Centralization versus decentralization is what I wanted to blog about but the photo on the right, which should be an example of my subject, turns out not to be. The photo on the right is the Seattle blue monorail that crashed into the only other monorail, red, going the opposite direction, because of bad timing.
The photo on the left below, shot from the bottom, shows that the two trains were in a turn that was too narrow for both to pass and they now seem to be permanently joined at the hip. I believe Seattle should just leave the trains in place, close the 40 year-old system that is mostly a tourist attraction, and let the two cars in the air be the tourist attraction. Monorails were a technology that didn’t work out.
It turns out the real reason the trains crashed was ....
It turns out the real reason the trains crashed was bad engineering. The word C.R.A.S.H is a descriptive term for
engineering mistakes in our era. The Mars lander that was programmed
by one group of engineers to land measuring meters, was programmed by
another group to land using feet. It did the bad-engineering thing and
crashed.
The monorail had its tracks changed in 1989 to end at a different site and the engineer didn’t calculate the radius of the turn correctly so the trains had to be timed to never go into the turn at the same time. Most of the year there is only one train so it didn’t matter. After 15 years, someone forgot to consider the consequences of having two trains running for the Holidays. Crash.
The centralization versus decentralization that I was going to write about arose from the history of railroads (pre-monorail). Before we had international time zones in the United States, the conductor on the train was the captain. He had a very accurate watch to make sure trains on the single tracks (with passing spurs) did not collide. No conductors on the Seattle monorail... just very poor engineering of the track design.
I’ll blog about the cent versus decent subject some other time when I have a good example.