8 ms·

I work within the train system of a European country (with ticketing, so I’m on the top and not the bottom of things). From my experience with station and onboa

by vages 5y ago

I work within the train system of a European country (with ticketing, so I’m on the top and not the bottom of things). From my experience with station and onboard crew, I am very certain that the schedules and patterns are still very much human rememberable, at least collectively: People have to show up for work, drive the train and many other things. My guess is that the failure is related to signalling or some other knowledge that exists “between” the trains (and brains). Having systems that can negotiate right of way is necessary to increase the number of trains and the speed of each individual train beyond their pre-computer-era limits. Having all trains stop for one day is probably a judgment call to lower the overall duration: Having all trains stop for a day is a pain in the neck, but you know when you’re done. If you could not wait, you could probably have (quite) a few trains run without problems. However, you would have to work for a very long time to get all the trains back to where they were to resume the regular time table. This would be the preferable option during a time of crisis.

Aperocky 5y ago
Commercial Flights can still be flown manually, without many automated sensing system. But if they don't work you don't take off, it's simply not worth the risk.
Foobar8568 5y ago
Try to run the pricing system in Denmark if it hasn't been changed over the years.... It was "deem" "impossible" for a human to calculate the pricing within a reasonable amount of time (with all the associated bonus). Do not forget that there might several companies running on the same track, cargoa and passenger trains etc. Managing a busy track is hell.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  > It was "deem" "impossible" for a human to calculate I live in Malmö so you have to understand I'm obliged to make a "well no wonder given the Danish counting system" joke here > Fifty is halvtreds, which stands for halvtredje-sinds-tyve, meaning “third half times twenty”, or “two scores plus half of the third score” [2½ 20]* https://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-danish/en/dan/ https://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-danish/e...
  - gsliepen 5y ago
    Indeed it is a very weird way of counting. It was a question on Code Golf a few years ago: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/92657/count-to-100-in-danish https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/92657/count-to-... What is remarkable here is that usually there are a lot of answers in dedicated golfing languages that can solve seemingly very complex tasks in just a few tens of bytes, here there is only one such answer, and it takes 115 bytes. So perhaps one could say it's even hard for computers?
    - tromp 5y ago
      That is not 115 bytes, but 115 wide (16-bit) characters, or 230 bytes.
      - xigoi 5y ago
        05AB1E has a custom codepage where all 256 characters are one byte.
t0mas88 5y ago
The Dutch railways said (in Dutch) themselves that it was a problem with the scheduling software which also has a role in safety. Apparently this is also used to route around for example a stopped train, so when it's not working it's not safe to operate anything but a handful of trains. There was a lot of extra impact because this system also feeds the passenger information so their app, website and information screens at the stations were not working either leaving passengers in the dark.
- mikebos 5y ago
  It has nothing to do with safety it's pure a who is where system.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Which on a train system is paramount for safety, otherwise you'd have trains crashing into each other because they're on the same track.
    - markus92 5y ago
      Different system, that'd be the switches/signalling. Freight and international trains were running just fine, safely. This was literally just planning which train (rolling stock) is going to operate which train (ride) with which personnel. Safety could be related to duty times, or making sure the rolling stock is fit for a certain trajectory (maximum platform length, weight restrictions etc.)
    - HowTheStoryEnds 5y ago
      No the section a train is on is automatically and mechanically secured by the lights on the section ahead and afterwards. (2 sections if you count the yellow warning lights)
      - VBprogrammer 5y ago
        Unless they are operating a dynamic block system like the channel tunnel lines and other high speed lines across Europe. Anything that runs over 125mph (or has to mix with traffic which does) isn't using block signalling.
mikebos 5y ago
The problem was in the scheduling of personnel and trains. The train schedule in the Netherlands is not human memorable. This is something they tried to correct in the past but was met with protest from employees because then they would only have one route on a day which would be boring.

by vages 5y ago

Aperocky 5y ago

Commercial Flights can still be flown manually, without many automated sensing system. But if they don't work you don't take off, it's simply not worth the risk.

Foobar8568 5y ago

Try to run the pricing system in Denmark if it hasn't been changed over the years.... It was "deem" "impossible" for a human to calculate the pricing within a reasonable amount of time (with all the associated bonus). Do not forget that there might several companies running on the same track, cargoa and passenger trains etc. Managing a busy track is hell.

vanderZwan 5y ago
> It was "deem" "impossible" for a human to calculate I live in Malmö so you have to understand I'm obliged to make a "well no wonder given the Danish counting system" joke here > Fifty is halvtreds, which stands for halvtredje-sinds-tyve, meaning “third half times twenty”, or “two scores plus half of the third score” [2½ 20]* https://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-danish/en/dan/ https://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-danish/e...
- gsliepen 5y ago
  Indeed it is a very weird way of counting. It was a question on Code Golf a few years ago: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/92657/count-to-100-in-danish https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/92657/count-to-... What is remarkable here is that usually there are a lot of answers in dedicated golfing languages that can solve seemingly very complex tasks in just a few tens of bytes, here there is only one such answer, and it takes 115 bytes. So perhaps one could say it's even hard for computers?
  - tromp 5y ago
    That is not 115 bytes, but 115 wide (16-bit) characters, or 230 bytes.
    - xigoi 5y ago
      05AB1E has a custom codepage where all 256 characters are one byte.

t0mas88 5y ago

The Dutch railways said (in Dutch) themselves that it was a problem with the scheduling software which also has a role in safety. Apparently this is also used to route around for example a stopped train, so when it's not working it's not safe to operate anything but a handful of trains. There was a lot of extra impact because this system also feeds the passenger information so their app, website and information screens at the stations were not working either leaving passengers in the dark.

mikebos 5y ago
It has nothing to do with safety it's pure a who is where system.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Which on a train system is paramount for safety, otherwise you'd have trains crashing into each other because they're on the same track.
  - markus92 5y ago
    Different system, that'd be the switches/signalling. Freight and international trains were running just fine, safely. This was literally just planning which train (rolling stock) is going to operate which train (ride) with which personnel. Safety could be related to duty times, or making sure the rolling stock is fit for a certain trajectory (maximum platform length, weight restrictions etc.)
  - HowTheStoryEnds 5y ago
    No the section a train is on is automatically and mechanically secured by the lights on the section ahead and afterwards. (2 sections if you count the yellow warning lights)
    - VBprogrammer 5y ago
      Unless they are operating a dynamic block system like the channel tunnel lines and other high speed lines across Europe. Anything that runs over 125mph (or has to mix with traffic which does) isn't using block signalling.

mikebos 5y ago

The problem was in the scheduling of personnel and trains. The train schedule in the Netherlands is not human memorable. This is something they tried to correct in the past but was met with protest from employees because then they would only have one route on a day which would be boring.