mark777 wrote:
A more realistic reason to why sometimes sick passengers are not moved off the train has more to do with legal matters than anything else.
And it's a sad commentary on society that many entities, not just railroads, must operate in an overly cautious manner simply to cover their behinds thanks to the current climate of litigation. It's one thing to do something because it needs to be done for safety's sake, and quite another to err too much on the side of caution for fear of lawsuits. I realize train crews are not to blame for this, but it's clear in my mind something really needs to be done about frivolous litigation. Again at the risk of sounding callous, I realize sometimes passengers will leave home feeling fine and then get sick enough enroute to require medical attention, but I'd say more often than not these sick passengers felt ill when they left home and shouldn't have gotten on the train in the first place. Again, not the train crew's fault but one of my pet peeves is people going to work sick. If you're not feeling well when you wake up, don't bother coming to work. You're not doing anyone any favors by doing so.
I realize train crews are caught between a rock and a hard place in situations with sick passengers. Maybe a little education would help here, such as having posters on the train telling people to stay home if they're sick, and maybe giving them a little guilt trip (i.e. a slogan like "Do you want to be the one who makes 10,000 people late for work? If not, then don't ride when you're feeling ill.").
And still yet, contrary to what many folks complain about, the LIRR is still a more reliable way to travel from LI into NYC.
No arguments there. To me car travel is so unreliable and unsafe that I don't even have a license or own a car. I'm often puzzled why people bother driving into the city from Long Island at all when the railroad is faster, cheaper, and more reliable, even with the occasional delays.
What I don't understand is, most people would give themselves more time to go to work by starting out earlier if they need to, but most feel that they should not have to do this because they don't want to.
The problem here isn't giving yourself more time. I always used to give myself maybe ten minutes beyond normal travel time just to account for less than perfect connections or the usual rush hour slowness. For many subway commuters this is enough. On a scheduled service like the LIRR it should also be enough most of the time. The problem with delays for sick passengers and other relatively rare events is that there is no way to determine when they will occur, or how long the delay will be. Sometimes these delays will be no more than a few minutes. Other times they may be a hour. What is a person going to do, leave early enough to account for the worst 1% of delays all the time? This might mean leaving an hour or more early all the time. Most of the time you'll end up arriving at work an hour early. Unless you have a job where you can leave an hour early if you arrive an hour early then that hour is completely wasted. A hour a day may not seem like much. Even the half hour you mentioned may not seem like much but in a year of 5 day work weeks that's a full 130 hours, or almost 5 and a half full days, completely gone. I bill at $50/hour or more. Fortunately I work at home now, but if I didn't would someone pay me $6500 a year extra so I can give myself that extra half hour each day? I highly doubt it. The majority of people think as I do. They'll allow a little extra time, and when things run really lousy they'll just end up coming in late. In the final analysis unless you have a job where it is an operational necessity to get there on time, as is the case for your job, this is probably the smart thing to do. It's a commentary on the metropolitan area's congestion that employers here are quite a bit more tolerant of occasional lateness than in many other parts of the country.
Flights are delayed all the time, especially during bad weather, but I never see the mutany that goes on our trains at the airport! Why is that? My flight from FL, was about 20 minutes late arriving at JFK, yet I didn't see anyone complain. maybe it's because they are going or coming back from vacation, but seriously, who wants to sit that long in a flying coke can? I'll never understand why is it that things are completely different onboard LIRR trains from every other RR and every other form of transportation. My guess is that LI has a very large number of residents who all grew up with a silver spoon in their hands and always got what they wanted when they wanted!
There are good reasons people tolerate delays on airlines and even Amtrak more than they do on commuter railroads or subways. For starters, when you're traveling long distance it's rare that you actually have to arrive at your destination by a certain time. If you arrive 20 minutes or even 2 hours late, so what? Second, you don't travel long distance every day. If you did, you might suddenly become a lot less tolerant of any delays. Don't think the situation you encounter is unique to the LIRR. It exists on any system where people ride every single day and need to get somewhere on time. I used to hear complaints all the time on the subway even when they would hold the train in the station for an extra minute. It's not that people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. It's that they're paying good money to get where they're going on time, or if not on time then at least close to on time. Most people are even fairly reasonable about long delays if good reasons exist, if they don't occur that often, and if they are kept informed. If there's three feet of snow nobody realistically expects anything to run even close to schedule.
However, there is no quicker way to end up with a train full of irate passengers than to have half hour delays all the time, never explain anything, and then act as if you're doing everyone a favor simply because you showed up for work that day. I'm not implying that this is the way train crews usually behave, but I'm using it as an example of why commuters get angry. I'll clue you in on some of what happens when long delays occur because of sick passengers or for whatever other reason. Try balancing on one foot at an awkward angle while you're holding on to a pole with your arm at an equally awkward angle at the same time the whole train is tilted because you've come to a dead stop on a superelevated curve. Now try doing this for 40 minutes while pressed against a bunch of other commuters doing the exact same thing until the train with the sick passenger finally pulls out of the station so your train and the twenty behind it can finally start moving again. Now imagine not being told a damned thing as to why you're stopped or when you can hope to start moving again. Now after all this picture finally arriving at your workplace a hour late, and then starting the work day all tired and sweaty. Now picture going through this ordeal two or three times a week, sometimes going to work, other times leaving work. The subway has at times been this bad. From what I've heard, so has the LIRR.
Who's to blame for this? I could run up a list of names from politicians who underfund mass transit in favor of highways to railway executives who make up inane operating rules to lawyers who file frivolous lawsuits to train crews who take no pride in being on time to commuters who knowingly ride trains when they're ill. I'll tell you who
isn't to blame, and that is the person who rides each day and pays the fare.
What happened in Japan was a horrible tragedy, but let's not place the blame on anyone until all the facts are in. From the facts so far (100 km/hr on a curve with a derail speed of 133 km/hr) it seems like something else other than excessive speed caused the accident. It may well have been a horrible coincidence that the train which derailed also happened to be speeding. If not for blind luck, the next train may have met the same fate instead. Could this happen here? Sure, but I doubt there would be anywhere near this number of deaths and injuries. For starters, trains in the US are stronger and heavier. We also don't have apartment buildings that close to the tracks, especially on sharp curves. Let's all hope we never have to find out.
Anyway, thanks for your input. It's nice to hear the side of someone who does the difficult task of keeping the trains running each day. The general public, as ungrateful as they may seem at times, does in fact appreciate the job you and your fellow workers do.
As I said, since I live in the city I don't ride the LIRR at all, so there's no way I could have known that. I'll also grant that it sometimes does make sense to not move a sick or injured person, especially if damage to the spinal cord is suspected. I've never thought of train crews as dumb, just sometimes the people making up the rules they need to follow are. Anyway, it's good to see that common sense prevails. Now I wonder if the NYC subway also does likewise.