Flaming Bus Excitement
I stuck around late at work last night, puttering on my computer. It’s a good thing I did - right before I left, I realized that I had to re-program the children’s book sale. Let’s not dwell on the sale pricing system too long, but… it’s best to have one sale going at a time.
After running that, I packed up and went to catch the bus. I was a few minutes early, found a seat and read my book. Right now that’s a completely random selection from my bookshelf: “Lost In Translation” by Nicole Mones. Yet another book I got for free through work many years ago. Most of those books never get read by me. Some of them I give away.
Well, the bus isn’t there yet, and plenty of time has gone by. Sunday night isn’t the best time to catch a bus, but I’ve had good luck with the schedule lately. I’ve gotten into the habit of hanging out after work Sundays in the cool office, so I have a lot of data points for bus reliability.
Silver Spring Metro is supposed to get a major makeover soon. I saw the plans once. They’re going to turn it into another Bethesda: new high-rises over a realigned bus concourse. In the meantime, they’re tearing the street apart, and it might not be directly related. Oddly, a couple years ago, they installed some equipment in the bus shelters to show when the next bus would arrive. I think they branded it “NextBus” or something. I say it’s odd because they went to all this trouble to install the equipment, it was never activated, and soon they’re going to rebuild the whole place. But the system isn’t entirely useless: It occasionally chimes in with a computer voice announcement.
“Get on board - NextBus is coming soon - the guesswork is gone”.
I’d like to know why a non-functioning system would call so much attention to itself. For starters, I’m trying to read. I want to know why my bus is 20 minutes late, not a reminder that a new high-tech bus prediction system still doesn’t work. It can’t tell me when the next bus is due. It can’t even tell me when _it_ is due to start telling me when the next bus is due.
I felt bad later: The Metro was on fire. Why couldn’t the computer voice tell us about that?
Can I interest you in some irony? I gave up on the bus (I still can’t figure out why _my_ bus was affected - maybe they had to borrow it to ferry red line passengers?), and went upstairs to catch a train. I was trying to decide whether to ride over to Dupont, or switch to the green line and get off at Columbia Heights when I heard the announcement. Farragut North was closed and there was shuttle bus service. I chose green. But, I still only knew about one closed subway station. From that article I count seven.
Each of the incidents, which occurred within a two-hour period, appeared to stem from a different cause, Metro officials said.
Huh?!?! Are they sure this isn’t some weird common mode failure? Electrical fires in seven different subway stations - if not an everyday occurrence - are probably still related. Where is the electricity coming from? The same place? It sure was hot - but not the hottest day we’ve seen recently. Maybe there was a domino effect of some sort? Break one link in a network, and loads on the other links vary. You’d love to be able to isolate systems - give them looser coupling, but that’s not always in the budget.
I got home. Not much later than I would’ve otherwise. At a cost of ten extra cents. So I can’t really complain. Then I turned on the news for amateur video of the bus on fire(!) Glad that wasn’t my bus. Oh, wait: My bus never came!
Posted by Evan Bittner Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:08:00 GMT
