Someone in New York is pulling emergency brakes, destroying subway commute
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
I would be very surprised if this could happen in central london.
1) the tubes are packed and the cabs locked.
2) they would have be murdered by the other commuters.
3) you can't get in or out of the station without being seen on CCTV
4) each train has CCTV coverage.
5) its almost impossible to get out of the tube via the tunnels, without being electrocuted or run over (All but the cut and cover tunnels are <1' bigger than the trains)
For point 2, even in legitimate cases where someone has keeled over, you get death stares. The only time its seen as acceptable is when someone falls inbetween the gap between the train and the platform edge.
And with good reason, because that is not a legitimate case. It is displayed on signs on many routes that the emergency services can best help/reach you on the platforms. Pulling the emergency brakes in the tunnel is actually counter productive if someone keels over.
Pulling the emergency brake therefore isn't necessarily a bad idea. If someone has fallen ill on the train (esp. common in summer), it's the best way to ensure that help will be available as soon as possible.
As you said, evacuating trains in the tunnel is dangerous so it's only done if trains physically can't move to the station (e.g. another train blocks the tracks). And even then, evacuation is only done after electricity has been switched off via the end of the train.
I think they started these announcements because people considered someone feeling dizzy a medical emergency.
But pulling it between stations would only prolong the time it took for the person to get help.
Unless you can point to official advice from TfL that states otherwise, I'm just gonna come out and say that I think it's best to stick to the advice TfL give at stations which is not to pull the emergency handle if someone is unwell. Whatever the precise action that results from pulling the handle (whether that's sounding an alarm, engaging a brake, or whatever), I don't see what it would achieve between stations and especially when TfL say not to do it.
But of course these are very limited and you almost never actually want to do that.
Rather, it should be said that tech workers are not inherently more knowledgeable in matters unrelating to tech than the general public. In this case, knowledge of train function and etiquette is in question, not intelligence.
(Note also that intelligence does not confer knowledge (although it makes knowledge easier to acquire) and that it's quite easy to find examples of people with modest intelligence but exceptional knowledge. Furthermore the work/intelligence selection process only really applies in one direction; there are a lot of high intelligence people who choose jobs they find undemanding because they have different priorities or have had different opportunities in life.)
The real solution is to practice till the time to reset an emergency brake is 1 minute or less. It should be simple - someone in a control room checks all CCTV cameras to see the situation, and presses a button to restart the train.
TFL's cameras mostly aren't digital and can't be watched remotely, so they're miles off ever being able to do this.
This often happens when a train is particularly crowded and people are crammed in near the doors.
This is usually followed by a frustrated driver coming over the PA system to implore people to stop leaning on the doors, because they are unable to move the train until they do so.
The emergency brake that is discussed here is different. It's inside the operator's locked cab, and releases air brakes that stop the train with maximal acceleration to the extent that the wheels can be damaged by grinding against the rails. They are only used in a last resort but they have to be available and functional in the event that the human operator finds itself unable to make a controlled stop. The same subsystem activates when the train incorrectly passes a red signal or hits a large obstruction in the tracks.
>He climbs aboard the rear of the train as it departs a station, unlocks the safety chains, somehow gets into the rear cab, and triggers the emergency brakes.
With my tinfoil hat adjusted: maybe this is a plan to push for CCTV acceptance in NYC. Annoy commuters enough, present surveillance as a solution, get agreement.
Fun fact - the tunnels are so tight in the Underground that there's not much room for much airflow around the trains and the clay surrounding the tunnels has absorbed so much heat that it can't take in any more, which is why it gets so stifling in summer. People used to go down to the Central Line to cool off in summer! https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2017/06/10/cooling-the-tube...
That's an understatement. IIRC in some of the tube stock you have/had to duck to enter the carriage if you're more than 5'5.
That said I rarely use the tube these days as it's quicker to get an Uber/Taxi (by a good 15 mins) between Waterloo and my office.
That would leave about a thousand people traumatised. I hope they can retrofit platform doors into the stations soon.
I'd long wondered why underground trains came in 2 obviously different sizes, ie. the central line AKA the sardines express vs the district line, the carriages thereof being properly capacious.
