13 ms·
A computer upgrade shut down BART
- giardini 1y agoWindows, upgrading again?
- fmbb 1y agoNah, we upgraded the network configuration. Should have no impact. No there is no source control.
- phkahler 1y agoIt'd be pretty cool if busses and trains were local-first.
- gjsman-1000 1y agoIf you can't send updated schedules or emergency alerts through the system, I also don't want service started. It doesn't have to be an individualized problem to render local-first useless. Also, what do you mean by trains being local-first? Trains by definition need to share the same tracks with catastrophic consequences for getting it wrong. You can't figure out if a train is going to possibly be on the same route locally, or if your route has been obstructed. Somebody gets a schoolbus stuck on a crossing, it takes over a mile to stop a train.
- zahlman 1y ago>If you can't send updated schedules or emergency alerts through the system, I also don't want service started. In the days before systems existed for publishing such schedules and emergency alerts, should public transit service not have been attempted at all? > Trains by definition need to share the same tracks with catastrophic consequences for getting it wrong. Just because it uses the same rail gauge as intercity freight doesn't require it to run on the same set of tracks. But if it did, I assume "local-first" entails other traffic just being excluded when an emergency in the local system necessitates it.
- gjsman-1000 1y agoOur modern transit system has no correlation to the complexity of transit service previously. Enjoy fewer schedules, more delays, and higher costs; pick three. Edit, for the pedantic: There's a huge difference between horizontal complexity (i.e. variety of transit options) and vertical complexity (complexity of a particular option). We have less horizontal complexity than we used to; but vertical complexity of a modern railroad is obscene compared to historical standards. > But if it did, I assume "local-first" entails other traffic just being excluded when an emergency in the local system necessitates it. No dice; as consider just 14 hours ago: https://x.com/SFBARTalert/status/1963772853947355630?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet https://x.com/SFBARTalert/status/1963772853947355630?ref_src... How does a local-first train safely operate if it could go through a police zone? You need communication, by definition, not local-first.
- MangoToupe 1y agoThere's a fourth factor here: labor costs.
- op00to 1y agoI don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Is it that we have more or less complexity? The public transit system was far more complex in the past. Between trolleys, inter urbans, and passenger trains, we’ve lost a LOT of routes.
- privatelypublic 1y agoTheres things police could/can attach to the rail to signal trains to stop. I think our over reliance on the telecom network has lead to safety issues- mostly in terms of "what to do when the telecom goes down." Because on the whole, its astoundingly reliable.
- tjwebbnorfolk 1y agoI think it's perfectly reasonable for us to have higher standards for quality and safety than we did 100 years ago. > Just because it uses the same rail gauge as intercity freight doesn't require it to run on the same set of tracks Building a replica set of tracks that runs parallel to the current tracks just to avoid sharing doesn't strike me as a good use of anyone's time/money. > "local-first" entails other traffic just being excluded And how are you going to notify them that they are excluded when the network is down?
- moralestapia 1y agoSure pal, that's why the internet enabled the existence of buses and trains.
- Aachen 1y agoI don't think it needs to be taken that literal. The train orchestrator can set signals on connected tracks and read out the block statuses without needing to also be able to reach HN and the wider internet. Local can be the track you're on, not merely driving on sight (but, yes, worst case you'd hope there's still procedures for that, too)
- wongarsu 1y agoTrains traditionally operate on signalling blocks: a section between two signals is a block, a block is occupied if any part of a train is inside of it, if it's occupied any signals leading into the block are red. This can be decided entirely locally (as in: local to the block). When a wheel sensor detects a wheel entering the block, the block is occupied, signals switch to red and the number of wheels is counted. As soon as another wheel sensor counts an equal number of wheels exiting the block the block is free and signals switch to green. You need a wire along the block to communicate this, but from a safety perspective there is no need for global communication. Modernization efforts focus on trains broadcasting position and speed so trains can travel closer together and still maintain a safe stopping distance, but that's again possible locally. Operating switches is where it gets trickier. Some rail operators maintain the possibility to operate them locally, but that requires either stopping the train at each switch you want to change, or to deploy lots of people into the field to do it on schedule
- 0xffff2 1y agoNot quite that easy. What if two trains are both traveling towards separate green signals into the same block such that the second train gets a red signal, but not in time to stop? I think it's possible to overcome this, but it become vastly more complicated than just "turn the signals red for the current block if it's occupied".
