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Despite good connectivity, some drivers can’t afford to stay online all the time, said Jaime. According to Jimena, about 98% of the train operators on her l

Despite good connectivity, some drivers can’t afford to stay online all the time, said Jaime. According to Jimena, about 98% of the train operators on her line use WhatsApp on the job, but some will often run out of data, which they must pay for out-of-pocket. Seems like WhatsApp isn't the problem here, but rather the solution. They need better comms infrastructure and more funding for maintenance.

donkeyofd00m 4y ago
Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but it seems moreso that proper comms infrastructure design and preventative maitnance plans is the problem Whatsapp is a readily available and an accessible solution... one that is better than current comms infrastructure. A local maximum I used to know a marketing specialist in Mexico who lived there her whole life. Apparently 90% of advertising for cheap consumer goods is done on TV and radio. <10% on websites or streaming services, since many choose not to use them or can't afford subscriptions Not to say that there aren't beautiful, well developed global cities with wonderful people and opportunities there. Guadalajara and Mexico City are great and growing. I see the country in a state very similar to late 1800s indusdrial America; high inequality, poor low-skill workers rights and pay with backlash occuring, large government backed infrastructure projects, fairly patriarchal buisness elite (and corruption within the "boys club"), fairly absent middle class relative to other countries. Moreso two classes. "Well off, global citizen" or "making ends meet, live in my town for my whole life or move where the work goes" Relying on a phone app seems like an unstable solution, as when the next budget cut comes, it could include scrapping the company phones in the case they were provided. Or downgrading data plans that are so slow that latency is too high. Wouldn't be a problem until the next accident Or, if workers are underpaid (low-skill, non corporate in Mexico), selling provided company phones on the 2nd hand market for cash could be fairly common... lying and saying they still have them Unless if Mexico further lowers it's gini coefficient... something I'm very optimistic with (but over decades) OR provides rudimentary smart phones (or even dated tech like pagers) for work, to me this whatsapp method seems as an easy means for middle managers just to save on their spending budgets. Unless there is middle management buy-in to further develop its usage in a stable way, it seems like a piecemeal (yet effective and creative) solution by the workers due to infrastructure neglect
pier25 4y ago
Obviously. But in a corrupt country like Mexico, there's never enough funding for anything. And now the current federal govt is burning gobs of cash on mega projects which only makes things worse.
londons_explore 4y ago
If Whatsapp is replacing radio equipment in the trains and does a satisfactory job, then it should 100% become the official way to do it. The 'proper' solution of new radios on the train and all the associated ground infrastructure installation cost could be really expensive (think millions of dollars). Yet just giving each driver a data plan would only cost thousands of dollars. The whatsapp solution is so much cheaper because the infrastructure (4G towers) is already installed for passengers of the train, the network is already run for citizens of the country, and the software work is already done by Whatsapp for their other 1.1 Billion users. Whatsapp isn't a 'cheap' solution. It's the very expensive solution where the cost has already been paid for by a billion other people, so, as long as it meets the needs of the subway, it is the cheap solution.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  People might say "it clearly doesn't meet the needs of the railway. it isn't reliable enough". Those people might be right. But I'd like to point to the old solution, the radios in the trains, which are in the middle of a decade long outage right now. It's more reliable than that. And this stuff isn't safety critical - in-cab radios are mostly used for logistics. Everything from scheduling shifts to getting trains to wait a few extra minutes to even out gaps in the service. Without it, the service wouldn't run so smoothly. But it could still run.
  - counttheforks 4y ago
    I would prefer to not give facebook even more power.
  - red_admiral 4y ago
    It sounds to me like WhatsApp is being used for safety-critical stuff: > Previously, each train could automatically identify its proximity to another one. “It is designed to stop so trains don’t collide,” said Pérez Varela. Now, human operators, who had initially been hired as a fail-safe to manually halt a train if the automatic pilot failed, need to intervene more often. Trains usually run at 70 kilometers per hour, but when the autopilot signals that it is not working, operators must take immediate action to manually reduce the speed to 35 kilometers per hour to avoid derailment. > > Since the trains are increasingly manually driven, real-time communication among operators is essential. “We are all provided with a radio but it doesn’t work properly,” Jaime, an operator who has worked at the Metro for 17 years, told Rest of World on condition of anonymity. “That’s why we started using our cellphones.” That reads to me like they need communication to ensure they don't run into the rear of the train ahead.
squarefoot 4y ago
> Seems like WhatsApp isn't the problem here, but rather the solution. It's a quick patch that potentially creates many more problems however, since the product isn't rated for that work and cannot guarantee any uptime. Also the touchscreen can be quite distracting and therefore dangerous. If the problem is that the communication infrastructure doesn't work reliably, but cellphone coverage does, the answer, aside restructuring the existing infrastructure, should be small 4G capable SBC boards with audio and text features, one per train, not a cellphone with WhatsApp.
killingtime74 4y ago
And at the very least, until then at least pay their cell phone bill, come on man
helloworld11 4y ago
This thing about them needing to pay for data out-of-pocket makes little sense if you actually live in Mexico City or know its subway. The vast majority of the line is covered by a free wifi service paid for by the government, which runs throughout the train lines and stations with only occasional interruptions. Just as passengers can use it, so too can the drivers. It even works pretty well most of the time, certainly enough of it for only modest interruptions. Also data packages in Mexico are pretty cheap. For the equivalent of 10 dollars, you can buy enough to use whatsapp, web browsing and other social media as well as make phone calls to all of North America almost without limits for 30 days. If you're really short on cash, a package costing just 1 dollar buys you two days of the same services.