Was talking to a TFL'er who said it annoyed him that all tube trains were collectively referred to by the public as 'underground trains' when there were actually sub-surface trains (the big ones) and proper underground trains (like the central and northern). I really hadn't known.
Edit: he could also tell the line a (proper) underground train was on by the metallic shriek it made. I asked him what caused that and he thought it was the wheel flanges rubbing on the sides of the rails during tighter turns.
Because the original lines were opened in the mid (sub-surface) to late (deep) 19th century. The sub-surface lines were built cut-and-cover and thus easy to make roomy with the technology of the times, digging from up and covering was well within easy means, however the deep lines were built using pre-TBM tunnelling shields, limiting their diameter due to effort and sheer technology. The deepest station in the underground was opened in 1907, remains one of the deepest stations in the world, and pretty much all the deeper ones opened after WWII.
Later deep lines (Victoria and Jubilee) I'm guessing were kept at the same diameter for convenience (of sharing structure, infrastructure and rolling stock), and possibly existing sections being "moved" from one line to an other.
> Was talking to a TFL'er who said it annoyed him that all tube trains were collectively referred to by the public as 'underground trains' when there were actually sub-surface trains (the big ones) and proper underground trains (like the central and northern). I really hadn't known.
Technically they're all underground trains, as in trains which are part of the London Underground. The sardine express ones are "deep-level" or "deep-tube" (they used to be the actual tube lines but the term has expanded to basically be the same thing as the Underground).
Not during the middle of the day, which would have a knock on effect
>each train has CCTV coverage.
You could always keep a change of clothes
Oh, I'm sure 99% of the NYC-area ridership is planning exactly this.
My immediate reaction to this story was, "Prankster, go into hiding now if you want to survive the week."
In the spirt of HN's policy of not being snarky I will attempt to temper my reply. As a native NYer: I find it Laughable that a Nation which, in effect, gave up its Sovereign Government to the EU and, outlawed Free Speech by banning "hate speech" (which is in fact--Anything that your Overlords say it is), would attemp to draw the line at someone pulling the EBrake on a train.
Sorry, but that is as Non-Snarky as I could make my reply.
If you dispute the idea, I suggest you try pulling the emergency brake as a joke and see how fellow commuters treat you.
one night i woke up flying across a subway car before slamming into one of the vertical hand poles
i was sitting, sleeping, facing the direction of travel and someone had pulled the emergency stop
it was 3am so the only people on the train where fellow transients
this fact must have been prominent in the mind of the person conducting the train because immediately they got on the comm and yelled, 'WHO THE FUCK PULLED THE EMERGENCY STOP?!'
the absurdity of it all helped me ignore the pain in my shoulder
i always slept with my back to my momentum after that night
If lots, how was that allowed to happen? If few, why not more?
As far as why not more, it's not a great place to sleep...
In London, you'd get woken up at the end of the line, and a valid ticket for unlimited travel back-and-forth is fairly expensive — around £13 ($16).
Or maybe there's some other reason, but I hardly ever see homeless people sleeping on metro trains.
It seems absurd to me to advocate petty lawlessness, but the public transportation systems are all so far underwater that checking ride tickets isn't going to practically move the needle anyway.
There's no time limit; one entry will let you stay in the subway system all day. But you can't just live on the trains, because they shut down at night.
Somehow I suspect that if Shanghai can shut down the subway overnight, New York, with half the ridership, could handle doing so too, so the question "why is this allowed to happen" seems valid.
Jumping the turnstile is... not common.
Why does Shanghai metro shut down at 11pm? So early. Impossible to have a fun night out.
Inside city limits, the distances travelled are so compressed (even interborough), that most trips are less than ten minutes of actual train ride.
Once you start dealing with zones, you also have to start operating on fixed schedules. The New York City system does have time tables but they don't really operate to the minute. The listed times are mostly just targets. More important is the frequency of trains, back to back trains (double capacity) with five minute frequencies during rush hour, and graveyard has 20 minute frequencies, everything else aims for ten minutes between each individual train.
Again, most people are travelling less than 45 minutes on trains set for 30MPH speed limits.
