BIKE: Re: Las Vegas monorail shut down

[Mike Dahmus]

Michael Bluejay wrote:

> On Sep 6, 2004, Nawdry wrote:
>
>>  First, nowhere did I say that the Vegas monorail's "simple 
>> mechanical failure" has "proven" that monorail technology is 
>> "unsound".  Patrick just makes this up.
>
>
>
> Oh come on, that's pretty much *exactly* what you said.  Read your own 
> email, below.  You said:
>
>> Complex, automated systems certainly do work, but they are 
>> "catastrophically" vulnerable to relatively small failures almost 
>> anywhere in the system.
>
>
> By the way, you're *really* not being fair by harping on how the whole 
> system was shut down over this problem.  You know as well as anyone 
> why they shut the whole thing down:  It's a BRAND-NEW system, and when 
> there's a problem in a brand-new system, especially in Vegas where the 
> whole world is watching, they want to make damn sure that everything 
> is working perfectly.  Anyone who DIDN'T shut the whole thing down to 
> investigate an early failure should probably be fired.
>
> So not only *SO WHAT* that they had a problem during the first two 
> months of operation, but also
>
> *so FREAKING what* that they shut the whole thing down to investigate 
> that problem.

The point is that the entire LRT system in Houston isn't shut down when 
some bonehead crashes into a train. The entire LRT system in (pick your 
city) isn't shut down when one vehicle derails. That ONE train is 
removed from service fairly quickly, and the rest of the trains continue 
to operate.

The fact that the entire system was shut down there indicates some 
uncertainty about the cause of this accident and whether it might happen 
again - and the fact that if it does happen, there could be very very 
negative consequences (imagine the PR debacle if the wheel fell through 
somebody's car roof - it would make the Houston jokes look like 
nothing). That's my guess anyways.

That's pretty obviously where Lyndon was going; you guys should probably 
stop ascribing motives to each other and just respond to what's actually 
being said.

- MD