Spain Officials Quit Over Trains That Were Too Wide For Tunnels (bbc.com) 120
WmHBlair writes: Two top Spanish transport officials have resigned over a botched order for new commuter trains that cost nearly $275m. The trains could not fit into non-standard tunnels in the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria. The head of Spain's rail operator Renfe, Isaias Taboas, and the Secretary of State for Transport, Isabel Pardo de Vera, have now left their roles. The design fault was made public earlier this month. The Spanish government says the mistake was spotted early enough to avoid financial loss. However the region of Cantabria has demanded compensation.
Not the first time (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Funny)
Any word if those too heavy submarines would fit through the train tunnels? ... :-)
Just wondering if maybe some people need to switch design teams in Spain
Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Interesting)
No, but according to the article, they belatedly realize their solution of expanding the submarine's length made the boats too big for their intended home harbor. So now they're expanding the harbor.
These sorts of military design fiascos are really nothing new. The Swedish warship Vasa (1628) was designed and built so top-heavy, on it's maiden voyage, it simply rolled over and sank about a mile into it's journey. And just perusing WW2 procurement history gives all sorts of design disasters, both for Allies and Axis countries.
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No, but according to the article, they belatedly realize their solution of expanding the submarine's length made the boats too big for their intended home harbor. So now they're expanding the harbor.
I take it simply adding "floaties" to the submarines to make them more buoyant wasn't considered? :-)
More seriously, nice info, thanks.
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The Vasa was built in the 17th century where we didn't really know all that much about buoyancy and the physics of stuff that floats. The top-heaviness was a result of the fact the
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
The Vasa was built in the 17th century where we didn't really know all that much about buoyancy and the physics of stuff that floats.
The implication of your claim is that those ships which didn't immediately capsize and sink were designed by shipbuilders who just happened to get things right by accident - which I find profoundly stupid.
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These sorts of military design fiascos are really nothing new.
These sort of design fiascos are not new to any industry private, public or military. There's examples a plenty the world over of these kinds of f-ups. Both the kind that results from calculation error, and the kind that results from poor documentation.
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Yup. Large corporations burn 8 and 9 figures on massive IT infrastructure projects that have to be abandoned with little or nothing usable much more often people realize.
This here is not an actual $275M mistake. Apparently, the mistake was caught a couple years ago, and that was early enough to merely delay delivery of the new trains. That is very inconvenient, but not a disaster.
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That's OK, I'm sure you can use the Mars probe story to balance that out, that was a doozy and not at all Spain's fault.
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, /= ;
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Lots of stories about mixing measurement systems. Even today if you asked me for a gallon of water, I'd give you 10 lbs of water rather then what (assuming you're American) you expected. Shit, we only agreed to use the same inch abut 70 years back.
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Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Funny)
Or you can use the sane measurement system as the testevof the wourld, .....
Maybe we could standardise on spelling too.
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Which spelling though? English or American? Should it be standardize or standardise.
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Thank you for the laugh.
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Changed to the metric system here about 50 years back, still think in gallons, feet, pounds, though largely metricised. 4 litre gallons, 30 cm foot kind of thing. In some ways imperial has easier units in the sense of the size. Buying a litre or 4 litres instead of 5 litres. Doesn't help change when a lot of stuff is in American sizes, 3.78 litre containers, 454 gram butter etc. Much of the country seems to be bilingual with measurements.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
Funny. Americans (Canadians, Brits) almost never have any trouble converting measurements within their own system. It's only when you introduce conversion to other systems that things tend to go awry.
And of course, that's the fault of the other system as much as it is America's.
Imperial is designed to work with real human values for people who actually use the measurements day to day in their work. Metric is designed for scientists who can't be bothered to learn more than one conversion system.
Neither is mo
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Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
You're conflating two systems (UK/US) and calling them one though. I already indicated conversion between systems is problematic.
And yeah, the system - if not designed top-down - was still developed by actual people who used measurements that worked well for them, their suppliers, and their customers.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
So did Roman numbers.
Then the arrabic system came along.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
No, the Roman system didn't work well for its users. That's why the Indian system (Arabic glyphs, but Indian positioning system) took over.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
It hard its advantages. For instance there is a multiplication system fo .big numbers that you can do in the Roman system on your fingers. I learned this in Latin, but I forgot (many decades ago).