(Manhattan is only 20 miles long)
I can go from my local station to the CBD (2 stops, around 5 minutes) and it costs roughly US$0.60; another 5 stops on the same line to get to my favorite restaurant bumps the journey to about 12 minutes and costs me ~$0.90. Crossing the harbor from Hong Kong island to the Kowloon peninsula takes less time but actually costs more (almost $1.50) thanks to tunnel fees.
On a side note, public transit timing is one thing that has been irrevocably ruined for me by living in HK. On my usual travel routes the train frequency is typically 2-3 minutes and during rush hour it’s on the order of 30 seconds - the next train often enters the platform just as the last car of the previous train leaves. Granted it does shut for a few hours each night, but even the other top Asian metro systems can't match it.
When I used to spend a lot of time in NYC (before moving to Asia) I had no problem with the subways; now it’s a significant consideration for me when thinking about moving.
An example: you could fill as many trains as you could physically fit on a track coming from Central (the CBD) during rush hour; a train every 30 seconds or so is crucial to keeping things civil on the platform. As you get farther from Central, utilization falls until you reach a terminal station, where the time between trains can be more like 2-3 minutes without any problems. Through clever signaling you can achieve a much higher perceived throughput on the busiest stretches without actually running more trains.
Why would that be? Plenty of cities with zonal systems (eg. London, most if not all Chinese metros) have turn-up-and-go high-frequency metros.
For example, in most of Switzerland and probably Germany that uses unified zone systems for everything (intercity trains, local buses, boats, funiculars, etc.) the frequency of most train routes is nowhere near those of a typical bus.
What a great way to generally enable the people living in the smaller towns around the city, and keep the towns themselves alive.
And it adds up so quick, with no unlimited option.
I guess it’d be like taking the Metro North or LIRR to work everyday but it still seems like a lot of money to me.
https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/09/22/judge-rules-ran...
https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/424036-329673-lawmaker-wa...
https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/02/washington-fare-...
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/11/02/cleveland-police-enfo...
https://ggwash.org/view/69171/a-new-report-highlights-the-st...
Those were the top of a very brief search. If I looked a bit more, I'm sure I could find more examples backing up my original claim. There's nothing ridiculous about the assertion at all.
So they don’t check tickets for anyone.
If it’s true that’s crazy.
One of the light rail trains near me is subsidized to the tune of 30 or so dollars per ride, so it's not like catching the small percentage of evaders will actually make a dent (that's probably 6 or more times the fare cost).
But it does seem like encouraging it by doing nothing at all is a bad idea.
Also, generally for $480 per month there will be somewhere non-moving that you'll be able to stay, such as a hostel or a roomshare apartment (which isn't necessarily legal, but common in larger cities).
As for why you're allowed to stay at the end of the line -- it's probably a mix of liberal policy, lack of manpower, and general "not my problem" attitude.
Or the train is being removed from service. That's not really going to happen in the middle of the night but definitely happens during times when they are decreasing service (after rush hour, after like 11pn)
Usually, if a non-looping subways hit EOL, there will be a sweep and a rest period. Looping subways might just change drivers and keep going...well, it can suck when you are on a train that is retiring (in Beijing, they just dump you out and tell you to wait for the next train...).
Generally this is a short rest period, ~ 10-15 minutes max during peak times and 30 minutes max otherwise. Nobody's kicking you off, you can just wait until the train starts back the other way.
It's also generally the least busy part of the line.
The second greatest problem on NYC's subway for people who wish to "live" there (after rush hours) has to be the light. The fluorescent is unavoidable.
https://www.bigissue.com/latest/londons-homeless-boarding-ni...
