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BlackChampagne Home Buy Crap! I get 5%. Direct donations to cover hosting expenses are also accepted. Site Information --What is Black Champagne? --Cast of Characters & Things --Your First Time. --Design Notes --Quote of the Day Archive --Phrase of the Moment Archive --Site Feedback --Contact/Copyright Info Blog Archives --Blogger Archives: June 2005- --Old Monthly Archives: Jan 2002-May 2005 Reviews Section Movie Reviews (153) Ten Most Recent Film Reviews: --Infernal Affairs -- 5.5 --The Protector/Tom Yum Goong -- 6 --The Limey -- 8 --The Descent -- 6 --Oldboy -- 9.5 --Shaolin Deadly Kicks -- 7 --Mission Impossible III -- 7.5 --V for Vendetta -- 8.5 --Ghost in the Shell 2 -- 8 --Night Watch -- 7.5 Book Reviews (76) Five Most Recent Book Reviews: --Cat People -- 4 --Attack Poodles -- 5 --Caught Stealing -- 6 --The Dirt, by Motley Crue -- 7.5 --Harry Potter #6 -- 7 Photos Section --Flux Photos --Pet Photos (7 pages) --Home Decor Photos --Plant Photos --Vacation Photos (12 pages) Articles See all 234 articles here. Fiction Original horror and fantasy short stories. Mail Bags Index Page Features --Links --Slang: Internet --Slang: Dirty --Slang: Wankisms --Slang: Sex Acts --Slang: Fulldeckisms --Hot or Not? --Truths in Advertising Band Name Ratings (350 Rock Bands Listed) FAQ -- Feedback A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z Hellgate: London --The Unofficial HGL Site --The Hellgate Wiki Diablo II --The Unofficial Site --Flux's Decahedron --Middle Earth Mod
	BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: A Streetcar Named Disaster Wednesday, August 24, 2005 A Streetcar Named Disaster I wrote 95% of this post a couple of months ago, just before I headed down to San Diego for my dad's back surgery. For some reason it's been ignored halfway down my notes page since then, but since I just looked at it for the umpteenth time and wondered why I hadn't posted it, I'm doing so now. You may need to update the figures slightly to add in recent accidents, but anyway: I first heard of the dangerous Houston Light Rail in various columns by The Sports Guy, back in early 2004 when he was in Houston covering the Superbowl. I'd link to them, but unfortunately ESPN.com has now locked all of his old archives away behind their $40 a year Insider wall, so you'll have to take my word for it. His jokes were all to the effect of how "insanely-easy it is to walk/drive in front of" the new monorail, and I thought it was just a comedic, "find something lame about the city hosting the event and joke about it relentlessly" effort. Turns out it wasn't; the Houston Light Rail really is a car-eating monster, with an accident rate running something like 2500% higher than the national average. It's so bad that the design of the trains has become a running joke, and the people of Houston have given their monorail two excellent nick names. It's known as both the "Wham-Bam-Tram," and the "Streetcar Named Disaster." Amused enough by those names to look for more info, I found a lot of sites talking/joking about it, but very few making any actual effort to explain the problem. As best I can tell, the trains run right alongside major roads, all through downtown Houston, and since cars must cross the tracks every block, the chances for a collision are extremely high. This is compounded by inadequate warning signs, lights, and guardrails, and the possibility that Houston drivers are really, really reckless. But certainly not wreck-less. Improvements galore have been made, mostly in terms of adding additional warning lights and guardrails, but there are still tons of accidents happening. One of the first Google returns on my search was this one, and it's worth a read for the amusement, largely for a few lines like this one: It should be noted that when Houston's MetroRail supporters were trying to generate public support for the vote on light rail, they told voters that it would take automobiles off the road. They just didn't mention that it would do it one car at a time. The oddest thing about my search results? Like 75% of the first page of Google returns were Libertarian sites, a fact that generally became clear when I checked out other links on their pages. I guess it's logical Libertarians would compile pages about the Wham Bam Tram; their political ideology opposes basically any sort of public spending (since those things require taxes or bonds to pay for them) and few things are more expensive than major public transportation systems. So when one comes along that's expensive, dangerous, and impractical, like Houston's, their eyes must light up like a pinball machine. Or like mine do when a new fantasy novel comes out that's famous, popular, and written like shit. Political biases aside, I think we can all agree that the Houston system is a bad one, with a poor design, and we can all try to learn from it. While laughing at the astonishing amount of accidents they've had already, in less than 1.5 years. I'm probably biased on this issue, since I now live in the Bay Area where we're blessed with the excellent BART system, and a geography that makes a mass transit system extremely viable. I should look up some info about San Diego though, since they were just getting their trolley system going full bore when I moved away from there, two years ago, and while I was amazed at the amount of trolley stops and the engineering they did to build them (clearing out an entire hillside along 8-East, just to get the trolley out from downtown to SDSU), I have no idea if it's helped traffic congestion, if it's worth the tax dollars spent on it, etc. The new trolley stop to the stadium was hugely popular for baseball and football games, during the last couple of years I worked there, but that's a special case with tens of thousands of people heading to a location with far too little parking, for a relatively short time. I have no idea if any of those same people actually rode it to work on weekdays, though the trolley parking lot near my condo in La Mesa (east of San Diego) was very full every weekday I drove past it. Posted by: Flux # 3:30 PM Comments: We have one in Minneapolis, only around a year or two old and it has also caused numerous accidents, even over such a short period. #: 2:04 AM posted by Anonymous It's the geography/population thing that gets Libertarians riled up. For most U.S. cities, a light rail system doesn't make enough economic sense to build. (And of course, the subsequent argument is that if it did make sense, a private company would build it.) #: 3:21 PM posted by Anonymous Yeah, but then you could point out that, without (at the very least) the permission and assistance of local government a light rail system simply cannot be built (for example, you're not going to get the land to build a light rail network throughout a city just by asking- you need Compulsory Purchase Orders). We've got one here in Dublin. We get an accident (invariably non fatal) every few months, which usually takes a short stretch out of action for a few hours. The LUAS (as it is called) has been making such a massive profit in the time it's been operational that a citywide ('spiderweb') network is to be built. Oh, and it's govenment run and funded. #: 6:07 AM posted by Anonymous BlackChampaign mentions that he lives "in the Bay Area where we're blessed with the excellent BART system". Admittedly, BART is one of the better light rail systems in the country. However, the Bay Area has two other light rail systems that serve the area and one of them is the light rail system that had the worst crash record in the US, before Houston built the wham-Bam-Tram. I'm talking about the MUNI system, which had 61 crashes in 2001, over 73.3 route miles. That's nothing, when compared to the Wham-Bam-Tram's recent onslaught on Houston cars and pedestrians. But in 2001, MUNI's record was considered horrendous. Since you were in San Diego at that time, I suspected that you might not be aware of that fact. #: 8:36 PM posted by ActionAmerica Post a Comment << Home Archives May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2012

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