3 ms·

Wouldn't it be both cheaper, and friendlier to the environment to hire a person chauffeur for her? This is outrageously inefficient. Public transport only becom

by c3534l 11y ago

Wouldn't it be both cheaper, and friendlier to the environment to hire a person chauffeur for her? This is outrageously inefficient. Public transport only becomes worth it when it achieves relatively high ridership.

xyzzy4 11y ago
It would be even friendlier to the environment if she wasn't formally educated. Will educating her really provide that much for society to make it worthwhile?
- shripadk 11y ago
  Your statement reminds me of a quote from a wise man: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10867178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10867178
hkmurakami 11y ago
This station is on an existing, operational line that would run trains on the tracks even if she weren't there (and this is what is going to happen once she graduates). So the marginal cost of stopping at this station is actually not that large.
- c3534l 11y ago
  I was under the impression that it was the line that was underused, not just a stop on the line. I suppose that makes things pretty different, especially since I think Japanese lines tend to go out farther to pick people up in general.
ayuvar 11y ago
The train is already going past the existing station, so I would imagine the additional cost of supporting the station for the two times a day the train stops there is relatively small - additional brake dust in the air, some extra energy burned. It wouldn't surprise me if the accounting/management, HR and maintenance overhead for the station was higher than the cost of having the train make an extra stop twice a day. It is a little surprising the station appears to be staffed based on the picture of the train schedule, but there is something to be said for producing that extra job. I am sure the station master who resides in that office is really happy it still exists.
- shiro 11y ago
  No, the station isn't staffed since 1983. I think the photo with a desk, books and timetable is a waiting room.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
It could be. It depends on how the costs of that extra stop and related overhead (maintenance, management) compared to the costs of sending that chauffeur and related overhead. I suppose it is inefficient, but not outrageously so. But you know what would be the most efficient option, from the point of view of the railroad company? Just ignoring the girl and closing down the station. That it didn't happen suggests that someone, at some point, decided that sometimes you have to sacrifice efficiency in order to be human. (It's actually a general observation - in current highly optimized economy, being human and humane creates inefficiencies. Or in other words, we need to keep some things from being perfectly optimized, in order to avoid living in a misery. Compare to e.g. various laws protecting employees. They purposefully make businesses less efficient, in order to ensure that employees can work in safe and humane conditions.)
canthonytucci 11y ago
I had a very similar thought. I'm surprised how many people are calling this "beautiful" and getting all misty eyed, this feels like an inelegant solution. I would love to be wrong and hear that someone did the math and found that stopping the train wasn't any more wasteful than just sending this girl a taxi or something, but I have some doubts. I am unfamiliar with trains, but seeing how cars are tuning themselves off at stop lights now to conserve energy and avoid pollution it really sounds very wasteful stop a whole train for one person. I have to assume that it requires a lot of energy to slow and accelerate a train weighing in at least the tens and likely the hundreds of tons. It's a sweet idea, but it really does feel misguided to me.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It is an inelegant solution. It's not something you want to scale up. It's not something "right" by Kant's categorical imperative. The lesson to take from this story isn't "keep every train running, no matter how little economical sense it makes it". Such an attitude, universalized, would indeed be a disaster for the world. No, the lesson is that when running and optimizing systems, we should not forget why are we having them in the first place. They are there for us. Our willingness to make an occasional exception to cater for another human in need, at the cost of efficiency, is what makes us human. Think of all those tourists who regularly get injured or lost in the mountains and have to be rescued by helicopter S&R teams. From purely economical perspective, this is burning money. We should leave them to die, because the costs of fueling a chopper and risking its destruction, not to mention lives of highly-trained personnel, are great and the money could be better spent elsewhere. And yet we train S&R teams and fly the choppers, because we chose to. Ruthless economic efficiency is not the end goal.
  - canthonytucci 11y ago
    My entire opposition to this is based on the idea that slowing an accelerating a train is grossly more inefficient in terms of pollution and fuel waste than just finding a way to get her to the next station on a transport that does not weigh as much. If I'm wrong about that I'm happy to go back to feeling nice about this.
toomanybeersies 11y ago
There is a little used passenger train service here in NZ from Hamilton to Auckland, which is about ~150 km or so. It runs twice a day (Hamilton to Auckland in the morning, and back in the evening). I remember reading a while ago that someone crunched the numbers, and they figured that it would've actually been cheaper to fly everyone up each day in a helicopter or two than it cost to run the train.