(Oh, it isn't run in a continuous circle anymore, after a 2009 extension to Hammersmith. Shame.)
more nyc subway information than you'll ever need:
- nyc has a globally rare subway in that it is 24hrs
- you need to be sitting up to sleep on the train, if you lie down you can be removed (was so told by a cop when i was first arrested for sleeping on the train that this is 'the law')
- subways run the full length of a track, then back, then swap drivers
- when a driver swaps they have to remove everyone from the train so all transients get up and go across the track to the next train that is waiting to drive off
- the two longest trains: ORANGE(D,1h-1h15m before driver swap), RED(2,1h30m-2h before driver swap)
- meaning you could get about ~1h30m of uninterrupted sleep
- that was until i discovered the L train is driven by software and the conductor is there as a failsafe
- as such there is a different driver procedure and you can run the train back and forth all day all week without being removed, thats eventually how id get 8h+ nights
someone down thread said 480$/mo for tickets, but id rarely pay
> why not more?
i wondered the same thing, its warm, even in winter, and heavily populated, protecting you from assaults
im unsure what percentage of people without places to sleep choose the subway, but there are some options
there are shelters, but after my experiences there: caging you in or out after curfew, once shut a lawlessness among the people, being placed in rooms with territorial long termers, structurally and hygienically questionable building; i decided id rather risk the street
but it was a winter with a foot of snow on the ground so i tried to sleep in a decommissioned subway stop where there were others sleeping but was woken up by the blunt end of a cop's foot
when i explained i thought it was okay to sleep here because i saw others doing the same the cop responded, 'that guys been there 7 years, get the fuck out of here kid'
hostels at the time cost about 30$/nt for a bunk in a room with 40 people, in brooklyn, so out of my price range but once i got a job i would stay in one once a week to take a shower
> how was that allowed to happen?
compassion, human decency, empathy
i jape, though thats why, im guessing, most riders accept it as a reality
but its probably more to do with poorly handling government resources to address the issue that some people need to sleep sitting up on a subway to have a warm place to rest
Similarly, Vermont keeps voting in Sanders despite there not being homeless issues there.
Dig deeper.
>You’ll find plenty of dirt poor rural people that would benefit from entitlement programs just as much.
The big difference is in an urban area even the non homeless want to solve homelessness because it's a public nuisance that directly affects them. See any thread here complaining about sf. In rural areas poverty is a much more private problem.
As for Vermont, you're cherry picking. By and large it is undeniable that the Republican/Democrat divide follows an urban rural line. The exceptions are parts of the deep South (where the racial divide is more prominent), and parts of the coasts where liberalism is so dominant even the rural areas are blue. I don't know the mechanism for the latter, but if I had to guess I'd say a big part of the rural population in those areas aren't farmers but retired professionals living in mcmansions. I know people like that but let's not get into anecdotes.
I'm going to double down here. It's not just attitudes on entitlement programs that are influenced by rational interest among urban and rural residents. Literally every hot button political issue can be understood in these terms.
Take guns for instance. Guns in cities are synonymous with gun crime. Owning one is deeply impractical and police response times are fast enough that you don't need one. In a rural area guns are still practical and police response times are slow.
Take endowments for the arts. Guess where the all the state subsidized art ends up. Hint: it's not Topeka Kansas.
Want me to keep going?
Speaking of which - if cities and their urban populations want to solve homelessness, why can they not do it on a city-by-city case, locally? A tragedy of the commons type issue, where a city that takes care of the homeless better will have more homeless people heading there?
I kid but this has been a known problem for two thousand years. The solutions are continually rediscovered, reimplemented and then ignored by later generations that "know better".
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
- Aristotle
Imagine if California was free to regulate all of healthcare for itself. They could write whatever socialized medicine program the voters desired all while not burdening the people of Texas with the cost who perhaps prefer a free market solution of some kind. As different states implement different programs people would be able to vote with their feet as to what was the better deal, causing states to compete with one another to offer the best deals to its population.
States are too small to effectively implement what they want? That isn't a problem as they can contract with each other and if that goes south look to the federal government to resolve the dispute.
I think we could improve upon on current system by adding a vice-governor to the governor's ticket, and subjecting the ticket to the popular vote. Then the governor could send the vice-governor, his popularly elected subordinate, to Congress, which would help shift power back to the states. As it currently stands, senators do not feel a need to pay heed to their states' governors.
You’re too shallow in your assumption that everyone wants free stuff from the government and only votes against it when they don’t benefit.
>Take guns for instance. Guns in cities are synonymous with gun crime.
Boring trope. Owning a gun in any Texas city isn’t a problem at all, including Austin, which isn’t exactly a conservative stronghold.
