is exactly what the mastermind behind the BART hacks would say.

I kid, of course. But seriously.

Re:I suspect ...

[dgatwood]

This is the best way to investigate such problems. I am sure the real experts are doing already doing it. There is nothing mysterious or sensational like hacking going on here. Just plain overvoltage problem causing weak old power-electronics to fail.

That would be my first guess as well. If it is happening in one spot consistently, though, I'd expect something more subtle, like AC phase problems. For example, if the power company changed the routing of the lines without telling anybody, you could perhaps get a big voltage spike when the train switches from one power rail to the next, assuming you ended up with a situation where AC from one rail was getting combined with AC from another rail inside the vehicle.

Karma

[Bartles]

Oscar Grant's ghost is looking for some payback.

Re:Karma

[Bartles]

Fine, if you're going to down vote that, then it's Charles Hill's ghost looking for some payback, saying that if BART is going to shutdown cell service to prevent protests, then he'll shut down the trains.

Re:Karma

[Rakarra]

Shouldn't he be dicking around in the Fruitvale station? Now THAT would cause some real delays, given the numbers of trains from three different lines that go through that shared station. Instead, the problem is in front of the end station on a single line, which doesn't significantly affect the other lines.

vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Anonymous Coward]

So the A & B cars having inductions motors seem to be fine, while the problem seems to be confined to the C cars having the DC motor. That's one difference.

Also, what else has changed? Take a look at wunderground to see that the Bay Area is having a wet season.

Why would the C cars have been mostly fine all along and having trouble now?

So there's charge building up in the DC motors that they can't handle and that makes them blow out. The charge has nowhere to go. What controls the flow of charge? Grounding. What can go wrong with grounding? Good grounds can go bad when a lot of discharge causes the sand in the soil to vitrify (melt into glass) after discharges and lightning strikes have been shooting through it for decades. Better grounds can unexpectedly form when more highly conductive paths form up. The AC induction motors will suffer a power loss but can handle the charge jumping back & forth in unexpected ways, while the DC motors can't.

Add it all up. This has to be a grounding problem aggravated by the wet season, and an underlying assumption that once you sink a ground it's good forever. It isn't.

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Anonymous Coward]

Throw together something to actually log what is going on. Even something like this, with the right voltage divider plugged into a little rugged PC like this or similar would probably work and you could create the logging code with Labview. Perhaps something like this, though variations may also work:

1) Continually collect data. Dump data to a queue.
2) Second process pulls from queue, and looks for anything out of spec.
3) Out of spec data, along with say 30 seconds either way gets sent to another queue
4) The other queue saves that data to a file as it really is (i.e. int16), before being zipping it. That process sends a file name to another queue. The file is ideally stored on a ramdisk.
5) The next process send the file to an FTP server run on a VPS, before deleting the file and freeing up memory in the ramdisk. Set the queue sizes such that data collection is paused if the FTP process gets too far behind.
6) Connectivity to the FTP server is via a cell phone that is also strapped to this and of course being charged by a USB port from the PC. Store data in some reasonable folder structure. (FUSE userspace FTP FS in linux works for this indirectly, though this is windows. Likely you can still script it, possibly with shell commands and system execs..)
7) Probably should set a lower bound in data reporting, so that the code sends at least one example of the worst data received every hour or other interval.

You could probably replicate that setup for around $1k, plus if you can use something like cricket wireless and keep the data rates down, well that is $40+$30+$20+$10 for 5 lines, so $100 per 5 lines, or $20 per box per month.

In the really ideal case, Windows Embedded could be used with an overlay file system, so, at worst, you have to restart the box and reset the phone.

In short, instrumenting things is not that hard. Sure it requires an actual engineer, and some care may be required to interface with the actual voltages involved safely, and/or to read currents, if desired (indirectly most likely), but it is all doable and shouldn't take more than a couple weeks to get something simplistic up, and maybe a month to get something somewhat robust up.

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy they usually send out to cover up the signs of excess rail wear with gobs of grease retired, and the new guy used a dialectric grease that is causing all sorts of new problems...

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, I can totally see this. Must have been a maritime electrician, previously.

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Alex Zepeda]

Turns out the problem is frying fuses on the A&B cars and thyristors on the C cars.

