Evacuate!
On the way to work today I was grounded by the lack of electricity. Read here:
Power outage
There are a few key points here which will drive this post. First, the outage occurred at 8:04 AM. My train is supposed to be in the station at 7:55. The fact that these trains are late every day means that I got nailed with this when I should have been standing on the subway platform waiting to be carried off to Brooklyn. This more than anything else underscores the inherent problem with mass transit. It is late every day - period. We are never on time, never in the station at 7:55.
Second, the train I was on was part of this quote from the story, "Another CNN employee reported her train had been halted since then in a tunnel about 100 yards from New York's Penn Station." Yes, that was us. For an hour, we sat there. Actually when we finally got off it was less than 100 yards, less than 50 yards in fact. But it took well over an hour for the FEMA-like workers to get us off the train and walk to the platform. More than likely they assumed we would be getting power back any second. So I can understand not getting us off immediately. But after 15 minutes they really should have known. I think it was in the realm of 60 minutes before they finally figured we weren't going anywhere fast.
But hey, this stuff happens and it's not a big deal. But the one real head scratcher is the fact these trains have no auxiliary power. I don't mean enough to get us the extra 50 yards to the station. I mean enough to keep the air flowing. By the end of the time sitting there, the car was like a locker room in the heat level. Is it so hard to have a car battery juiced up and ready to ventilate in the event that this happens? It's just a good thing nobody had a gym bag full of sweaty socks.
In all, I don't care. If I had been going home I would be more irate. But if I'm going to work it just means I get to work late. No skin off my back. And for a change, the passengers actually started talking to one another by the end of it, which is something you don't see very often on these trains. The complete and total lack of contingency plan is probably a concern. Apparently there were a handful of trains left in the tunnel, something that must have been awful given than the lights went out and there was no air movement on these trains.
I have off tomorrow, so I won't be late to work, which is nice.
Power outage
There are a few key points here which will drive this post. First, the outage occurred at 8:04 AM. My train is supposed to be in the station at 7:55. The fact that these trains are late every day means that I got nailed with this when I should have been standing on the subway platform waiting to be carried off to Brooklyn. This more than anything else underscores the inherent problem with mass transit. It is late every day - period. We are never on time, never in the station at 7:55.
Second, the train I was on was part of this quote from the story, "Another CNN employee reported her train had been halted since then in a tunnel about 100 yards from New York's Penn Station." Yes, that was us. For an hour, we sat there. Actually when we finally got off it was less than 100 yards, less than 50 yards in fact. But it took well over an hour for the FEMA-like workers to get us off the train and walk to the platform. More than likely they assumed we would be getting power back any second. So I can understand not getting us off immediately. But after 15 minutes they really should have known. I think it was in the realm of 60 minutes before they finally figured we weren't going anywhere fast.
But hey, this stuff happens and it's not a big deal. But the one real head scratcher is the fact these trains have no auxiliary power. I don't mean enough to get us the extra 50 yards to the station. I mean enough to keep the air flowing. By the end of the time sitting there, the car was like a locker room in the heat level. Is it so hard to have a car battery juiced up and ready to ventilate in the event that this happens? It's just a good thing nobody had a gym bag full of sweaty socks.
In all, I don't care. If I had been going home I would be more irate. But if I'm going to work it just means I get to work late. No skin off my back. And for a change, the passengers actually started talking to one another by the end of it, which is something you don't see very often on these trains. The complete and total lack of contingency plan is probably a concern. Apparently there were a handful of trains left in the tunnel, something that must have been awful given than the lights went out and there was no air movement on these trains.
I have off tomorrow, so I won't be late to work, which is nice.
