They emailed me back, they said that the floppy thing makes a good headline but is really just the tip of the iceberg. It's really the whole system that's like this at every layer, it needs replacing they say.
If they had good schematics for all of the parts it might be possible to keep the the system running for a long time with a couple of smart EEs who are comfortable with the scope and soldering iron, but eventually they're going to run out of some obscure part and be up a creek.
Or maybe they could replace entire boards with home designed versions condense all of the old logic down to one chip and a handful of support components and start in-place upgrading without a total system revamp. Still an expensive process, and one that requires some hard to find engineers on staff, but theoretically spreads out the upgrade process over many years. It also loses out on functional improvement opportunities while your system is made up of a hodgepodge of old and new hardware.
The computers in question are, I believe, just thin clients.
Since I experienced 5.25 inch floppy disk era...and even the occasional bernoulli disk...we could simply say: the system had its run, replacement is reasonable. A lot of stuff had changed since then, and not just in storage media.
By comparison a train is vastly over-engineered and has an electric drive train. Sure stuff will need replacing but a train should last 40 years at least
A cursory search suggests that quite a few manufacturers design for light rail car lifetimes of 25-30 years, not forty. These tend to be of European origin, which tracks San Francisco switching from an Italian to a German vendor. I don't see evidence that it's a common practice to significantly extend the tenure of those devices there nor here.
Funnily enough, I see no problems with the Breda trains personally as a passenger. But once they've shaken out the major bugs, the Siemens train reliability is anticipated to be triple or more. It may not make sense to design a traincar for a fifty year term.
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2021-11/...
Looks like this has been the subject of some industry wandering in the last generation:
https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/new-boom-in-the-...
Some were planned for 30-35 years, some for 25 to 30, some models have aged so gracefully they may be refurbished, yet others may have been engineered with roughly the correct obsolescence window in mind as engineering has advanced in the last generation, even in the dimensions of making some things simpler and more reliable (one of the billed advantages of some of the Siemens train mechanisms).
FTA has set a default ULB as the expected service years for each vehicle
class in the table below. … In cases where the submitted ULB differs
significantly from the default value, agencies may be prompted to submit
justification.
Basically if you're buying things that don't last 30 years, the feds are going to be very reluctant to give you money.
Until you have directly used "legacy" machine that are mission critical, and understand how even a tiny error could cause the failure of a business and all the jobs that go with it, you can't avoid underestimating the true scale and scope of the problem.
It may feel emotionally like this at every layer, but the layers that are not floppy discs are completely different from floppy discs.
Other than electrolytics caps (easy replacement items), old electronics is reliable.
Moving parts need service; that's life.
> needs replacement
Not believable without detailed justification.
In the present article, someone is literally quoted as everything working just fine.
Good luck getting the city to see it that way. If you'd like help, let me know.
this is the agency that brought you the central fucking subway, a $300M sewer project masquerading as some red paint on van ness, that picked the already-mostly-grade-separated M Ocean over the N Judah to subway-ify and that is incapable of flicking the traffic preemption switch on the rest of the T to the on position without a decades long pedestrian detection LIDAR project for the unique in the world needs of san francisco.
(they probably are…)
It sounds like they let this problem fester until it has reached this existential end. They clamor for new technology, which they get, then they use the most risk adverse management strategy and never upgrade or change it, until it reaches this problem state.
They either need significant third party help deploying and managing this system, or they should go back a few generations of technology and use the simplest possible system that meets their needs. Pen and paper should be considered if it can be made more efficient.
I guess the people who work on public transit aren't interested in having the best public transit system available. They're only interested in keeping it running for as long as possible with zero changes or responsibility.
This is why I'm strongly doubtful on public transportation in the US. Our bureaucracy can't handle it.
Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled? Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with government.
The problem is the public and the politicians - transit employees largely do the best they can with the resources and constraints they are given. In order to succeed transit needs municipalities and states to: pay more taxes; accept that transit won't generate a profit, but does generate non-monetary public value; and gather their resolve to deal with NIMBYs.
Do you not see this article as evidence of this fact? If you walked into any other business reliant on "floppy disks" just to take your money, would you praise their practices and efficiency?
> Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with government.
I form opinions because I try to use their services and am disappointed and often disgusted. Do you really think "experience with public transport" is particularly hard to come by? That this is all too esoteric for the "common man" to opine on? Please...
> transit employees largely do the best they can with the resources and constraints they are given
Perhaps they should earn those resources competitively instead of being given them? Otherwise, this seems like a perennial chicken and the egg problem that swallows tax dollars with no worthwhile result.
> Perhaps they should earn those resources competitively instead of being given them?
How? They're a public agency. There is no profit motive - if the public wants nicer stuff, they need to pay for it. That includes both the software costs and the higher salary costs to hire people capable of those types of projects.
Again, you come off as someone running their mouth with no actual experience interacting with public agencies. It's very frustrating to know how to fix a problem without being given the resources or permission to do so, which is often the case in transit. Add to that most transit agencies have a tiny budget for IT, and I'm not sure how you expect this to get solved without a big public push.