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking bad/hot grounds myself though finding them in that network could be rough without putting in some sort of live monitoring to figure out exactly where the trains are getting popped.

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[thegarbz]

Throw together something to actually log what is going on. Even something like this, with the right voltage divider plugged into a little rugged PC like this or similar would probably work and you could create the logging code with Labview.

You're in university or work in research aren't you? In the rest of the world we just hire off the shelf logging equipment specifically designed for the task and move on.

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[thegarbz]

This has to be a grounding problem aggravated by the wet season

Grounding problems are the cause of problems in the rail cars for many different reasons. My favourite is when an Australian train company decided to go green and implement regenerative breaking on all their equipment without any forethought. After purchasing an entire fleet of fancy new green trains they found the power goes out at the train station every time the train approaches.

But really this is not helped by the fact that ground forms an important part of the electrical path in a rail system, and not just a safety mechanism as in most other cases.

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Anonymous Coward]

regenerative breaking

What a clever plan!

1. Train breaks.
2. Profit!

Re: vitrification of grounds and more rain

[Anonymous Coward]

Watching the first 'digital native' generation trying to deal with real world problems is kind of cute, isn't it?

Re:vitrification of grounds and more rain

[mangamaster03]

Turns out the problem is frying fuses on the A&B

Easy fix. Just replace each fuse with a simple piece of copper pipe. That way the maintenance level required stays level across the system.

Re: vitrification of grounds and more rain

[dj245]

Watching the first 'digital native' generation trying to deal with real world problems is kind of cute, isn't it?

I think this issue is more of inexperience, rather than generational differences, as the parent implied when they speculated that the GP was in university. When labor is basically free or labor cost are not important (as in many University or research settings), the solutions gravitate towards customized hardware operated by a relatively highly skilled person. Data collection in the real world gravitates towards commercial off-the-shelf solution operated by person of a lower skill level. It just doesn't make sense to have an electrical engineer running around checking grounds using a complicated in-house built tool when you can send an electrical technician at 1/2 the hourly rate and have them use a 3rd-party calibrated tool.

terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

they do that

flux capacitors?

[ionymous]

that's all I got.

control computers probably spygrading to Windws 10

[raymorris]

Perhaps the newest computers controlling the system have forcibly "upgraded" themselves to Windows 10.

corrosion of the grounding straps

[Anonymous Coward]

Did all the experienced techs and engineers retire recently?

Re:corrosion of the grounding straps

[Anonymous Coward]

Did all the experienced techs and engineers retire recently?

They all got outsourced to cheeper overseas labor.....

Re:corrosion of the grounding straps

[Anonymous Coward]

And you outsourced your spell checking? "Cheeper", really dude?

Real Time Monitoring

[BoRegardless]

I'm truly surprised that they don't have intensive real time monitoring with sensors through their whole system.

Proper engineering and maintenance of such a critical system demands it.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

It was built a million years ago, be grateful it uses electricity and not coal powered steam engines.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[Hans Lehmann]

Monitoring of what? Sensors through the whole system that measure what? What exactly is this proper engineering that you claim they should have done? Armchair engineers always seem to have perfect hindsight.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[Nemyst]

Have you seen the Bart? It's falling apart from all sides, the cars are old. Back then, real-time monitoring wasn't a thing.

Re: Real Time Monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Distributed, time synchronised Power Quality.

Not SCADA, but at least IEC61000-4-30 PQ

The DC parts are even simpler to measure. I would bet almost none of the feeders have anything but an over current relay.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[BigU 03C0mpin]

If you're surprised that BART is lacking something remotely logical and/or basically requisite you don't understand BART or the non-Tech Industry side of the Bay Area.

BART only funds repairs, no technical improvements what-so-ever. The most recent redesigns are ways to fit more standing people in each car since it raises rider count. In fact, the only technological changes I can think of having happened to BART in the 25 years I lived in the Bay Area was the upgrade to the Clipper Card system.

Bathrooms in stations? All the underground ones, particularly in SF are closed permanently. Above ground stations outside of SF, if it's in service it might be open. It will be one of the most awful public bathrooms you've been in. I honestly have found nicer solar and pit toilets in the California back country than I've ever found in a BART station unless the station was a new expansion station.

