Jakarta –
San Francisco may have Silicon Valley which is home to many technology companies. However, the train control system in the city is still very old school.
It is the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the government agency that manages trains in the city. According to Mariana Maguire, SFMTA Train Control Project, in 1998 they were the first agency in the United States to use a floppy-disk-based automatic train control system.
For your information, in 1998 the use of floppy disks was actually starting to be replaced by the presence of CD-ROMs. However, according to Maguire, the use of diskette technology is the most sophisticated, specifically for train control systems.
In the video made by ABC7, it is shown that the diskette used in the system is a 3.5 inch diskette. It makes sense, because in 1998, 5.25 inch floppy disks seemed to be out of fashion.
According to SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin, the train management system in question is actually targeted to be operational for 20 to 25 years. However, in 2024, the system will enter its 26th year, as quoted by detikINET from Techspot, Tuesday (9/4/2024).
Tumlin realizes the importance of updating the train management system, even though he considers the system is still running smoothly today. However, he realized that every year, the risk of losing data from the diskette was getting bigger. In fact, he believes that one day a very big disaster will occur in this system.
However, the problem is that updating to a more modern system not only takes a long time (up to a decade), but also requires hundreds of millions of dollars.
Tumlin hopes the majority of the funding will come from states and aid from the federal government. Meanwhile, the rest is covered by SFMTA capital, which according to Tumlin, continues to shrink.
Watch the video “Baltimore Collapsed Bridge Begins to Be Evacuated, Predicted There Will Be Trapped Victims”
(asj/asj)
2024-04-10 15:00:49
#train #control #system #city #diskettes
