Technology Thursday
Stacy wrote about the recent Metro tragedy the other day. I have also been reflecting on the accident as I ride Metro to get to my office downtown . On the one hand, I understand statistics and that Metro's safety record is still very good. And that riding Metro is far safer than driving. Nevertheless, this kind of system failure definitely hits close to home.
There is a lot of conjecture about what caused this particular accident and details are only slowly emerging. The Post reported that the cars had been recommended for removal. We know that Metro's maintenance budget is terribly underfunded. We know that major failures like this don't usually tend to happen unless multiple things go wrong at once. We know that Metro's trains are usually run on autopilot and that software was almost certainly involved. And even as the National Transportation Safety Board and other agencies sort out what happened and (hopefully) how to prevent such a thing in the future, we know that regardless of the particulars this was a systems issue. A systems issue on a critical piece of infrastructure. And we know that this country has been neglecting its infrastructure for far too long, kicking the ball down the road to the next Congress or the next Administration. Metro is a particularly egregious case of what I believe is irresponsible behavior and neglect on the part of the jurisdictions within which it operates.
Stacy wrote about the recent Metro tragedy the other day. I have also been reflecting on the accident as I ride Metro to get to my office downtown . On the one hand, I understand statistics and that Metro's safety record is still very good. And that riding Metro is far safer than driving. Nevertheless, this kind of system failure definitely hits close to home.
There is a lot of conjecture about what caused this particular accident and details are only slowly emerging. The Post reported that the cars had been recommended for removal. We know that Metro's maintenance budget is terribly underfunded. We know that major failures like this don't usually tend to happen unless multiple things go wrong at once. We know that Metro's trains are usually run on autopilot and that software was almost certainly involved. And even as the National Transportation Safety Board and other agencies sort out what happened and (hopefully) how to prevent such a thing in the future, we know that regardless of the particulars this was a systems issue. A systems issue on a critical piece of infrastructure. And we know that this country has been neglecting its infrastructure for far too long, kicking the ball down the road to the next Congress or the next Administration. Metro is a particularly egregious case of what I believe is irresponsible behavior and neglect on the part of the jurisdictions within which it operates.
This morning, it was reported that Metro was allegedly warned of a circuit problem near where the accident took place. While it may be easy to lambaste Metro for not acting on this information, I'm wondering just how many maintenance or "problem" issues are they alerted to every day? It's possible that there was egregious neglect here. But it's also possible that there are just too many under-resourced competing priorities within the Metro system.
It is really scary when you think of all the things that might cause a problem. I'm sure at the root of the issue is that nobody gives politicians prizes for averting disaster -- keeping infrastructure repaired and well-maintained just isn't a high-profile campaign issue. It should be!
Posted by: Katherine | Friday, July 03, 2009 at 12:40 PM