Anyone with half a brain can see that zero money has gone into BARTs technical budget in a long time. From my passenger perspective, it's been at least a quarter century.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[thegarbz]

I'm truly surprised that they don't have intensive real time monitoring with sensors through their whole system.

Outside of a power generation company looking at maybe one or two substations away from their plant you'll find power infrastructure monitoring to the level that could aid predictive maintenance is non-existent. Even in utilities it's non-existent. Even in companies that don't run their equipment into the ground it's non-existent.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll help you out:

s/Armchair engineers/management who just talked to a cloud rep/

Re: Real Time Monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, let's use cloud hosted big data to synergize our processes and then we'll use a business intelligence engine to crowdsource an optimal solution.

What was the problem again? I'm late for my meeting with the guy from New Delhi who's gonna tell me how to fire some more American workers.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[hughbar]

Actually, the Tube in London is ancient (I'm not going to say 150 years old, because it was steam at the start) and still running, with problems. It's also over-capacity, to the extent that the entrance barriers sometimes need to be closed at some stations. So BART is a child or an adolescent by comparison. Actually, maybe the problems are problems of adolescence!

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

"Monitoring of what? Sensors through the whole system that measure what?"

To measure and sense the system. Duh.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[mangamaster03]

I know Southern Company in the southeast is putting in remote GPS-synced Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) all over their entire grid, with a new fiber optic backbone to go with it. This will give them split second accurate monitoring capabilities across their entire network, with one in almost every major substation.

No, this isn't cheap, but that's what running a monopoly gets you. The ability to make needed improvements to a network, and passing on costs to customers. The system protection built into the power grid runs on a highly networked system of controllers, relays, and industrial computers, and gives them levels of monitoring that BART could never afford. PMUs, Static VAR Compensators, and networked relays all work together to protect the power grid, the generation plants, and end user equipment.

Preventative, and predictive maintenance is very important in the power industry, and they have the cash flow to support it.

Re:Real Time Monitoring

[thegarbz]

Is it the same souther company that was sued by ever major oil company after a power outage in a critical Texan location a few years ago? Most monopolies spend their cash flow filling their own coffers and put in this kind of thing only when absolutely needed. If they did do it under their own accord then that would be uncharacteristically forward thinking of them. They should fire everyone before the toxic idea of "investing in the future" spreads.

Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a tumor...

Re: Maybe

[galgon]

It's not a tumor!

Money Money Money....

[Anonymous Coward]

I want Money to solve such a valuable system. This is an easy problem. Such dumb ucks.... Call me and I'll fix it for you.

Maybe its because they use DC instead of AC

[drfreak]

Savages!

Harmonics on the grids?

[jtayon]

Maybe the grid is polluted with harmonics that are tuned at the same frequencies of reasonancy of all or part of the engines?

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Harmonics on the grids?

[93 Escort Wagon]

So somebody reversed the polarity on a flux capacitor, which destabilized the warp field matrix?

Anonymous steps

[Anonymous Coward]

In the military a soldier is taught to march out of step over a bridge to limit destructive feedback. By the same token, have the BART engineers looked at the feedback through the electrical systems carrying destructive frequencies cause by the timing of the trains?

Re:control computers probably spygrading to Windws

[freeze128]

I visited the Bay area in 1987, and I remember seeing the ticket sales machines having the big blue IBM logo on them. I bet the controllers run OS/2 warp.

Back when I was a kid

[Snotnose]

In the mid-70's I went with my parents to the bay area to meet some friends of theirs. They decided we needed to eat at a restaurant that required a BART ride. Keep in mind, back then BART was brand spankin new, ultra-reliable, much cheaper than gas. We never made it to the restaurant. I was like 10 years old, I have no idea why, But as an old fart nowdays whenever I think of BART I think "not gonna happen".

On the other hand, that was the first time I saw Black Sabbath's Paranoid album. Didn't hear it, but Ed (son of parental unit's friends, some 3 years older than me) made sure I knew it was the best album out at that time.

Re:Back when I was a kid

[__aaclcg7560]

Keep in mind, back then BART was brand spankin new, ultra-reliable, much cheaper than gas.

