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The problem is that BART doesn't employ talented reverse engineers. There is now way they could afford them in that area. Well, no. Money is not the problem a

The problem is that BART doesn't employ talented reverse engineers. There is now way they could afford them in that area. Well, no. Money is not the problem and BART doesn't need reverse engineers. They've already thrown away tens of millions of dollars on a replacement train control system (AATCS). Everyone's favorite defense contractor Raytheon was tasked with the project until they realized they couldn't make it work. Eventually Raytheon pawned the project off on Harmon, which was later bought by General Electric. GE shut the whole thing down because it was going nowhere. I think most folks here are drastically underestimating the complexity involved in getting a train control system right (and how badly BART botched the original system). Considering that BART dates back to the 70s, DOS and Windows 98 were upgrades. Meanwhile Muni soldiered on with OS/2 for nearly a couple decades.

peteradio 4y ago
> I think most folks here are drastically underestimating the complexity involved in getting a train control system right The phrase "butt-puckering" comes to mind. Ya some whizkid could come along and put something together but they'd be foolish to attempt, there is 1000 atm of pressure to not get one damn thing wrong. All the things currently wrong with the system are grandfathered. One single wrong thing in your new system and you are toasted.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  Sure there are safety considerations (and plenty of dramatic safety events from BART), but I'd venture to guess even there it's rarely quite so black and white. I was actually thinking more of day-to-day nuisance problems than anything else. Things like getting stuck at the station while the train's computer gizmos reboot, stop annunciators getting confused (or out of sync with each other), having to position the train manually within a station. Or even software failures as hardware wears out – shit like that almost always fails in a safe manner. Unfortunately even a safe failure can have massive consequences which raises the cost of failing fast and breaking thing often.

peteradio 4y ago

> I think most folks here are drastically underestimating the complexity involved in getting a train control system right The phrase "butt-puckering" comes to mind. Ya some whizkid could come along and put something together but they'd be foolish to attempt, there is 1000 atm of pressure to not get one damn thing wrong. All the things currently wrong with the system are grandfathered. One single wrong thing in your new system and you are toasted.

inferiorhuman 4y ago
Sure there are safety considerations (and plenty of dramatic safety events from BART), but I'd venture to guess even there it's rarely quite so black and white. I was actually thinking more of day-to-day nuisance problems than anything else. Things like getting stuck at the station while the train's computer gizmos reboot, stop annunciators getting confused (or out of sync with each other), having to position the train manually within a station. Or even software failures as hardware wears out – shit like that almost always fails in a safe manner. Unfortunately even a safe failure can have massive consequences which raises the cost of failing fast and breaking thing often.