
The Wreck of Amtrak 188 - dankohn1
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/magazine/the-wreck-of-amtrak-188.html
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LeifCarrotson
> Even today, it’s not hard to reach the tracks if you want to; plenty of
> holes and gaps remain. A sergeant with the Philadelphia Police Department
> told me that the rail bed is popular with addicts and dealers. “And let me
> tell you,” he said, “you couldn’t build a fence high enough to keep them all
> out.”

As with software piracy, the solution is not to make the tracks unreachable -
that's impossible. Instead, make them less desirable than the alternative.

For people trespassing to walk on the tracks to get somewhere, add good
sidewalks or park paths. For people crossing between one building and another,
add official pedestrian crossings and signals, or build bridges and tunnels
that are nicer to walk than trying to hop even a 4', no-barbed-wire fence.

For addicts and dealers, make non-dangerous drugs legal. I am not sure what to
do about dangerous drugs and other crime that needs a secret place to meet,
but I think access would make this much easier.

People walk a rail near me because it's literally the safest way to get from
the town (restaurants, the park, ice cream, shops, the river a little off-
screen to the southeast) to the high school and the Stoney Creek neighborhood
to the North:

[http://i.imgur.com/0pBaSa4.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/0pBaSa4.jpg)

Division is not walkable. Lamareaux is mostly, but the sidewalk crosses back
and forth, traffic is fast, and the railroad is much more direct.

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samcheng
With all this talk about self-driving cars, it's really depressing (and
tragic!) to see so little progress on self-driving trains (Positive Train
Control).

Think about how much easier self-driving trains are to implement! There's
already no expectation that a train can swerve to avoid the unexpected
obstacle, there's already digital switching to make sure the train goes in the
right direction and instruct the engineer to stop, and the retrofit problem is
much easier, since all locomotives are part of a fleet (as opposed to
privately-owned cars).

~~~
ild
The problem with PTC, that the railroad companies are totally incompetent in
making this, demanding, knowledge intensive kind of software. I know people
charged with this at a large railways corp and they are terribly
underqualified.

~~~
stuaxo
You'd think they could bring in experts from other countries that have
implemented this already.

~~~
ild
Railroad companies are old, arrogant businesses, who would never consult
anyone.