Of course if someone is sitting opposite to you then they’ll slam into you in case of an accident, but I still think the chances of survival are better when facing rearwards.
This was scientifically proven through the work done by John Stapp[1], who attached himself to a rocket sled facing both directions and at one point became "the fastest man on earth" by breaking the land speed record at 632 mph and sustaining 46.2 g's.
His research is the reason why most military transport planes have seats facing backwards or sideways.
http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm
The takeaway should be "make sure you can't hit anything". Sitting with your back to the stop often helps you not go flying and hit anything when no proper tie downs are available but it's just a rule of thumb. If you have even just a lap belt your going to be better off facing forward in the event of a crash because of how the human neck works.
Went researching it after the flight and apparently reverse seats are far safer for injuries, especially neck and torso related.
1. Most trains in India do have doors.
2. Almost all modern subway in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai etc do have doors. The trains won’t move till the doors are completely shut.
3. Mumbai is one of the few cities which has an ancient train system which overlaps with the national long distance trains and is separate from the subways but still carries the bulk of the people. Trains/EMUs on this do have doors but people generally don’t close these in rush hours.
4. These days even long distance trains in India have their doors closed shut and you do get reprimanded for trying to keep the doors open (happened to me multiple times)
5. The part about chains being rusted and difficult to pull is probably true.
6. Delhi metro (and I suspect others too) don’t have chains. You have a button and speaker near every other door to talk to the driver in case of emergency.
7. Trains have doors. People just don’t close them.
http://images.newindianexpress.com/uploads/user/imagelibrary...
I can imagine at least some testing if relations improve and stabilise a bit.
... we assume
The system doesn’t get talked about very much, but even regular patrolmen are trained to use it effectively. It’s built to accommodate a variety of use cases ranging from tactical support (“suspect headed north on Amsterdam Ave, but then we lost him - where did he go?”) to general investigative duties (“who usually comes by this store on Mondays at 9am?”) and, based on what I’ve heard from cops, works really well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Times_Square_car_bombing_...
Also took 2 days from the first attack to catch the NYC/NJ bomber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_New_York_and_New_Jersey_b...
He was caught sleeping on the street at 10:30 AM, so maybe not exactly a master of evasion, but still, 2 days to catch him ain't bad.
He was caught 2 hours after the police sent an alert to people's phones by someone who got the alert, but not too quickly for Anil Dash to criticize the alert as useless:
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/technology/personaltech/a...
- If the subway needs to stop via an external decision, there are triggers all over the rails to trigger an emergency break.
- If you are sick, emergency break is actually worse than waiting to get to the next station.
- If anything is happening. Emergency break is wrong.
- If something is in view of the conductor, the conductor will do the correct action.
- If the train is going too fast, there is already a timer and an automated emergency break triggered on the rails.
I cannot think of a single good reason for this. It's like saying there's a "turn engines off" lever on an airplane next to the bathroom.
This is the conductor’s control they’re using.
Or if the doors won’t close and the train starts to move.
Or the classic: there is a fire in the train and waiting for the next station is not an option.
- in case of fire the lever should alert the conductor. And the conductor should quickly make the best correct response. Often the passengers don't know that a station could be 20 seconds away and could clear out the train faster. The dispatch could clear a path for the train to speed to a better location than stuck in a tunnel with potentially nearly no place to evacuate to. Do you evacuate to ongoing train traffic? hell no! We have fire detectors, we could install them in every cart.
Yeah, until the drivers decide that the doors are so unreliable that it's faster to override the interlocks and hope nobody's caught in the doors (which will eventually reset themselves and close properly).
Just as he train was about to pull off, a man approached us and said something incoherent in Dutch. Before we could even utter our confusion, he grabbed the backpack on my lap and ran for the doors. I followed him but not nearly as fast as I would like. He was jammed between the automatic doors and I caught a glimpse of him yanking himself onto the platform, where he stumbled and started sprinting.
My cries alerted other passengers who immediately pulled the emergency break. The doors opened and we went into hot pursuit.
