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0 pointseecc3y ago0 comments

Not in NL. Train schedules regularly go haywire whenever a track switch freezes or -- less funnily -- there's a "person collision". The infrastructure is so congested there's no slack; indeed WFH (or remote, perhaps a local professional setting cowork) would do wonders to reduce commute overhead.

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crote3y ago

This seems to be happening less and less often, though.

ProRail has pretty aggressively been removing most track switches not in regular use, reducing their chance of failure at the cost of not being able to reroute around any issues that do occur.

At the same time they've been replacing busy railway crossings with tunnels, and closing or protecting the 150 or so remaining unprotected crossings. The total number of accidental collisions is down to less than one a week. There's still about 200 suicides a year, but they are also actively trying to prevent those by adjusting the infrastructure.

There are significant issues at the moment, but most of them are at NS and other transporters. They are critically short on personnel, and recruiting new people isn't going very well. They've had to cut the number of trains by about 10% already!

dmitriid3y ago

In Stockholm we're joking that as soon as there's a singe leaf on the tracks in autumn, trains are screwed. Wet leaves on the tracks are no joke, and can be hazardous, but the commuter trains have been quite badly mismanaged

nradov3y ago

It's a lot faster and cheaper to add more telephone circuits than to build more train tracks and stations. Our infrastructure in many places was just never designed for so many people.

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