French railway operator orders hundreds of new trains that are too big

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/french-railway-operator-sncf-orders-trains-too-big

by kercker • 12 years ago

22 36 12 years ago

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

So I wonder if they will re-do the stations or re-do the trains. It seems the older stations which are too narrow would probably benefit from an upgrade, but I could imagine they might not have the space to make them any wider than they are now.

ceejayoz• 12 years ago

It's literally a four line article, and one of them is "Construction work has begun on widening hundreds of platforms."

meric• 12 years ago

They're going to first spend €400m upgrading their train station platforms by widening the space for train tracks, and then later we'll find out on Hacker News: "200 Upgraded French Train Platforms 'too thin for pedestrian traffic'".

doxcf434• 12 years ago

Right, the french pedestrian network will have failed to communicate the correct specifications to the platform operators.

sirdogealot5• 12 years ago

Most subway stations I have frequented can certainly afford losing 10 or 20 centimeters of platform space so I wouldn't be too concerned.

ekianjo3• 12 years ago

Ah, the SNCF... they are professionals in wasting public money and slackers in everything. I can't remember the number of times my train was delayed, cancelled, or stopped in the middle of the countryside for no reason. And when shit happens, there's one thing you can expect from them: zero communication and zero responsibilities.

Argorak3• 12 years ago

The party responsible for the blunder is actually the RFF, the railway system provider, which provided the SNCF with false data.

http://www.france24.com/en/20140521-french-trains-wide-old-s...

sirdogealot5• 12 years ago

I was staying in Paris, France for a few months with a local friend a while back... she worked for SNCF.

Apparently suicide is a huge problem in France, and most of the time when a train is delayed or you are stopped in the middle of the tracks it's because they're quickly picking up body parts.

That's also the reason for the lack of communication on behalf of the train operators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_France

kalleboo• 12 years ago

Here in Japan, the most common delay reason I see on the signs is "passenger injury". I think we all understand that they don't mean it's a grandma who fell over and hurt her leg...

negativity• 12 years ago

You'd still expect that they'd have some kind of open-ended vague parlance for suicide-by-train.

In NYC subways, a conductor will at least mention on the intercom that delays are being experienced due to "train traffic", "signaling problems", "mechanical difficulties", "medical emergencies" or "police activity." A suicide could easily be categorized as a medical emergency, hence the ambulances.

Argorak3• 12 years ago

Munich has a similar problem with the S-Trains only having one track to run through the system.

In Berlin, "Notfalleinsatz im Gleis" (Emergency rescue in the trainbed) is also quite often. Deutsche Bahn uses "Unfall mit Personenschaden" (Accident with people involved).

Usually, information and coverage about this is scarce for a reason, to avoid copycat suicides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide).

ekianjo3• 12 years ago

Let me call BS on that. Japan has way more suicides on its railways (because it has both more trains and more suicides in the first place than France) and the Japan Rail company always communicate on the reasons of their delays, EVEN when it's about a suicide. And delays are never in number of hours for these kind of cases, but rather about 20 to 40 mins max.

Another example from the SCNF, from my own experience. One the TGV (bullet train) stopped nowhere and we waited more than 2 hours wondering what was happening. There was no communication. Only when we arrived at the destination we were told the train hit a wild boar or something like that and that was the reason for us stopping. Seriously, why keeping everyone in the dark ? Complete lack of process and customer service. That's what the SNCF is.

It's very telling how they refer to their clients as being "usagers" (users, but in the worst possible choice of word in French) instead of referring to them as customers.

renox• 12 years ago

I'm not sure that this is 'most of the time' some parts of our railways are also very old so they have technical failures..

In the subway, they're (slowly) replacing access gates so that you cannot access to the tracks which would reduce a lot this kind of suicide, but 1) it's very expensive 2) unions are against it, because at the same time they make trains remotely controlled..

robzyb• 12 years ago

The article makes it sound horrible, but I wonder how bad it really is.

For instance, they've "only" spent $50m so far compensating. That's only 0.33% of the total $15bn budget for the trains.

Even if they end up spending a whole $1bn widening platforms - that's "only" a 6.66% cost blowout.

In the context of infrastructure projects, a <10% budget blowout doesn't sound so bad :P

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

Compared to the clusterfuck of extending the San Francisco subway system, it sounds like a bargain. By contrast, I've grown to love the subway system in LA to the point that I look forward to visiting so I can ride it.

batiudrami• 12 years ago

Holy crap, someone who loves LA public transport? Admittedly SF's is...odd, but I'd say it's much better than LA's.

They're both got nothing on NY or Chicago though, obviously.

Edit: This is from a tourist perspective to all four cities, so I only have a little experience with each of them.

Dorian-Marie• 12 years ago

And it's actually to improve old train stations so not that bad if we can get larger train.

gbog• 12 years ago

The article makes it sound horrible

Yes, it feels like "look we found something to say about the French abd how they are bad a planning!"

I have the same impression when reading my home country's newspapers about UK or USA, it's like a jealous girl saying about the pretty one: "Look, she has a red spot today!".

And this means UK is jealous about France, which is nice the know...

makomk• 12 years ago

Almost but not quite. If it happened in the UK it'd be all over the UK news as evidence of how broken Britain's train system is, as cstross pointed out on Twitter earlier. It's mostly surprising because we're used to the French actually being competent at running train systems unlike us.

OwlyCode• 12 years ago

Yes it makes it sound horrible. 0.33% is nothing when speaking of over expenses.

Plus, getting larger train was planned as French Government passed a law for accessibility for the disabled to be applied before 2015 : the distance between the border of the station and the train must not be more than 1cm (horizontally and vertically).

(French source : https://www.facebook.com/cedricingrand/posts/101524737376878...)

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

Construction work has begun on widening hundreds of platforms.

I hope he means narrowing them, otherwise the problem is just going to get worse :)

herbig• 12 years ago

The trains are too wide or the platforms are too narrow. One of those problems needs to be addressed.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

I guess in rail terminology the platform includes the track section, but I always think of it as the part you stand on while you're waiting for the train since that is the part that is raised above track level - so wider track areas would necessitate narrower platforms. The definition of platform is a raised surface, after all.

Argorak3• 12 years ago

Probably a better source is this:

http://www.france24.com/en/20140521-french-trains-wide-old-s...

a) This only applies to very old platforms, build by standards over 50 years ago. b) If the trains were ordered by the older standards, i can imagine an issue that newer platforms would need to be widened (modern trains try to provide gapless entry).

So, all in all, the problem was found late (unfortunate), but the real problem is: platforms following different standards which should probably be unified anyways.

icefox• 12 years ago

Sounds like a long term win anyway, now all future trains can be wider.

makmanalp• 12 years ago

I read some speculation on a reddit thread that this was no accident but a backhanded way of forcing modernization: Enough money and effort goes into supporting old trains and train stations in terms of switching trains, personnel, repairs, little bridges to fit smaller trains into wide stations etc that the difference between that and going ahead with the modernization wouldn't be that big.

But if there were political objections to such a renovation project from some unknown group, this would be a good way to force their hand.

bloodmoney• 12 years ago

Well fuck me runnin

dang• 12 years ago

Url changed from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27502184.

kolev• 12 years ago

Poor journalism across the board! None of the articles mentions any specifics. How much wider?!

informatimago2• 12 years ago

In any case it is rather insignificant, on the order of the decimeter!

French railway operator orders hundreds of new trains that are too big

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