by c3534l 11y ago

xyzzy4 11y ago

It would be even friendlier to the environment if she wasn't formally educated. Will educating her really provide that much for society to make it worthwhile?

shripadk 11y ago
Your statement reminds me of a quote from a wise man: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10867178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10867178

hkmurakami 11y ago

This station is on an existing, operational line that would run trains on the tracks even if she weren't there (and this is what is going to happen once she graduates). So the marginal cost of stopping at this station is actually not that large.

c3534l 11y ago
I was under the impression that it was the line that was underused, not just a stop on the line. I suppose that makes things pretty different, especially since I think Japanese lines tend to go out farther to pick people up in general.

ayuvar 11y ago

The train is already going past the existing station, so I would imagine the additional cost of supporting the station for the two times a day the train stops there is relatively small - additional brake dust in the air, some extra energy burned. It wouldn't surprise me if the accounting/management, HR and maintenance overhead for the station was higher than the cost of having the train make an extra stop twice a day. It is a little surprising the station appears to be staffed based on the picture of the train schedule, but there is something to be said for producing that extra job. I am sure the station master who resides in that office is really happy it still exists.

shiro 11y ago
No, the station isn't staffed since 1983. I think the photo with a desk, books and timetable is a waiting room.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

It could be. It depends on how the costs of that extra stop and related overhead (maintenance, management) compared to the costs of sending that chauffeur and related overhead. I suppose it is inefficient, but not outrageously so. But you know what would be the most efficient option, from the point of view of the railroad company? Just ignoring the girl and closing down the station. That it didn't happen suggests that someone, at some point, decided that sometimes you have to sacrifice efficiency in order to be human. (It's actually a general observation - in current highly optimized economy, being human and humane creates inefficiencies. Or in other words, we need to keep some things from being perfectly optimized, in order to avoid living in a misery. Compare to e.g. various laws protecting employees. They purposefully make businesses less efficient, in order to ensure that employees can work in safe and humane conditions.)

canthonytucci 11y ago

I had a very similar thought. I'm surprised how many people are calling this "beautiful" and getting all misty eyed, this feels like an inelegant solution. I would love to be wrong and hear that someone did the math and found that stopping the train wasn't any more wasteful than just sending this girl a taxi or something, but I have some doubts. I am unfamiliar with trains, but seeing how cars are tuning themselves off at stop lights now to conserve energy and avoid pollution it really sounds very wasteful stop a whole train for one person. I have to assume that it requires a lot of energy to slow and accelerate a train weighing in at least the tens and likely the hundreds of tons. It's a sweet idea, but it really does feel misguided to me.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
It is an inelegant solution. It's not something you want to scale up. It's not something "right" by Kant's categorical imperative. The lesson to take from this story isn't "keep every train running, no matter how little economical sense it makes it". Such an attitude, universalized, would indeed be a disaster for the world. No, the lesson is that when running and optimizing systems, we should not forget why are we having them in the first place. They are there for us. Our willingness to make an occasional exception to cater for another human in need, at the cost of efficiency, is what makes us human. Think of all those tourists who regularly get injured or lost in the mountains and have to be rescued by helicopter S&R teams. From purely economical perspective, this is burning money. We should leave them to die, because the costs of fueling a chopper and risking its destruction, not to mention lives of highly-trained personnel, are great and the money could be better spent elsewhere. And yet we train S&R teams and fly the choppers, because we chose to. Ruthless economic efficiency is not the end goal.
- canthonytucci 11y ago
  My entire opposition to this is based on the idea that slowing an accelerating a train is grossly more inefficient in terms of pollution and fuel waste than just finding a way to get her to the next station on a transport that does not weigh as much. If I'm wrong about that I'm happy to go back to feeling nice about this.

toomanybeersies 11y ago

There is a little used passenger train service here in NZ from Hamilton to Auckland, which is about ~150 km or so. It runs twice a day (Hamilton to Auckland in the morning, and back in the evening). I remember reading a while ago that someone crunched the numbers, and they figured that it would've actually been cheaper to fly everyone up each day in a helicopter or two than it cost to run the train.