However, it had man disadvantages, too.
But this is the point: but they didn't know that. It was the best they knew. That's why initially there was great reluctance to accept the Arabic system when it came to Europe.
Same with imperial: you think it's useful because that's what you grew up with, but actually it's mor
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
The difference is Romans were essentially mathematically illiterate. They didn't contribute anything significant to maths for their whole millennia long existence.
America on the other hand has contributed more to science and math in its short history than any other country in the world, with the exception of maybe India and UK.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
No thanks to its imperial units. This is just a fact of history, that America is now one of the leading technological countries. And im fact most of US contributions were in metric or SI units, mot imperial. (NASA, all of university physics etc.)
100 years ago it was Germany and other European countries that were tip of the spear (Von Neumann, Carnot, Gauss, Mach, Einstein, ...).
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
Oh, and BTW, Romans did their fair share of contributions (aquaeducts, heating systems, advanced catapults and other asssult devices, advanced construction systems and chemistry comparable to modern concrete etc).
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
And yet they failed to make a single contribution to math.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
No, not thanks to imperial units.
But absolutely thanks to the decision to use positional numbering.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
Imperial is designed to work with real human values for people who actually use the measurements day to day in their work.
Not so sure sure why you think metric isn't.
What do you think is so diffict to "a kilo of wheat four", or "a 20 cm dildo", as opposed to "two pounds of four" and "an 8 inch dick."
The fact that 20 cm is nothing to you, but "8 inch" is, well... that's just getting used to.
Oh, you need more flour? Take a 50 kilo sack, where's the problem. You only need 50 grams or so for a muffin anyway.
Why is that more difficult than "2 ounces"?
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You can also teach how NASA lost the 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter because JPL used metric system while Lockheed Martin used imperial, and -this is the important part- nobody resigned.
Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Funny)
It is weird that Lockheed Martin used Imperial, I thought they were American.
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It is weird that Lockheed Martin used Imperial, I thought they were American.
America is an empire.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
"America is an empire"
That explains the empirical units instead of logical ones.
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In this case they didn't even lose any money because they mistake was uncovered early. It just delayed the project by a couple of years.
In other countries, like the UK, a delay of two years is normal and expected and probably wouldn't even affect that year's bonus.
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I am reminded of how a few years ago, Spain designed submarines which were about 100 tons too heavy https://www.military.com/military-life/how-misplaced-decimal-point-nearly-took-down-spains-newest-submarines.html [military.com] which cost a bit extra to design. As a math teacher, I always like stories like this because they are great to tell students about what they need to really be careful about. But I suspect that Spain is not going to be happy being the source of now two of my go-to examples.
What about the Airbus A380 example where the wires were the wrong length due to different design software used by the French and the Germans?: https://simpleflying.com/airbu... [simpleflying.com]
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Re:Not the first time (Score:4, Interesting)
The Gimli glider might be another example for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Simple flying is, as usual, only partially accurate. There is some better information here:
https://www.airliners.net/foru... [airliners.net]
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Don't worry. Spain has some good company in France. In 2014 the French train operator SNCF has discovered that 2,000 new trains it ordered at a cost of 15bn Euros were too wide for many regional platforms. It cost them millions to modify the thousands of regional train platforms so the wider trains could pull into those stations without scraping the platforms. https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
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France had a similar train size snafu a few years back as well.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
In that case the trains were already build.
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>I can't help if converting from metric feet to meters
"metric feet"???
There's no difficult conversion to be done if you work in metric, everything is powers of ten, and in the base 10 decimal system we use for math, that's pretty frickin' trivial.
I can't imagine any way that metric->metric conversion would cause issues like what occurred. That was just the Spanish officials not even realizing that some of their train tunnels are not up to their normal standard size when they ordered the new trains.
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There is the informal metric foot of 30 cm, instead of the correct (using the international inch) 30.48 cm.
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Nobody I've ever met uses the term "metric feet" or measures anything in multiples of 30cm. We just use centimetres. If something is 30 cm, it's 30 cm.