- wongarsu 1y agoYou are right, reality is more complicated. In reality some blocks need more than two states and need to know the state of adjacent blocks. For example in a one-way track with two every points you would want to deny entry from one entry point if the track leading to the other entry point is occupied, to solve your case. And you probably want to call that state "reserved" instead of "occupied" to prevent a cascade if you have multiple such blocks right after each other. But the point that you can do this local-first is still true. You will want to engage a couple bits of information with the neighboring block, but you don't need to know any global state, and if one block breaks down that only affects its direct neighbors
- phkahler 1y agoIt would be cool IF. I said if. I also included busses which do operate autonomously from a safety perspective. If air traffic control can fall back to pen and paper in a pinch, I think it would be cool IF trains had a decent fallback. ;-)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ok123456 1y agoDid the upgrade also break scrolling on their site?
- rvnx 1y ago[flagged]
- QuercusMax 1y agoAlternatively, get good at doing rolling releases so you don't take down the entire system and have some sort of canarying process.
- whycome 1y agoI think the rolling stock may be stationary right now. Updates relying on stationery.
- johnfn 1y agoI feel like some BARTs moving and some stuck might be a bit of a worse problem.
- ShakataGaNai 1y agoTrain rolling jokes aside, that makes sense... until it doesn't work. A traffic control system, the thing that makes sure all trains are in known locations, safely spaced, etc.... might be necessarily centralized. There isn't really a "rolling release" you can do for a single system. Should they have a separate test system for release before "production", sure. Do they? No idea. Is it identical to production? Clearly not. How does the saying go.... > Everybody has a testing environment. Some people are lucky enough enough to have a totally separate environment to run production.
- blamarvt 1y agoThis is not how software works. Although I guess this isn't quite as catchy: Assume all software is broken at all times. Constantly try to ensure it works and is secure. Sometimes updates break things. Test before production. Ensure test environments are similar to production. You're going to break things.
- dayyan 1y ago[flagged]
- xyst 1y ago[flagged]
- nimbius 1y agoThe bart is basically the crowning achievement of US public transit. As for the solutions coming from everyone's favourite bay Aryan Elon Musk, they are...somewhat lacking. You're probably not going to believe this but the Hyperloop in Las Vegas: - is now just "the loop." - only has 8 stops - doesnt go to the airport - most stations are unprotected park benches in the desert sun - vehicles arent driverless - speeds are 26 miles per hour instead of 155 - it can take up to 20 minutes for a ride to show up - it does not go to or from the airport. - it only runs for 11 hours a day at some stations. - cost taxpayers fifty-three million dollars.
- dayyan 1y ago[flagged]
- brandonagr2 1y agoThe hyperloop idea (which was just a presentation with no plans to build it) is an entirely different thing from the boring company tunnels
- chasd00 1y agobut does it go to the airport at least?
- ramesh31 1y ago>The bart is basically the crowning achievement of US public transit. Hardly. People in this country outside of the Northeast Corridor have absolutely no idea what public transit can actually be.
- thewebguyd 1y agoMoved to the west coast from NYC area many years ago, public transit here is atrocious in comparison to the northeast.
- wills_forward 1y agoThe cheap easy take: it's tragically ironic that the software running the infrastructure in Silicon Valley is such a problem
- gdulli 1y agoMaybe expected though that high salaries there depress incentive to work in these jobs even more than other cities?
- rustystump 1y agoNo. It is pretty typical for anything gov to be pretty bad. Most dont work there due to how bureaucratic it is rather than the comp. This is what my friends who work in gov say at least.
