Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Transportation A Mixed Blessing
Posted by Dominic Holden on Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 11:52 AM
Light rail is coming! Light rail is coming! Rejoice, cavort, shout from the rooftops, run in the street...
Actually... don't run in the street. Here's a new video (that's overwrought and inadvertently sort of funny) from Sound Transit illustrating why you'll want to keep your rejoicing on the sidewalk:
We wrote in this week's paper about the seven things we learned riding light rail:
Brilliantly, the train communicates with traffic lights. "Not 100 percent of the time," says county council member Larry Phillips. "But most of the time, the train gets the right of way." That said, the train bolting down Martin Luther King Jr. Way, not stopping, could be a mixed blessing: "People aren't used to trains in Seattle," says Nickels. "This is a very quiet train. If kids don't look both ways, things will not be good."
Light rail begins running—and crushing unwary pedestrians—on July 18.
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2
On my first day working on the new ball park in San Francisco, at the manditory safety meeting for all workers one of the first topics was a warning about the newly opened street car line that was a silent killer. (We were all used to old cars on old tracks that you could hear from 6 blocks away). It was PacBell park then, I don't know what its called this week.
4
People stupid enough not to be careful about crossing train tracks are not worth protecting from trains.
5
It's a good video. Dear everybody, but especially kids: STAY THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCK OFF THE TRACKS. We don't want you to die in a very horrible and messy way.
6
It's far more likely to kill old people driving in cars who are overmedicated, actually.
They don't adapt well to change, and will sit in the tracks and then die when they get hit for not having cleared the intersection.
That said, WOO HOO!
They don't adapt well to change, and will sit in the tracks and then die when they get hit for not having cleared the intersection.
That said, WOO HOO!
10
What's wrong? It's called thinning the herd. I mean do you REALLY want that stupid guy to have offspring?
11
Light Rail - a perfect complement to the Age of Obliviousness.
Stop - Look - Listen = 20th century train bywords
21st century version: Look (at my Blackberry) - Listen (to my iPod) - Live (only in cyberspace)
Stop - Look - Listen = 20th century train bywords
21st century version: Look (at my Blackberry) - Listen (to my iPod) - Live (only in cyberspace)
13
People stupid enough not to be careful about crossing train tracks are not worth protecting from trains.
Ditto on people running across Aurora at night.
+1
Ditto on people running across Aurora at night.
+1
15
I was in traffic court last week, which is always entertaining (dear gods, people are STUPID! - they admit having DRIVEN to traffic court when they have a suspended license!). There was a woman in arguing a ticket for crossing the train tracks while the warning arm was down and the lights and bells were going. She was mad they gave her a ticket because "she didn't want the people behind her to honk at her." OK, so you're going to be obliterated by a freight instead? Lady, that's gonna fuck up traffic a lot more than waiting for the train to clear the crossing.
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