Sounds like a weird American thing, but I've never heard it used by them either. A google search shows Wiktionary claiming it's sometimes how wood gets sold in the UK? And lo and behold some ISO standard that defines it for the British construction industry. It does not appear to be used by any country except Britain, and I'm highly dubious as to how much tra
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A google search shows Wiktionary claiming it's sometimes how wood gets sold in the UK? And lo and behold some ISO standard that defines it for the British construction industry. It does not appear to be used by any country except Britain, and I'm highly dubious as to how much traction it has there.
I buy a significant amount of timber in the UK. I have always found it sold in metres and its decimal parts, and a metre is an ISO metre.
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And here in Canada, wood is usually sold in inches and feet. We're officially metric but still use a lot of imperial.
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It's an internal mental thing, it's easier to think of a foot as 30 cm rather then almost 30.5 cm. If the prediction is for 15 cm of snow, that's half a foot. We're metric here and have been for about 50 years, still think in feet, stuff in the stores is advertised in pounds, lumber in inches and feet, volume usually litres but 4 litres seems a more normal size then 5 litres.
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There's no difficult conversion to be done if you work in metric,
Sure there is: km/hr to metres/second. RPM to Hz to Radians/second. Calories to kilojoules. And whatever the hell milliamp-hours are.
To avoid problems like the Mars Climate Orbiter, it is of course not enough to use metric.
Everything should be done with SI units. - an important distinction!
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Calories aren't metric, so yes, there is a weird amount of them per kilojoule: that's like converting feet to metres.
The rest of you examples are all conversions involving time, converting hours->minutes->seconds. Simple, but we are all stuck with base 60 there, metric or not. Radians are odd because they are based on irrational constants (two Pi radians in a complete circle), but again everyone is stuck with that because it flows from basic geometric principles: there's intrinsic mathematical reasoni
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Calories aren't metric,
Really? A calorie is the energy required to raise one gram of water by one Kelvin. Did you think it can't be metric just because Americans use it?
tl;dr radians are easier to use in any sort of physics calculations, as the "natural" measure of rotation. But historically, we humans were simply more interested in dividing a circle into fractions, hence degrees dating back to ancient Mesopotamia.
As for mAh, correct answer is that it is not even the right unit for batteries (charge once made sense for cells
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While calories SOUND like a metric term because it uses grams in the equation, the official metric measurement is joules (usually kilojoules). If you were travelling in say Australia, a metric country, the official food labelling you'd see would all be in kJ, not calories.
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"Official metric"? That would be SI units. You are confusing metric with SI.
Another example of a metric energy unit is the erg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Metric system IS SI. WTF you taking about? SI is literally the French name for what we call the metric system:
"Why is the metric system called SI?
Also referred to as the metric system, the System of Units is commonly abbreviated as SI, which comes from the original French name, Système international d'unités." -NIST
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No. It isn't. Just read the Wikipedia link above. SI is one subset of metric.
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You read it:
"The metric system is a system of measurement that succeeded the decimalised system based on the metre that had been introduced in France in the 1790s. The historical development of these systems culminated in the definition of the International System of Units (SI) in the mid-20th century, under the oversight of an international standards body. Adopting the metric system is known as metrication."
Are you claiming that the finalized standard in "mid-20th century" is too new or something, and we n
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Really? A calorie is the energy required to raise one gram of water by one Kelvin. Did you think it can't be metric just because Americans use it?
You are ignoring the fact that when most people use the term calories, they really mean kilocalories or "Calories" [capital C].
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
There's also no difficult conversion if you work in imperial. Unless you start comparing the weight of an elephant to the weight of an aspirin or something else nonsensical. Imperial is like a set of interconnected systems, each designed for a single problem space.
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Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Funny)
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There's been cultures (Inuit for one IIRC) that used the space between their fingers for counting, giving a base 8 system, which has advantages.
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Linear metric measurements, as in centimeters & kilometers, are based on powers of ten.
The typical human has 10 fingers.
So anyone that has issues measuring distance in metric must also be using their toes, ears, or nose?
I know that it is now woke to employ idiots, but if the people who designed those trains needed to count with their fingers I believe that could have been the source of the problem.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
So what? The Sumerians used base-60 based on the joints in their hands. Ten isn't some magical base that is better than others.