- aspenmayer 1y agoAnd yet NYC .gov sites, apps, and functionality makes SF still look like a shantytown after all this time.
- rustystump 1y agoBeating a bar that is on the floor is none too impressive.
- aspenmayer 1y agoThis dead horse ain’t gonna beat itself back to life. Might as well give it the ol’ college try, eh?
- notmyjob 1y agoThere is a strong correlation between hiring low end people and being or becoming ever more bureaucratic. Bureaucracy like everything else is there for a reason.
- deleted 1y ago
- bravetraveler 1y agobreak things and don't move at all edit: lmao, so many upvotes yet my comment has been moved so low. No more snark than a loving brother would provide. TY for your attention to this matter
- stuartjohnson12 1y agofed combinator startup decelerator
- kelnos 1y agoI generally downvote jokes, even the clever ones, because I don't come here for that (reddit is generally more fun for that; even though many are low effort, there are many that are just so clever), and I'm mainly interested in thoughtful prose and discussion. (Which sometimes is hard to come by here, too, but jokes are obviously not it.) Probably what's happened is you ended up with a lot of upvotes, but also a lot of downvotes. I would expect HN's software to downrank "controversial" posts, since those are likely to lead to flamewars. So even if you see +30 on your comment, the overall tallies might be something along the lines of +100 -70.
- bravetraveler 1y agoMakes sense :) Nothing is for everyone, all the time. Addition of the last phrase had truly the worst impact; Drumpf meme was not well-timed/placed
- hed 1y agoYou'd think trains would use a rolling release
- TechSquidTV 1y agonice.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- CartwheelLinux 1y agoAlso surprised they don't have the ability to rollback
- tossandthrow 1y agoMaintaining roll backs is incredibly expensive for what you get.
- x0x0 1y agoIf you've ever been in, on, or near bart you wouldn't be.
- er4hn 1y agoNot having redundant rails in case of breakdowns is something BART is well known for
- cortesoft 1y agoBroken release train breaks train brakes
- wavemode 1y agoThey clearly need to rebuild this as a Rails app
- bombcar 1y agoApparently there was too much Rust on the Rails?
- hn_throw_250903 1y ago[flagged]
- bigmattystyles 1y agoBroke the read-only Friday rule…
- jkingsman 1y agoI know this is a tongue in cheek casual comment, but this article is a really good and important counterpoint: https://charity.wtf/2019/05/01/friday-deploy-freezes-are-exactly-like-murdering-puppies/ https://charity.wtf/2019/05/01/friday-deploy-freezes-are-exa...
- tossandthrow 1y agoIt is not about fear, it is about risk management. As an engineer I have absolutely no issue deploying on a friday. But friday bar starts at 4pm, and after that I am not sober before monday. So leadership don't want me to do it - which is probably wise.
- green-salt 1y agoI enforce a work/life balance and this is how the team loses a weekend when something goes wrong.
- yacthing 1y agoThis reads like someone who works on a small and simple system. "Deploy on every commit" lmao "Shipping software and running tests should be fast. Super fast. Minutes, tops." hahah
- sampullman 1y agoDeploy to what? Staging on every merged PR (commit to stg), and prod deploy on every commit to main? That sounds reasonable to me, and I've done some variation of it on most projects for the last 10 years or so without issue.
- yacthing 1y agoWell people aren't talking about not deploying to staging on Fridays. And there are hints to what the author actually means, like "Each deploy should be owned by the developer who made the code changes." That just isn't feasible in a system that's of any reasonable size.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoShould have taken the car!
- jasonjmcghee 1y agoI'm curious what percent of HN is based in the bay area for this to hit the front page so quickly. I suppose it could in part be that it was posted when people are commuting in?
- darth_avocado 1y agoIs it causation or correlation? Maybe bart being down caused all the people to browse HN while waiting for the issue to be resolved, thereby making this show up on the main page.
- MBCook 1y agoA tech failure taking down a big government thing is certainly HN worthy. And BART is relatively famous, as such things go. It’s a name people know, as opposed to of it was the Minnesota DMV system. That would be a fine story too but no one knows the name for that.