President Nixon rode it during the 1972 election.

http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2012/08/16/rail-to-the-chief-when-nixon-rode-bart/

Re:Back when I was a kid

[Muad'Dave]

Wow. I remember reading about BART in my 6th or 7th grade social studies textbook. That was in 1976-77 or so.

With a name like that YOU ARE JUST ASKING FOR IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh. Stupid, stupid people.

The Simpson's did it already? Of course. Lanley's monorail. Same thing as Nordweststadt cum Haverbrook cum BA, only full of stupid, stupid people.

Welcome to the crumbling.

obviously

[schematix]

its the muslim terrorists

Re:control computers probably spygrading to Windws

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the newest computers controlling the system have forcibly "upgraded" themselves to Windows 10.

I saw their computer screens inside the help booths and they had a GNOME desktop environment

Re:Donald Trump

[ls671]

Nah, it's the aliens:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

http://www.collective-evolutio...

It should be a breeze to deactivate BART trains then :-)

Eels on a train

[sjames]

It all started 2 years ago when a student majoring in EE took an exotic canoe trip on the Amazon. One day the canoe capsized while he was studying and his book sank to the bottom. Thee eels read voraciously and learned about series parallel wiring of batteries. An idea was born.

And so now we have Electric Eels on a Train!

Re:Eels on a train

[whoever57]

And so now we have Electric Eels on a Train!

Is that better or worse than snakes on a plane?

Re:Eels on a train

[sjames]

Not sure, but it seems to be more expensive at any rate.

Re:Eels on a train

[khallow]

You spilled it too early, so now there will be copycat movies hitching a ride on your blockbuster. Prepare for Lampreys on a Barge and Rugrats in a Car. Coming to theaters near you!

Re:Eels on a train

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I was thinking it was caused by a Sharknado. My bad.

Re:Eels on a train

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had it with these mother fucking eels on this mother fuckin train.

Explain Toles' Cartoons

[Streetlight]

This thread seems to explain many of Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles cartoons having very negative comments on DC's Metro. The continuous stream of cartoons point to constant problems with the system and inane explanations by its executives.

perhaps someone is testing

[MrKaos]

a cyber attack.

Thirty years too late...

[__aaclcg7560]

BART is finally coming to Silicon Valley. I'm so excited. Meh...

http://www.vta.org/bart/

Location for the non article readers.

[basecastula]

So the first time was entering the tube at west oakland and the second time was between north concord and bay point? Yea I know I didn't RDFA but I think the info would be helpful here instead of possibly there.

Cheap forcefeed racing wheels!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese forgot to put in a 0.1$ diode so when one was swinging from left to right violently, the forcefeedback motor would start to works as a generator and blow up the power supply.

Turboflaps

[Anonymous Coward]

why does nobody notice it?

A simple solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a simple solution. Extend the BART from Millbrae to San Jose to close the loop.

Re:A simple solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the Berryessa extension will have taken only couple decades to plan and build 10 miles from Fremont to San Jose, so maybe we'll see it go another 40 miles to Millbrae by the end of the century? Although Embarcadero might be underwater by then.

Really not much information to go on

[Anonymous Coward]

There's really not much information to go on here. It happens on certain sections of track. They've done something to the track and the power supply. It only effects trains with DC traction motors. How is the voltage supposed to be regulated? Maybe all along, there's been resistance in the 3rd rail and when they changed that they lowered the resistance. Load the train, current going straight to the motor with less resistance in the 3rd rail... and all that heat goes to the motor? If it's really a "surge" from the power supply, well... then it's the power supply, so take one off line and measure the components to make sure they're still in spec. This isn't voodoo. Things happen for reasons.

Re:control computers probably spygrading to Windws

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's systemd that's the problem...

Re:control computers probably spygrading to Windws

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Those ticket machines were running in 1975. Not even MS/DOS.

Power beaming???

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was working fine before, now clusters of power surges are occuring, then there is always the possibility that someone is firing a Maser at BART. Setup some SDR equipment along the lines, look for unusual interference and harmonics. Covering the spectrum under 1GHz is usually enough to pick something like that up. Check if the events are following a straight line, or multiple straight lines.

Galvanic corrosion

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically damaging transformers, etc. Because of the physically separate instances that are still in the same general area, environmental causes are suspect. There is likely some change in ground water that has brought a corrosive substance in contact with voltage regulating equipment.

