Sand Box John wrote:Instead of everybody worrying about the crashworthiness of the various series, they should be demanding that the hardware in signaling system be maintained to designed specifications with absolutely no exceptions to prevent any future collisions.
In a perfect world I think this should be the case, but protecting against crashes has generally been the US mindset for a few decades now. The FTA, even NHTSA/others push crashworthiness almost more than crash avoidance, unlike some of the European modeling. With the track record WMATA has, I don't think they'd be the one to push that shift from crash reaction to prevention.
Sand Box John wrote:I think the practice of "bellying" the 1k cars is nothing but theater and should be discontinued.
100% agree.
Sand Box John wrote:I am not a fan of trashing the 4k cars. I believe they should be rehabilitated in the same way the 2 and 3k cars were rehabilitated.
I'm against rehabbing the 4Ks since the MDBD data shows they have just about never been reliable. In the data that I have, they only meet/exceed WMATA's target MDBD of 60,000mi for 3 months since 2008 (
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oBnfSe9fjz8/V ... l-mdbd.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). The 5Ks are better and have some pretty decent monthly averages, but neither have been phenomenal even before mixed consists.
Sand Box John wrote:The 1k cars that are in the best physical condition should be retained as reserves.
I believe they are already going to be keeping 50 as reserves once they're phased out of revenue service, so yes that is part of the plan for at least a few years.