- zdragnar 1y agoIronically, the Northstar rail line (one part boondoggle, one part "would have worked if it went all the way to st cloud", depending on who you ask) is shutting down Jan 3 or 4 in 2026, so I wouldn't be surprised to see articles on it and/or the met council before then.
- ryukoposting 1y agoThat's a shame. The Twin Cities set a relatively high bar for American public transit, too. The light rail is fantastic. I only wish you could take the green line all the way out to SLP or Plymouth.
- zdragnar 1y agoBack when I lived in the cities 15 or so years ago, it was still notably slower than driving, so many if not most people still drove everywhere. Public transit wasn't as gross as stories I've heard of elsewhere, but it also wasn't something I wanted to take on a regular basis if I could help it. I think I used it regularly for about six months or so one year in particular, and the lack of warm bus stops meant standing in freezing rain, sleet, snow and more. Maybe things have improved since I lived there, but hearing that they are the high bar is pretty sad.
- VonGuard 1y agoSooooo much snark, and so little interest into what BART actually runs on! Originally, BART was a master stroke of digital integration in the 70's, and it's digital voices announcing the next trains were a thing of the future: An early accessibility feature before we even knew what those were, really. Reading: https://www.bart.gov/about/history https://www.bart.gov/about/history https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/traincontrol#:~:text=To%20support%20the%20successful%20implementation,Communications%20Based%20Train%20Control%20system.&text=Your%20browser%20can't%20play%20this%20video.&text=Learn%20more-,An%20error%20occurred.,third%20rail%20is%20turned%20off. https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/traincontrol#:~:text=To%...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bbaron63 1y agoI believe in one of the Planet of the Apes sequels, they used a BART construction site, because of how futuristic it looked.
- gojomo 1y agoPre-opening BART tubes were definitely used for George Lucas's first feature film, THX-1138: https://www.sfgate.com/streaming/article/bart-transbay-tube-construction-photos-george-luca-13671480.php https://www.sfgate.com/streaming/article/bart-transbay-tube-...
- dredmorbius 1y agoA Streets of San Francisco episode, starting a very young Michael Douglas, was set in the BART tunnels, still under construction, as well.
- dlcarrier 1y agoI know what it runs on! It's a 5' 6" in gauge, usually used in India, and used no where else in the US.
- 1y ago
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 1y agoPublic transportation is inherently centralized. Cars are anti-fragile and decentralized. Cars fail open in the short term.
- formerly_proven 1y agoTraditional train systems themselves are extremely decentralized, though scheduling is not. Traditional interlockings form a mirroring mesh network parallel to the physical network of steel rails itself.
- xnx 1y agoTrain tracks are a form of centralization. Without the ability to reroute around disruptions (like cars and buses) a single stopped train (e.g. due to mechanical or passenger issues) can stop everything.
- ForOldHack 1y agoBART is dual track around the entire system, except for side yard entrances. I have seen stopped trains, and it was worked around. One I was on caught fire I. The middle of a station and it did not close the line. It slowed it down a lot but did not stop. There are so many systems in place, it's a quite complex system. The real heros? The bus drivers. The baddies? The planners, the management. The evil? Pure unadulterated evil? The AC Transit app. I would give it a -11.
- rafram 1y agoTell that to someone in a two-hour traffic jam on the highway.
- loire280 1y agoBuses are the resilient backup for trains, especially if road infrastructure has been designed to prioritize transit (e.g. Chicago highways with shoulders designed to let Pace buses bypass traffic jams).
- namuol 1y ago
- nova22033 1y agoWorks on my local environment <points to train set> choo choo
- dylan604 1y agoso you're saying BART should run in a container?
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- nilsbunger 1y agoSeems like BART should do these upgrades only at low traffic times, like overnight Saturday night.