How is BART supposed to update trains...

[Nova Express]

...when all their money is going to high salaries and benefits for union employees?

Over 200 BART employees earned over $200,000 a year in total compensation...

Re:How is BART supposed to update trains...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Because fuck people who want to live in the Bay Area and work for the Bay Area Rapid Transit. They should commute from someplace cheaper to live!

Re:How is BART supposed to update trains...

[Princeofcups]

...when all their money is going to high salaries and benefits for union employees?

Over 200 BART employees earned over $200,000 a year in total compensation...

Those look mostly like executives, which are definitely NOT Union positions. The Unions are the ones trying to get some of that executive salary down to the real workers.

Re:How is BART supposed to update trains...

[Anonymous Coward]

But that doesn't play into my libertarian wet-dream narrative! Free Market! Free Market!

Re:How is BART supposed to update trains...

[Not-a-Neg]

In all honesty, that's basically the minimum needed to earn a living wage in Silicon Valley.

North Korea?

[Etherwalk]

Why? If the cause is cyberattacks, we are in a much more adversarial relationship with North Korea at the moment. China's cyberattacks are directed at espionage and industrial espionage; this isn't their style.

Re:North Korea?

[eric_harris_76]

If these sorts of mystery problems go away after the North Korean regime collapses or is overthrown -- next year, next decade, whenever -- we'll know.

Not that knowing will help us much now. Or then, for that matter.

Someone forgot insulation transformers...

[Anonymous Coward]

pls, protect your sensitive electronics.

For those outside the US...

[BeCre8iv]

WTF is a BART?

Re:For those outside the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bay Area Rapid Transit

Re:For those outside the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bay Area Rapid Transit - San Francisco's Bus and light rail system

Re:For those outside the US...

[jittles]

Bay Area Rapid Transit - San Francisco's Bus and light rail system

San Francisco's transist system is called Muni. BART covers more than just San Francisco and is most common in the East Bay though it has been expanding into the South Bay over the last 10-15 years.

Back to the future

[Anonymous Coward]

They should add some flux capacitors

Looking in wrong place but across the magic sea...

[Anonymous Coward]

> BART reports that it has reached out to experts around the country and asked them to fly in and help solve the mystery.

Why are they reaching out to experts around the country? The USA is very much backwards when it comes to electric traction. They should reach out to experts in London or Moscow or some frenchies at Alsthom or the japanese or India or the hungarians or just anybody around the world with many decades of experience in large scale railway electrification projects and knowledge of how to maintain and debug heavy used underground railway network.

Disconnect bart from the

[Anonymous Coward]

WAN

Re:Donald Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's Kolchak when you need him?

Re:Donald Trump

[Coisiche]

I think there's a movie franchise that already explains this and it's not aliens...

This is beside the Pacific, right? This is clearly the giga-monster that is a result of all the atomic tests in the Pacific 60 years ago approaching the west coast. Good time to take a holiday in Florida, you'll only risk wet feet from the rising sea levels there.

Area 51

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they had any visitors from Area 51 recently who might have brought some of their 'toys' with them?

nike tn 2016 pas cher Homme

[chenxanjin]

The sneakers ended up at first launched in air max Pas Cher and once again in . Even so, the 2001 model did not attribute a blue tinged, translucent outsole like the original pair. Instead the translucent outsole left icey obvious. A modify which a lot of weren't too happy with.AJ11 "Cool Grey"The Air Jordan 11 "Cool Grey" is just not one of many original designs that launched when the sneakers did in , but that hasn't stopped them from getting to be a scorching commodity among collectors. The Air Jordan eleven "Cool Grey" was 1st released in March of , 6-years after the initial AJ11 was uncovered for the public. Like their counterparts, the sneakers acquired their nickname in the selected coloration scheme by which they use. Medium Grey supplies coloration towards the ballistic nylon upper, even though Neat Grey coats the patent leather around the base of the sneakers. The upper sits atop a white midsole that is capped with the beloved icey apparent outsole. Since becoming released in 2001, the Air Jordan 11 cheap jordans "Cool Grey" has not been re-issued when. That's all about to alter later on this 12 months even though once the sneakers make their 1st comeback in 9 years.