The imperial system is designed by people who actually use the measurements. Metric is designed by a council of scientists in France. Imperial measurements in day to day business are almost always small integer values or powers of two (1/2, 1/4, etc.). This has its own benefits.
Re: Not the first time (Score:2)
Nothing you said contradicts what I said, except you used the word "knuckles" instead of "joints".
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Not another one... (Score:3)
This seems to be another in the continuing series of 'politicians make terrible engineers'. And I recall another where the trains didn't work with the existing platform placement. Where we used to live they put in an electric ferry -- save that at one end of its transit (where it spends most of its time) there is no way to charge it. There needs to be a public list... shaming these idiots. Maybe someday they will stop doing engineering.
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How about shaming the engineers responsible for the non-standard tunnels in the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria?
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Sure, I bet their great, great grandchildren are around to embarrass.
Re:Not another one... (Score:5, Informative)
How about shaming the engineers responsible for the non-standard tunnels in the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria?
The tunnels were built between 100-200 years ago and were probably "standard" sizes *then*. From TFA:
The rail network in northern Spain was built in the 19th Century and has tunnels under the mountainous landscape that do not match standard modern tunnel dimensions.
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You are going to try to blame the sizing of tunnels built in the 1800s?
Whoever thought it would be a good idea to try and standardize rail tunnel size ought to have settled on the smallest width in use.
But at the end of the day.. The patient isn't at fault for having the non-standard blood type if the hospital administers the wrong one. It's not a mistake of the tunnel designer they ordered the a train to the wrong specifications; And it's not even wrong to design a different size than what is common
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Whoever thought it would be a good idea to try and standardize rail tunnel size ought to have settled on the smallest width in use.
Just keeping it to passenger lines, that might be the Glasgow Subway with 11ft diameter tubes, a bit smaller than the London Underground tube lines. The Glasgow system is isolated, but the London tube lines share track in places with standard "main line" trains; the latter, being in the UK, are themselves significantly smaller than the international UIC gauge. The London Underground's small trains are severely over-crowded at times, and LU might welcome any contribution from yourself to rebore their 250 m
Re: Not another one... (Score:2)
It's almost like standards bodies (like the metric guys) don't consider how things are used in the real world, and only care about some academic aesthetic of beauty.
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What standard? And what revision of said standard?
That's the great thing about standards isn't it.
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MBA mentality.
I have no doubt that someone below them told them that these new models were too large for the loading-gauge. And that person was ignored because if the decision-maker even had heard of the concept of loading-gauge they for some reason didn't think that it was possible that there were special cases, even though rail is a very old technology.
Only once the true depth of their failures were evident did they at least acknowledge their failures, and merely to quit.
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It appears that the UK has higher usage of its passenger rail network than Spain does. When usage is high it's typically a lot easier to justify infrastructure upgrades since there's a revenue stream to help justify it.
Plus from your article it looks like it was a double-tunnel, so again it's easier to justify that sort of extensive line work when they can keep the line open with carefully coordinated single-track operations on the remaining line.
For what it's worth I'm not saying that Spain shouldn't incr
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This seems to be another in the continuing series of 'politicians make terrible engineers'. And I recall another where the trains didn't work with the existing platform placement. Where we used to live they put in an electric ferry -- save that at one end of its transit (where it spends most of its time) there is no way to charge it. There needs to be a public list... shaming these idiots. Maybe someday they will stop doing engineering.
I doubt the politicians are the ones making these specific decisions with the responsibility like checking tunnel dimensions all along the lines. In fact, I'm pretty certain at no point did someone do something like look at a tiny tunnel then went ahead and bought too big train.
A better explanation might be that politicians make terrible managers, though that really depends on how the transit is run. Either way, mistakes like this are rarely the work of one person but are more likely due to wider ranging or
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This seems to be another in the continuing series of 'politicians make terrible engineers'.
Politicians have nothing to do with it. These kinds of design errors transcend the public / private ownership barrier. Heck when I was a graduate I briefly worked at a private company that made exactly the same mistake, except it wasn't a tunnel the new trains didn't fit into, they could fit under the coal unloading arm.
