Almost defying belief, our local public transit system just keeps getting worse: Newly-purchased cars on two lines were taken out of service with problems with their batteries; an escalator in one of the subway stations suddenly reversed direction; and video footage came out of 4 train cars rolling backwards with no conductor aboard.
And that was just yesterday.
I heard the other day that one of the train lines has no maintenance car, because the
only maintenance car on that line is itself down for maintenance - and has been
for eight months. This is all just a couple of weeks after the NTSB had to step in because 80% of the system's dispatchers had let their federal certifications lapse, and I believe there were two more low-speed collisions on the light-rail line. In one of the incidents, the whole line had to pause because two light-rail cars accidentally coupled up with each other. Nobody was hurt or killed this time, but several years ago several passengers were injured and a light-rail operator was killed, when it's believed the operator was using their mobile phone while coming into a station. [EDIT: Okay, it was 2008, longer ago than I thought it was. I was conflating that incident with a crash last September in which 20 people were injured and the NTSB investigation found that the driver had mistakenly put the train's Master Controller into the Full Power position and rear-ended another train. Nobody was killed that time.] Because of the now-abrupt shortage of certified dispatchers, the whole system has moved to a Saturday schedule all week, at least for the Summer. On the bright side, I guess if you have to slow down your service for a couple of months to get your [crap] together, Summer is the time to do it.
Thing is, they won't get their [crap] together. None of this is really news to residents of the metro area, even if they didn't specifically know about the 3 incidents I mentioned above. People who've lived in this area are shrugging and/or yawning. Our public transit system has been a mismanaged dumpster fire for decades, and there's nothing to indicate it's getting any better. If these posts weren't dated, you wouldn't know if I was writing from 2022, 2002, or 1982. (I suppose my avatar means it couldn't be any earlier than 1984.
)
I've been a half-dozen cities around the world that have significant public transit systems, and every. single. one. was better than ours. I challenge any resident of an American city who uses public transit to visit Tokyo. You'll feel like you're in a [freaking] episode of
Star Trek. Go to Shinjuku or Shibuya station, but bring a brown paper bag to breathe into, in case you get the vapors. This [stuff] can be done, people. You know how I know? 'Cause almost everybody else has [flipping] done it. It seems we're the only [donkeys] who can't figure this [stink] out*. [Fork.]
* Admittedly, I haven't been to North Korea. I've heard that the subway in North Korea uses the same half-century-old train cars that ours does. I bet all their dispatchers are properly certified, though. Probably their light rail drivers don't [flippin'] plow into each other, either.
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