Re:nike tn 2016 pas cher Homme

[Anonymous Coward]

So your hypothesis is that the outages are caused by sneakers?

Ghosts

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious. I'm surprised so many smart people missed it.

I've got a theory

[maroberts]

It must be bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies! /Buffy

BZZZZZZZZZZ

[Anonymous Coward]

Static electricity buildup from excessive number of passengers.

Poor guys

[bickerdyke]

I wouldn't want to swap with those poor engineers working overtime to find out what's wrong here. as one myself, I know how desperate this can feel.

On the other hand, there is no better feeling than finally finding the root cause. The better the more unconnected it seems to be at first sights. That's what you got your degree for.

It could be solar....

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that has changed in our electricity supply, is that that load balancing of the grid has gotten much, much more complex.
The proliferation of solar installations, and the requirement generation and transmission companies (they are two, separate businesses, now) buy back any solar surplus, has changed things quite a bit. Load balancing used to be under the power companies' control Now they have to contend with external inputs and switching, that is NOT under their control, and is less predictable. It's not just solar; wind and other sources must now be "bought back" also. So even though wind and solar are "free", there IS a cost, financial and operational, that is being borne by the generation and transmission companies. It MAY be affecting the stability of what comes off the grid. On the comsumption side, various "smart" energy saving schemes, which involve load switching, have also been implemented, where loads are switched more frequently, in more places, than ever before. The grid was never designed for that, and glitches may happen. Anyone who has installed some of the new LED lights, and has dimmers, can appreciate the various weirdnesses that can occur when the electronics of the various device interact, in unforseen ways, over their mutual coupling to the powerline.

Re:It could be solar....

[mangamaster03]

When did generation and transmission split and become two separate businesses? Our regional power company manages both.

And that cost of the "free" solar and wind that the power company is absorbing...that's not gonna last. There is legislation moving right now to require a flat fee for anyone hooked up to the grid. California pitched a hissy fit about it last summer, but you can't have free solar power, and an on-demand, always on reliable power grid at the same time. If you want the reliability of the grid, you're gonna pay for it.

Homeless crazy poop

[Applehu Akbar]

All downtown BART stations have to be periodically taken offline so that human excrement can be cleaned out of the escalators.

Re:Homeless crazy poop

[BronsCon]

Sadly, the above statement is true.

I have a design for a portable emp weapon that doe

[Anonymous Coward]

Think MRE in a backpack

Nailed It!

[Anonymous Coward]

The eels are in the wheels.

Don't have a cow, man

[Anonymous Coward]

Just replace the batteries with some decent Duracells.

Beards

[OopsClunkThud]

why does it suddenly start happening now ?

Static in all the beards on board. Ridership is at an all time high, much of it bearded wunderkind, but since they are all totally unique they blind to the collective effect of accelerating all that change.

Re:Looking in wrong place but across the magic sea

[thsths]

Indeed. Running power systems is not easy, and railway power is especially difficult (at least houses and substations are typically stationary). Some good research has been done on this in Europe - and I am sure experts are available for reasonable fees. (Maybe that is the actual problem?)

It's a scam

[Anonymous Coward]

As a daily bart traveler, and one that gets on at north concord, its a scam. Bart is requesting money again for track upgrades and are also looking to raise fairs. things on the system always start breaking as we get closer to hand out day. But being that they are it as far as travel goes were stuck taking it. I almost turned back after getting to the station this morning. tons of people busses and news vans , and a friendly hobo pissing on the train as we waited to be let on.

I may be wearing a tin foil hat, but its to block piss.

DC metro not similar

[Anonymous Coward]

DC (WMATA) metro problem is wires catching fire. Probably due to lame inspections a year ago.

The BART problem is a transient raising troubles with new generation traction motors and their electronics.

probably relays, not even 74 series TTL

[Anonymous Coward]

This stuff is really, really old. The original BART cars were marvels of late 1960s engineering (check out older issues of IEEE Spectrum), and almost certainly do not have microprocessors in them. One of the big novelties in the early 70s was the digital speed display at the front of the car (using 74LS TTL, as it happens)

The ticket machines are mostly electromechanical.