donkeyofd00m 4y ago

Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but it seems moreso that proper comms infrastructure design and preventative maitnance plans is the problem Whatsapp is a readily available and an accessible solution... one that is better than current comms infrastructure. A local maximum I used to know a marketing specialist in Mexico who lived there her whole life. Apparently 90% of advertising for cheap consumer goods is done on TV and radio. <10% on websites or streaming services, since many choose not to use them or can't afford subscriptions Not to say that there aren't beautiful, well developed global cities with wonderful people and opportunities there. Guadalajara and Mexico City are great and growing. I see the country in a state very similar to late 1800s indusdrial America; high inequality, poor low-skill workers rights and pay with backlash occuring, large government backed infrastructure projects, fairly patriarchal buisness elite (and corruption within the "boys club"), fairly absent middle class relative to other countries. Moreso two classes. "Well off, global citizen" or "making ends meet, live in my town for my whole life or move where the work goes" Relying on a phone app seems like an unstable solution, as when the next budget cut comes, it could include scrapping the company phones in the case they were provided. Or downgrading data plans that are so slow that latency is too high. Wouldn't be a problem until the next accident Or, if workers are underpaid (low-skill, non corporate in Mexico), selling provided company phones on the 2nd hand market for cash could be fairly common... lying and saying they still have them Unless if Mexico further lowers it's gini coefficient... something I'm very optimistic with (but over decades) OR provides rudimentary smart phones (or even dated tech like pagers) for work, to me this whatsapp method seems as an easy means for middle managers just to save on their spending budgets. Unless there is middle management buy-in to further develop its usage in a stable way, it seems like a piecemeal (yet effective and creative) solution by the workers due to infrastructure neglect

pier25 4y ago

Obviously. But in a corrupt country like Mexico, there's never enough funding for anything. And now the current federal govt is burning gobs of cash on mega projects which only makes things worse.

londons_explore 4y ago

If Whatsapp is replacing radio equipment in the trains and does a satisfactory job, then it should 100% become the official way to do it. The 'proper' solution of new radios on the train and all the associated ground infrastructure installation cost could be really expensive (think millions of dollars). Yet just giving each driver a data plan would only cost thousands of dollars. The whatsapp solution is so much cheaper because the infrastructure (4G towers) is already installed for passengers of the train, the network is already run for citizens of the country, and the software work is already done by Whatsapp for their other 1.1 Billion users. Whatsapp isn't a 'cheap' solution. It's the very expensive solution where the cost has already been paid for by a billion other people, so, as long as it meets the needs of the subway, it is the cheap solution.

londons_explore 4y ago
People might say "it clearly doesn't meet the needs of the railway. it isn't reliable enough". Those people might be right. But I'd like to point to the old solution, the radios in the trains, which are in the middle of a decade long outage right now. It's more reliable than that. And this stuff isn't safety critical - in-cab radios are mostly used for logistics. Everything from scheduling shifts to getting trains to wait a few extra minutes to even out gaps in the service. Without it, the service wouldn't run so smoothly. But it could still run.
- counttheforks 4y ago
  I would prefer to not give facebook even more power.
- red_admiral 4y ago
  It sounds to me like WhatsApp is being used for safety-critical stuff: > Previously, each train could automatically identify its proximity to another one. “It is designed to stop so trains don’t collide,” said Pérez Varela. Now, human operators, who had initially been hired as a fail-safe to manually halt a train if the automatic pilot failed, need to intervene more often. Trains usually run at 70 kilometers per hour, but when the autopilot signals that it is not working, operators must take immediate action to manually reduce the speed to 35 kilometers per hour to avoid derailment. > > Since the trains are increasingly manually driven, real-time communication among operators is essential. “We are all provided with a radio but it doesn’t work properly,” Jaime, an operator who has worked at the Metro for 17 years, told Rest of World on condition of anonymity. “That’s why we started using our cellphones.” That reads to me like they need communication to ensure they don't run into the rear of the train ahead.

squarefoot 4y ago

> Seems like WhatsApp isn't the problem here, but rather the solution. It's a quick patch that potentially creates many more problems however, since the product isn't rated for that work and cannot guarantee any uptime. Also the touchscreen can be quite distracting and therefore dangerous. If the problem is that the communication infrastructure doesn't work reliably, but cellphone coverage does, the answer, aside restructuring the existing infrastructure, should be small 4G capable SBC boards with audio and text features, one per train, not a cellphone with WhatsApp.

killingtime74 4y ago

And at the very least, until then at least pay their cell phone bill, come on man

helloworld11 4y ago

This thing about them needing to pay for data out-of-pocket makes little sense if you actually live in Mexico City or know its subway. The vast majority of the line is covered by a free wifi service paid for by the government, which runs throughout the train lines and stations with only occasional interruptions. Just as passengers can use it, so too can the drivers. It even works pretty well most of the time, certainly enough of it for only modest interruptions. Also data packages in Mexico are pretty cheap. For the equivalent of 10 dollars, you can buy enough to use whatsapp, web browsing and other social media as well as make phone calls to all of North America almost without limits for 30 days. If you're really short on cash, a package costing just 1 dollar buys you two days of the same services.