Of course the employees work hard. It’s the vocation they’ve chosen. I’m always amazed by the diligence of TFL and rail employees in the U.K., for instance.
No, the guiding principle for the folks at the top is “so, how can I make money for myself out of this before I fail upwards?”.
I’d wager the SF situation is just the same old looting by the Very Important People who run the show, leaving employees and actual managers with a shoestring and two peanuts to make it all work, while the head honchos bathe in gravy.
Who are "the folks at the top"? Transit agency executives in California make less than software engineers (though if you put in your time, you get a nice pension to make up for it) - how are these people getting rich? If you mean the politicians, sure, I've already said they're half the problem.
These people are around in SF - see Mohammed Nuru, Rodrigo Santos and so on.
It's hard to live in SF for long without inadvertently touching corruption, even if you actively try to avoid it.
We are talking about American transit workers. I haven’t been to London, but I’ve been amazed by the diligence and efficiency of Japanese transit workers. But they bear zero resemblance to the folks running the transit system in DC, where I live.
I honestly find it incredibly disheartening how rampant and underreported corruption and nepotism are in practically every sector, industry, everything, everywhere, always.
The corrupt are a minority - but they are global, and the impacts of their actions are damaging the entire human race in a very significant fashion, and always have.
Murder, I can forgive.
Corruption, I cannot.
I've worked in the public sector for several years, and there are definitely a decently-sized group of people in many different positions that are riding out their time until retirement trying to fly under the radar and do as little as possible. Not to say there aren't people that aren't competent, but as a competent person you have to work around the people that don't care and often actively don't want to see more work come their way to get anything done. It becomes tiring and eventually the private sector is too enticing and the competent people leave.
I think American public servants are lazy, overpaid, and unskilled, yes. You don’t need experience running the government to know that the government sucks at its job, just like Windows users could tell Windows 95 sucked without being programmers themselves.
US transit systems almost uniformly suck compared to those in other developed countries, while costing the public just as much money, and in many cases a lot more money: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephensmith/2011/12/11/surpris.... (“ The Swiss Transit department made a presentation a year or two ago in San Francisco. As far as I could tell, the public transit subsidies for all of Switzerland are in the neighborhood of the subsidies for transit in the Bay Area… He gives total [Swiss] transit subsidies at $1.5 billion.The 2009 MTC report gives Bay Area transit subsidies at $1.3 billion.”).
Sweeping generalizations much?
Its completely besides my point, but comparing sprawling American metros to compact Swiss cantons is not a useful exercise. If we want to redevelop American cities to be more transit friendly, I am on board!
The problem is not funding or public policy or geography. The northeast corridor is densely populated; there is no reason in terms of geography why you shouldn’t be able to have efficient transit in Baltimore and DC. These systems are well funded and heavily subsidized by the federal government. The problem is the people, and that’s a problem you can’t fix. You cannot redevelop American cities into anything other than what they are so long as you have Americans running them. It’s a futile exercise.
It was more than a few years ago, but I remember the posts on Slashdot where tech people were wringing their hands over the fact that election offices were not adopting touchscreen ballots fast enough. Some posters were also promoting things like internet voting. How did that work out?
Sometimes it actually is better to move slowly instead of adopting something new just because it is new. With old equipment and older technology, we know the failure modes, we have the procedures in place for addressing them. Whether it's floppy disks, paper ballots, (or human beings,) older does not necessarily mean worse.
If a business fails to perform well, its customers can choose another provider, and the business will have to improve, or else it will fail.
If a government fails, what recourse do its "customers" have? Wait a few years for the next election and hope that the truth about the government's poor performance wins out over the propaganda, and hope that the citizens vote in competent, honest officials, who might gradually make improvements, despite having to work through non-elected officials who are difficult to replace for incompetency? How often does that happen? And what if the officials in question are merely appointed by those who are elected, and thereby insulated from accountability by several levels of indirection? What recourse do the "customers" have then? Can they choose another "rail provider"?
The private sector has natural consequences for failure and a natural incentive to excel and be efficient (certain circumstances, such as monopolies, notwithstanding). The public sector is heavily insulated from consequences for failure and inefficiency.
That doesn't mean that everything should be privatized. It means that we shouldn't be surprised when a service provided by the public sector fails to perform well or efficiently, and we should carefully consider what the government ought to be responsible for. Also, we should make it easier to hold government officials accountable and replace them for incompetence. If someone wants the security of a public sector job, they ought to be held to the highest standards.
If a business fails to perform well, its customers can choose another
provider, and the business will have to improve, or else it will fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6mQfWC1v98
Thing is, Alcatel did fail. Thales scooped them up. From a customer POV Alcatel/Thales failed too. They sold an end of life product that the MTA had to spend millions on just to add a new route (first part of the central subway). They've largely abandoned support of the inductive loop system.
Sure, the MTA could choose another vendor. If memory serves that's where they're stuck currently. Of course this brings out all the anti-government folks despite the main problem being a private vendor (Thales) and private consultants (BAH).
Public ventures are like that, but without the bankruptcy.