- ForOldHack 1y agoThey did. They started before yesterday's shutdown, and worked all night, they tried to bring up the system for startup, and it came up, then crashed. It was state of the art on 1962 when it was designed, and remained state of the art until the 1980s, when the signal system started breaking down, and the the late 80s upgrade which had a train presence glitch, which caused almost all the system to get resignaled. So by the 2000s again it's showing its age, and they got a 32 processor zSeries mainframe. Brake problem last week, and the this on Friday? Now it's getting like New York, even more. Whatsmatteryou?
- MangoToupe 1y agoWhat on earth does it do that requires a mainframe?
- nradov 1y agoIt doesn't require a mainframe but that was the cheapest path to keep things running without rewriting the software. The IBM Z platform is very good at maintaining backward compatibility. If you don't constantly keep your applications software up to date with support for new platforms then eventually you find yourself with very limited platform options.
- Aloha 1y agoThey're highly resilient - as in the hardware/OS itself is, so the applications dont have to be. That and IOPS are the primary advantage of mainframe systems.
- kelnos 1y agoNothing, but rewriting a train system from scratch and testing it is incredibly expensive and disruptive. Eventually you do have to do it, and we might not agree with their trade offs here, but it's not unreasonable.
- warkdarrior 1y ago[flagged]
- Buuntu 1y agoEveryone here blaming BART and bureaucracy for being inefficient when in reality it's starved for funding due to our own voting (and zoning preventing housing/badly needed ridership near transit stops). Yes it's expensive to build transit just like it's expensive to build anything in America, which we should fix but that is not unique to BART. It's quite possible the system will collapse next year if we don't pass increased taxes to fund it in 2026 https://www.bart.gov/about/financials/crisis https://www.bart.gov/about/financials/crisis. Just last year we failed to pass a common sense bill to make it so we only need a 51% majority for transit bills in the future, indicative of how opposed we still are to transit in the Bay Area https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-proposition-5-local-bond-measures-vote-threshold-2024-election/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-proposi.... Not to mention the fact that Silicon Valley opted out of BART and chose car dependent sprawl instead. So let's be clear, most of the issues with BART are due to anti-transit and suburban voters starving it of support.
- crooked-v 1y agoGood ol' Prop 12, guaranteeing that everything will be underfunded one way or another.
- ForOldHack 1y agoExcept, as always bureaucratic pay raises.
- dilyevsky 1y agodidn't realize cage free pigs lead to such dramatic second order effects =)
- peterbecich 1y agomust have meant Prop 13
- crooked-v 1y agoWhoops, yes, that was the one. Caught it too late for an edit.
- benced 1y agoI’m not frustrated that this happened, I’m frustrated that it seems likely this won’t get better (witness their protracted incredibly high constructions costs that have not improved). I hope they prove me wrong.
- esalman 1y agoI lived mostly car free in Atlanta because the Marta station is one flight of stairs down from the airport terminal, and I could get to my lab in GSU in downtown Atlanta in less than 30 minutes, midtown Georgia tech campus in similar time, my first apartment in Lindberg in 40 minutes, and my second apartment in Sandy Springs on the other side of the city in less than an hour from the airport. Commute to and from my school/lab/apartment was always under 30 minutes and always faster by train compared to car. These days I fly to the bay area to my office in East Bay. It's 2+ hours commute from either SFO or even OAK because you need to change buses 2 or 3 times. Add 1 more if you count taking the airport shuttle to the BART station. And SJC does not even have a BART connection. There's fundamental design flaw in public transportation in the US, they almost never connect the population centers. Part of the reason why people are discouraged from using them and they don't get the funding to stay up to date.
- dylan604 1y agoPart of the reason why people are discouraged s/from/by/ using them and they don't get the funding to stay up to date. People are constantly being encouraged to take public transpo, but once they finally do, they realize why they hadn't before.
