Comments on: HSR Security: No Need To Panic

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:50:36 +0000

This is an excellent point. I think the transit community should raise this number much more frequently than it does in support of transit projects. I suspect if you polled people on how many auto related deaths occur in the US each your your average response would be in the low thousands.

By: wu ming

wu ming — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:47:05 +0000

dude. process point:

see that little blue word in brackets below people’s posts that says “reply”? if you want to reply to a specific point, CLICK IT and then reply, please. we went to all the trouble of giving you nested comment threads to make the context for your silly claims easier to follow. please use the nice blog features.

By: TomW

TomW — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:27:43 +0000

I grew up in the UK in the 80s and early 90s, when the IRA was regularly bombing all sorts of places. The only impact at railway stations was the ironclad rule that you were never to leave your bags unattended, because it might get mistaken for a bomb). On very the rare occasions people did, it would prompt an evacuation and a call to the bomb squad… but because of this simple rule, the IRA never even tried to bomb a railway station, because they knew it wouldn’t work.

Seperate issue: a bomb goes off on a plane, everyone dies. A bomb goes off on a train, and there’s a good chance many will survive.

By: adirondacker12800

adirondacker12800 — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:09:29 +0000

How long does it take a train going 220 MPH to stop? You have that much time to do something.

By: adirondacker12800

adirondacker12800 — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:08:14 +0000

my argument is that if someone wants to blow it up they will at least make a loud boom on the tracks. A nice fence stops stupid people . Thinking that an alarm system the fence and camera monitoring the ROW is going to stop determined people is wishful thinking. Luckily the determined people are very very few and usually while they are very very determined they aren’t particularly effective. Even the ones who want to see the sunrise tomorrow have a good chance of blowing themselves up while they are busy building a device. The ones who are determined and competent are extraordinarily rare.

Google FALN sometime. Or 18 West 11th Street. There ate whole lists of things the IRA was unsuccessful at including managing to blow themselves up during manufacture of bombs.

By: Me

Me — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:47:47 +0000

There is a requirement that it be ready for high speed service – so just building tracks and forgetting HSR equipment and electrification like the current Anaheim plan does not cut it. Having Amtrak run doesn’t do it (the subsidy thing)

By: Me

Me — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:45:22 +0000

The whole critique of the business plan is that it is still based on program level alignment costs AND that it more or less ignored AB3034, except for the matching part. The business plan provides cold comfort.

The state senate is struggling with what to do – cool project but the business plan is basically a blow off to state law.

By: Matthew F.

Matthew F. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:44:02 +0000

Anaheim is in AB3034.

By: Matthew F.

Matthew F. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:31:52 +0000

It won’t stop them from getting on the tracks, but it’ll stop the train from reaching them.

By: Dan S.

Dan S. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:19:00 +0000

“thinking you can control the topic with loud and moronic pronouncements”

Hah, good observation.