Sadly, we never did catch the man that day. The backpack had my laptop and many important documents, but by the grace of some Unknown or my own laziness my passport was still in my pocket. In fact when we got to the police station I thought it was in the bag, and their attitude there visibly changed when I was able to produce it. They took a statement and that was that.
So the emergency brake is useful in some situations...never did get that bag back though ;)
> the train rolled in to the station just before Amsterdam proper. I forget the name.
Amsterdam Sloterdijk.
The use case is some sort of emergency that the driver may not have seen.
SF's Muni is in the process of onboarding new trams from Siemens. Someone recently stuck their hand in the doors as they were closing. On pretty much any newish tram or subway vehicle this will cause the doors to open again. It's shitty behavior, but that's what people do. Typically trams in the United States have door interlocks such that if the doors are open the vehicle doesn't move. The new Siemens cars apparently don't have well calibrated pinch sensors and the damn thing took off with some idiot woman stuck in the doors, dragging her down the platform.
I've had similar experiences with the older ones (where the drivers would deliberately disable the interlocks — this was before they put tamper evident bits on the override switch). The driver closed the doors as I was boarding. Without looking at his/her mirrors the driver took off as I had one foot on the street and one on the vehicle.
Same deal with people who've fallen onto the tracks.
Maybe while train still at the station. But not during the movement in the middle of tunnel.
Definitely not relying on random passenger making such decision.
This capability need to be disabled to avoid hurting people. Replace it with the button to communicate with local authorities.
No, it's not, it's like saying there's plane controls in the cockpit. The break is in a cab that should be inaccessible to riders.
>He climbs aboard the rear of the train as it departs a station, unlocks the safety chains, somehow gets into the rear cab, and triggers the emergency brakes.
It seems like it should be fairly good bang for buck, in this sense, to just hire people to drive around kind of slowly and badly. Nothing overtly aggressive, but a few dozen people driving slowly around a few select traffic circles around rush hour should really gum things up.
Even better if you can cajole some people into, say, pulling emergency stops on subways. Note I don't think that's what's happening in NYC, but this case does seem to show that a few people could cause outsized disturbances just by being assholes.
Either they're the utilities are exposed https://www.businessinsider.com.au/ships-anchor-cuts-interne... or the overreaction is very expensive https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/portland-flush...
the CFAA and foreign states not wanting to start a war is seemingly the only thing stopping massive grid failure.
Two people can rent a couple of UHaul trucks and block almost any highway. It will take hours to get the trucks away.
I also remember an estimate that ~10000 trained saboteurs can bring the whole country to a grind. It's quite cheap and fast to blow stuff up, and much more expensive and slow to restore it.
The police were able to pull them over and sort them out. I forget what 'public nuisance' law they used, but the police have a wonderful set of things they can arrest people for. Breach of the peace, public order or a good one is conspiracy. Conspiracy can be proved in court but the act at the heart of the conspiracy does not have to be illegal. You could prosecute people for conspiring to share a chocolate bar in theory.
One law the police can truly hang/draw/quarter people for is arson. An 'accidental fire' need cost no more than a box of matches and can definitely sabotage a city. Hence the vast prison sentencing options. I lived somewhere where there was someone setting light to cars at night on our street, they got away with it six or more times and it was crazy how cars would explode the fuel tanks of neighbouring parked cars and melt the windows and guttering of the houses. We had pitchforks at the ready for kids from a neighbouring estate but it didn't turn out to be them. It just took one mentally ill person to put us all on this 'war' footing, suspicious of our neighbours and paranoid.
During the fun years of 'The War Against Terror' the government had to make the threat real with lots of terror drills and implausible scenarios. At one stage there were 'ricin' terror plots where some innocuous plant in someone's front garden was going to kill us all, there was another funny plot where the alleged terror operatives had bought several trillion smoke detectors to get the radioactive gubbins out of them and make a 'dirty bomb'. Obviously this would have killed us all but luckily the 'intelligence' services were onto the bad guys and 'saved the world'.
There was no foreign nation state doing this, the UK government managed to do it all by themselves. They even shut down London's Heathrow in one of these colour coded terror events, inconveniencing many but making the threat seem plausible if nonsensical.