- linguae 1y agoI travel to Japan twice a year for business and for vacation, and coming back to the Bay Area and dealing with its transportation infrastructure is always jarring. I find the Bay Area very difficult to get around. The roads are jammed with commuters who live far from their workplaces due to the housing situation. There is not enough housing near job centers, which bids up the prices of available housing to very high levels that requires FAANG-level salaries to clear unless one wants to have an army of roommates. Thus, many people have to commute, some from far-flung exurbs and even from Central Valley cities like Stockton and Modesto. Public transportation in the Bay Area is better than most American cities, but it’s still underpowered for the size of the metro area. Not all residences are served by trains, and bus service is often infrequent and subject to delays. Missing a connection can lead to major inconveniences (such as a long 30-60 minute wait) or even being unable to reach your destination without an über-expensive Uber or Lyft ride. There’s also matters of safety and cleanliness on public transportation; every now and then I smell unpleasant odors like marijuana and urine, and occasionally I see sketchy people. It’s a major step down from Tokyo, where public transportation is ultra-convenient, reliable in non-emergency situations, impeccably clean, and generally safe. The sad thing is the reason the Bay Area lacks Tokyo-style transit is not technology, but social and political issues. If it were merely technology, we’d have solutions by now.
- linguae 1y agoI’m at a conference at Stanford University right now. I was going to take BART and the Dumbarton Express to avoid having to drive in traffic, but when I drove to the Dublin BART station, I found out BART wasn’t running. I ended up having to drive to Stanford, since the only public transportation over the hills separating Dublin/Pleasanton from the inner East Bay is the Altamont Commuter Express, which is much less convenient due to its few runs. Thankfully traffic wasn’t that bad today, but going home is going to be a traffic nightmare since it’s a Friday. I wish there were more bus options that connected the outer East Bay (Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Walnut Creek, etc.) to the inner East Bay.
- dylan604 1y ago> but going home is going to be a traffic nightmare since it’s a Friday. I've never understood the Friday traffic issue. Are there people that normally stay in the city during the week and only go home on Fridays causing more traffic? How is there more traffic on Friday and the rest of the week? Friday being one of the forced RTO days, but the Friday traffic thing was known well before WFH/RTO fights. Then again, the root cause of most traffic always seems much more anticlimatic
- dlcarrier 1y agoIt's people leaving home, for the weekend. Friday traffic extends along I-80 (and eventually Hwy 50) all the way to Nevada, and beyond.
- linguae 1y agoInterestingly enough, even with RTO, I’ve noticed that driving on a Friday morning is much smoother than Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Despite the BART shutdown, it was smooth sailing southbound down 680 from Pleasanton to Milpitas. I normally commute from San Ramon to Fremont, and going through Pleasanton and Sunol on a midweek morning is rough. I think there are many people in the Bay Area who start their weekend trips Friday afternoons and evenings.
- reliabilityguy 1y ago> Are there people that normally stay in the city during the week and only go home on Fridays causing more traffic? In NYC people going out of the city for the weekend (Airbnb or their own house somewhere).
- Animats 1y agoAre there any technical details yet? What was upgraded?
- coldest_summer 1y agosorry using throwaway for this. When GitHub was constantly failing, I finally got fed up and now I use my own private Gitea. It’s near-zero maintenance and has never had any unexpected downtime. Never looked back. Stories like these make me feel the same way about California, which I called home for almost 20 years. So much to love, so many reasons never to live there again. Great place to visit when there’s not an active disaster unfolding.
- outlore 1y agomate we can't self host BART
- wiml 1y agoIsn't that kinda what people are doing when they commute in private cars?
- outlore 1y agofair enough!
- dlcarrier 1y agoI think the problem with BART is that it is self hosted. By "self hosted" I'm not referring to it being run directly by the government, but that in comparison to every other government-run transit system, everything at BART is done the BART way, limiting access to an entire industry of light rail infrastructure, reducing safety and reliability, while significantly increasing costs.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoI mean despite it's history the snark is well deserved. With so many companies and people in the bay paying taxes, where the hell does all the money go? Interesting, tidbit you added here. But snark is needed for this situation.
- tomhow 1y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45140823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45140823 and marked it off topic.