They may add a retrofit module to do RFID type things, but the basic turnstile is a good solid 60s design (which has been sort of, kind of, maintained, maybe)

Re:probably relays, not even 74 series TTL

[BronsCon]

I see you haven't been to the bay area in a while.

Geomagnetic Flux

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard an interesting story from a friend of mine in the power industry that seems like it might be relevant:

A number of years ago there was a long line running N-S that had constant problems with power surges frying transformers all along the line. After a great deal of troubleshooting it was finally discovered that there was a huge inductance current coming from geomagnetic flux in the area. The solution was to reroute the line in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the direct interference of the magnetic flux.

Being a highly active fault zone, is it possible that this could be a new effect?

Re:Geomagnetic Flux

[LunaticTippy]

Faults don't really affect magnetic variation. In the area annual change is 0 6' W per year, or 0.1 degree. Such a slow change wouldn't cause a sudden spike in failures, not to mention the entire BART system isn't all that long.

Re:global warming. its settled science!

[BronsCon]

I think this was meant to be funny, not as a troll. I could be wrong, but it did make me laugh.

better late than never

[LunaticTippy]

I am very excited. I'm in Milpitas these days and when I want to visit the city or go to berkeley or oakland I have to drive or bike to Fremont to catch BART. Those few miles are super awful after work. Having a station much closer to home is going to make my life much easier.

Braking

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they have regenerative braking?

A Subway named Mobius

[mcswell]

http://www.rioranchomathcamp.c...

This would not happen in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

because Japan is awesome. There is also no sexism in Japan at all.

(AmiMoJo, seem to have hit my posting limit).

San Andreas

[pebear]

I think the San Andreas fault is about to give way. And all that static electricity is making it's way into the grid and shorting out the BART infrastructure. We had better get the Rock and Paul Giamatti on this issue because they are the only ones who can save millions of Californians....

Details on the power system

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia, the system is 1000vDC. The newer motors are driven by chopper thyristors, not sure what the older DC systems use.

I'm no electrical engineer...perhaps someone could shed some light on this. It isn't like an AC distribution grid with reactive power and inductive loads, though the substations feeding the system are. It also seems AC is much more common for electric transit, but I imagine that this issue could be replicated elsewhere. We need to look at the science and mechanics behind it, I.E. what exactly happens (others have mentioned data logging) under what circumstances, and analyze that.

I'm inclined to agree with the issue possibly being related to weather, as this system has been running for years, and these issues are recent.

Please do not touch the 3rd rail

[Anonymous Coward]

BART has an exposed high voltage "3rd rail" that delivers AC to the motors. If that rail were to short against any of the other rails it might cause a surge, depending on how ground is wired. A thin strip of aluminum might cause such a short and combust without a trace.

Just a hypothesis.

BART Electrical Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ktvu.com/news/108827982-story
#1 They have a "Chief Mechanical Engineer" in charge of the problem. Hint to BART: Put some freakin' electrical engineers in charge!
#2 That looks like an IXYS Westcode UK division SCR. Hint to BART: IXYS headquarters is in Milpitas.
#3 BART recently began testing the new piece of track between Fremont and Warm Springs. I suggest they disconnect this unused extension and check if the problem has gone away.
#4 A Tesla Model S has about the same total horsepower as the total horsepower of a BART car. Hint to BART: Tesla is in Fremont. Give them a call. Their CEO considers electric vehicle design so simple that he devotes half his time to his other company, which puts rockets into space.

Re:BART Electrical Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

#5 Electrical wiring does not require maintenance (I will show you homes with functional wiring dating to the 1920's). BART simply needs to cut down on the amount of human excrement collecting at the stations.
#6 California High Speed Rail will be running off of 25,000 volts AC. It isn't a challenge. It is done every day. BART runs off 1000 VDC. I bet there are guys in Silicon Valley would would fix the BART problem for free if you let them keep the leftover parts to hack their Prii.

What's Frying the Electrical Systems On BART Train

[Anonymous Coward]

It sound like a software problem. BART should be checking the control computers in their substations ..... Base on what was posted, just shutting down the substations will be insufficient, the attack will move to another one. It is also not clear whether this is an external or internal issue.

hipsters charging their cell phones ?

[Anonymous Coward]

people charging their cell phones ?