The issue is always design assumptions and documentation. The assumption that the current standard is the design limit (rather than reflecting that outdated equipment is part of the design l
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Or fix the tunnels (Score:3)
The alternative is to fix the none standard loading gauge of the tunnels.
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The alternative is to fix the none standard loading gauge of the tunnels.
TFA notes the tunnels were built in the 19th century, through/under the mountains. I don't know how long they are, but imagine it would be prohibitively expensive to increase the size of the tunnels, though doing so would alleviate issues like this going forward and allow the use of modern "standard size" trains throughout the network.
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Which was my point, but now I realize that this is Spain so you are going to have to order a non-standard train anyway as they won't be standard gauge anyway but Iberian gauge which is only used in Spain and Portugal.
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Got a half billion dollars lying around for a tunnel expansion? This would incur the sort of financial loss they at least avoided in this situation -- since it's a 2 year delay instead of having the wrong train delivered
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They did that in Australia. QR bought new commuter trains which didn't fit in the tunnels. So they modified the tunnels.
But be careful of the use of "non standard". There is no one standard, not even internally within an organisation are things like this unchanging for long periods of time to say nothing of 200 years we're talking about here.
Failed ato answer emails, delays resulted (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the TRAINS (as a physical object) that could not fit, it's the INITIAL REQUIREMENT that was wrong. Somebody drafted trains with dimensions forgetting about the tunnels. The mechanical company, whose first task as part of the contract, was to check the compatibility of the requirements with the actual infrastructure, did what they had to do, found the problems, and notified the officials. There, an unnecessary amount of time was lost when said officials failed to answer. This apparently caused 2 years of delay in the delivery of the trains.
I think it's great if a delay (not even a cost increase) in a public contract now causes top officials (a Secretary of State) to take political responsibility.
There will certainly something to learn in the results of the investigation. Maybe (just speculation) the company had a contact that was a top manager (at train company) or a politician rather than an engineering responsible. There are ways emails get lost when dealing with large organizations.
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Somebody drafted trains with dimensions forgetting about the tunnels.
Did they forget about the tunnels or did they make incorrect assumptions about the tunnels? I.e. pull up the current tunnel standard and design to that (assumption: tunnels meet the current standard).
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I also cannot help but ask, couldn't the contracted company have sent a reminder or two?
I was just speculating when saying emails, voluntarily with an example of a "simple" explanation. The news say the government is investigating for "negligence". There is a lot we can speculate about. I'm actually very curious in their final report.
"cost 275m" "was spotted early enough" (Score:3)
"The Spanish government says the mistake was spotted early enough to avoid financial loss."
Great journalism, great editing, all clear to the readers.
You must be so proud of your jobs.
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So they wrote that the botched order cost $275m.
Except it didn't.
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so, the pain in spain is all about the train? (Score:5, Funny)
is that about the long and short of it?
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The trains in Spain run only on the plains.
bad decision process and lack of experience (Score:2)
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So, you prefer a an expensive fiasco over nice cheap status quo? What point did these politicians have?
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The status quo can get quite expensive in an expanding city. Think of ever growing traffic jams. Don't know the particulars of this case.
Not a unique problem. (Score:3)
The Hastings Line tunnels in the UK are undersized because the original Victorian contractor botched it and extra brick lining was needed thus reducing the bore size.
It required narrower rolling stock both for passenger and freight right up until the 1980s when many of the tunnels were single tracked and more precise track alignment meant normal UK rolling stock could run. [UK Loading gauge is smaller than the European Continental gauge as tunnels, bridges, platforms were built so early on in the history of railways by many different companies leading to a plethora of standards].
Standards are a good thing. (Score:2)
A few years back a satire show on German TV was joking that the Federal Train Service was updating a smaller track to higher platforms even though the trains running the line fit perfectly. They failed to see that updating the track to standard would make operations more smoothly and allow for standard trains to be used.
Standards do make a lot of sense if everyone gets why they exist.
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Nah, they modded you down because the tunnels in question are like centuries old and would cost literally billions to upgrade. The *correct* answer is just to get trains built that fit, and this is quite common around the world.
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Probably used ponies as they're better in the mountains.