Oddly the terrorists never had a plan that would actually work. There was always a flaw to the story, for instance the likelihood of being able to buy an absurd amount of smoke detectors or the realities of the ricin yield from the castor beans.
It was a bit like video games and movies where the bad guys are predictable and stupid.
Industrial action has been an area of subtle sabotage. In the UK this was a common thing in the 1970's. Cars would make it to the end of the production line with rattles and other defects that just made mass production a farce.
I think the CIA have a manual on how to do this, so a resistance movement in an occupied country can make things grind to a halt, just by being useless at their jobs, never doing anything that could be seen as 'terrorist'.
Four Lions[1] has you covered.
I see this as a complete win. It would quickly result in cops aggressively enforcing the existing traffic laws that already make this kind of behavior ticket-able.
It will be a glorious day when driving like a slug carries more risk of being stopped and ticketed than speeding, rolling an empty 4-way stop or otherwise driving like a normal person.
You can screw over an entire city for a week+ by renting a car, parking it in a particularly busy street, and then leaving it there. If you + a few of your friends do this, then you can gridlock the entire traffic flow of a city, as tow trucks cannot get into the area.
2017 derailment https://imgur.com/a/7Bn0bqC
2013 ignornace and fuckery https://imgur.com/a/lPrB0Gx
If I designed a massive, fast-moving, unmaneuverable tube holding dozens of human lives, I think affording it a relatively safe way to arrest that momentum would be essential.
>Then, he disappears, most likely through the subway tunnels and out an emergency exit.
That said, you're absolutely right that cameras in the tunnels would be pointless. It's dark!
Case Neistat did a New York Times Op-ed video on YouTube about it, before they were disabled: https://youtu.be/aUcP5OD-ctQ
From riding the MTA I imagine its actually a very challenging environment between the leaking mystery fluids and the electronic noise, but of course I don't mean to take the blame off the multi-billion dollar organization that should be able to handle installing some security cameras, but the infrastructure is just falling apart in every way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/nyregion/30subway.html
Some good comments on Bruce Schneier's blog too:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/03/security_came...
If yes, could this be people brazenly deciding they need to get from A to B, climbing aboard at A and stopping the train wherever B is?
I would be quite surprised if anyone was living in the subway tunnels. Compared to the Amtrak tunnels, they are much narrower. Additionally, people were living in the Amtrak tunnels during a time when the tunnels were unused or seldom used by train traffic. In contrast, subway tunnels see lots of traffic 24 hours a day.
I've often wondered if the people responsible for planning guideposts in large train stations are doing the same.
"Sorry, we didn't mean to put an ad in front of this important information, we just hadn't considered that people coming up the stairs wouldn't be able to read it."
“Cars ending in 1, 5, 6 and 0 have single full-width cabs and are known as "A" cars.
Cars ending in all other digits have no cabs and are known as "B" cars”
, I guess it is about 40% of that, or 2,600.
So, about 2,600 cameras (motion detectors might already be enough, if the culprit spends sufficient time in the cabin) in the cabs likely would solve the “what do they look like?) problem. Because of the differences in car widths, you even likely need fewer to cover the lines where this occurs a lot.
The word is "brake" not "break".
I got a chuckle out of that, so I hope you will understand that I mean this only in good humor:
For anyone who mixed them up, no harm, no foul! (And certainly no fowl play.)
Of course everyone knows what you meant, and that's what really counts. If you do want to remember the "correct" spelling, I wonder if this will help?
"It's only fair to pay your fare. And please don't pull the emergency brake, so your fellow passengers' bones don't break."
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd mastered it when I was five!
This version has IPA included, in case anyone knows IPA better than English and wants to try to follow along.
Examples from the article: the chess pawn and 'to pawn', Repair (to fix) and repair (as in “let’s repair to the smoking room”), Isle and island. All descend from different root languages with different meanings.
[1] https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/05/11/words-li...
- All conductor cabins are locked when in or not in use.
- The emergency break is a big red thing on a string that you can pull that is right next to either cab exit that is on the 2 ends of a cab.
> Every New York City Transit employee gave the same description of the “surfer” they saw riding the back of the train or darting across the tracks: young, male, wearing black clothing and white sneakers.