Metaphor Alert

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A billion dollar train with nobody on it runs a stop signal and rams a car that had the right of way pinning it between it and another LRT train.

Is there a more perfect bunch of parallels for government in the Twin Cities these days?

11 thoughts on “Metaphor Alert”

  1. OK, first thing is that the driver probably should have sped through the intersection, but that risks getting creamed by a delivery truck on the other side. Looks like he knew that the yellow lights there (as I time it) set at about three seconds, which is also way too fast for most intersections–you have about a second before the foot can hit the brakes, which means that the driver can really only stop if the pavement is clean and dry.

    And then you’ve got a train where the conductor and/or automated control system does not seem to be responding to the fact that it does not have the right of way. Really, if ambulances can signal to traffic lights that they’re coming through (and I just witnessed that yesterday), why can’t the signals be set to stop the train?

    Lots of screw-ups there. Lots of ’em, really starting with “we’re sending 50 ton carriages through downtown entertainment/bar districts with braking that relies on metal on metal, what engineers would call a ‘bearing surface’ when wet.”

  2. One of the reasons Minneapolis got rid of its street cars is the traffic mix of street cars and automobiles caused a lot of accidents.

  3. I hate to disagree with MP, but according to my mother, a lifelong Saint Paul resident, Big Oil bribed the politicians to rip up the street car tracks. (Pay no attention to the old tracks down University that were exposed and subsequently ripped out so they could lay new ones for LRT. Whom am I to believe, my elder or my own lying eyes?)

  4. *No crack pipes were damaged in this accident, but one traveler who was defecating in the rear of the car soiled his clothing.

  6. SmithStCrx, my grandmother told me that she was glad to see the streetcars go because they were smelly inside & in the winter they were icy cold.
    My grandfather was of the opinion that they made resurfacing roads difficult, so when they resurfaced during the growth spurt of the 1950s, they tore them out & switched to buses.

  7. I’m personally of the view that “oil companies bribed” or “GM bribed” is fiction, but if they did, good for them. Streetcars weigh over twice what a bus does, can’t stop like a bus can, can’t share the road with cars and bicycles like a bus can, and cost far more than buses do. They’re a great 19th century non-solution to a 21st century problem….

    Regarding comfort, it’s worth noting that a bus generates excess heat from its engine that can be used to keep passengers warm. With a streetcar, that excess heat is dissipated at the coal fired power plant. So if you’ve got to have transit, let’s have buses, and improve those.

  8. “Regarding comfort, it’s worth noting that a bus generates excess heat from its engine”

    Unfortunately, that’s becoming increasingly untrue as transit agencies switch to electric buses (using federal grants). Of course they’re having enough problems with them that it may be a self-correcting problem in that they give up on them before they become too widespread, but considering how all-in the fedgov is on electrifying everything…no guarantees.

  9. That’s my biggest buggaboo about drivers: 90% of the time, hesitation kills. Make up your mind and do it.

    In this case, when the light turned yellow, the car hit the brakes and started to slow, then the driver changed his mind when he realized he wasn’t going to be able to stop in time, but by that point, the car had slowed down enough that they were in the perfect spot for the train to T-bone them.

    If they’d not slowed down, or better yet, sped up, they might have cleared the tracks before the train got them, or at least been hit in the rear quarterpanel and spun out rather than solidly t-boned and pushed into the other train.

    In other news: I wonder what the odds are for this specific sequence of events: A car that can’t stop in time for the red light, a train that runs the signal at that specific light at that specific time and a car with a dashcam in the perfect position to get it all on video. Those are some long odds I’d guess.

  10. good point about the odds, sailor. now i’m starting to wonder how many drivers squeaked through without getting hit, how often the dangerous situation actually does happen? And what about pedestrians dashing across – how many of them just barely make it?

    Yeah, people ought to be smarter around trains, take more care to look out for their own best interests. Except most people are idiots and we all know that – just look at their voting patterns. So why put at-grade vehicle and pedestrian crossings on a train line? Madness.

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