- octernion 1y agoyour tax money broadly speaking doesn't go to BART; it's massively underfunded. not sure why they are the target of the snark.
- nradov 1y agoUnder funded relative to what? What would the optimal amount of funding be? Are there ways that BART could cut costs to free up budget for IT upgrades? I'm not trying to be snarky, it's just that for regular citizens who don't have time to attend BART BoD and committee meetings it's almost impossible to tell whether existing money is being wisely spent. So people get the impression that taxes are going up while service quality declines and assume the money must be going into someone's pocket.
- lokar 1y agoIn nearly all of the US there is an unresolved (and perhaps unresolvable) debate about to what extent public transit should get a subsidy vs pay for itself. The dominant position (even in CA) has been no or little subsidy.
- aafanah 1y agoThe bigger issue is not just the upgrade but how brittle the system is. Modern practices like rolling releases or safe fallback modes are standard elsewhere. Critical infrastructure should not be this fragile.
- slowhadoken 1y agoYeah the BART needs some love.
- mdaniel 1y agoI'm on my phone and not able to readily dig up the link, but there was a linguistic study about the differences between the audience who use definite articles for highways/freeways/interstates and the transit system, versus those who just use the distinctive noun ("101", "80", "Bart") I thought it was interesting and I'm sorry a hint at it is all I can offer right now
- dehrmann 1y agoSocal says "The 101" because its a holdover from names like the Hollywood Freeway, before freeways were numbered. No idea why Norcal didn't do the same; you still hear "The Bayshore Freeway" or "The Nimitz Freeway" sometimes. My theory is the rest of the country picked up on what Socal does through media and assumed it's a California thing.
- kelnos 1y ago> you still hear "The Bayshore Freeway" or "The Nimitz Freeway" sometimes. Oh huh. I certainly see these tiles on maps, but in 21 years in the bay area, I have only ever heard of one highway where people sometimes call it by the name (Skyline) rather than the number (35). And even then, I think that's pretty rare. I wonder what's different about the people you and I interact with that makes it different for you.
- thephyber 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45142101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45142101 and marked it off topic.
- jama211 1y agoPublic infrastructure is requested and funded by the government, not voluntarily done by companies that happen to base themselves nearby. Sounds more of an issue of government.
- nradov 1y agoBART is unique and doesn't share much in the way of infrastructure with any other public transit system. You can't build a scalable startup targeting BART because you'd have a maximum of one customer. The Boring Company has attempted to develop tunnel boring technology which theoretically could someday allow for cheaper expansion of all subway and light rail systems. Although in practice they haven't accomplished much and their existing projects aren't even used for rail transit. https://www.boringcompany.com/ https://www.boringcompany.com/ There are also several eVTOL startups aiming to improve quality of life through rapid point-to-point transportation. But I doubt they'll succeed on any widespread basis due to battery and noise limitations.
- bluGill 1y agoThere isn't much different about bart. Slightly wider wheel spacing and such are things anyone making trains can handle. the real problem is thinking they are different or that they need to innovate. Trains are common and they need not innovation but minor improvements over time.
- novok 1y agoI've heard that makes procurement way more difficult, you can't just order a train car in the standard gauge from many manufacturers. It's like big and tall sizing, yes, any place can make it, but there just isn't that large volume to create a liquid market.
- lxe 1y agoWas this related to the CBTC rollout by any chance? EDIT: It was not.
- diebeforei485 1y agoIncompetence. Someone should be fired for this.
- WTFnsfw 1y agoSeptember 5, 2025, from late Thursday night into Friday morning caused by a server upgrade On May 8, 2025, from late Thursday night into Friday morning caused by a server upgrade On November 25, 2013, from late Thursday night into Friday morning caused by a server upgrade https://web.archive.org/web/20131124212037/http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2013/news20131122 https://web.archive.org/web/20131124212037/http://www.bart.g... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/us/bart-train-shutdown.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/us/bart-train-shutdown.ht... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/bart-transit-outage-bay-area.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/bart-transit-outage-ba...