A computer upgrade shut down BART

It'd be pretty cool if busses and trains were local-first.

If you can't send updated schedules or emergency alerts through the system, I also don't want service started. It doesn't have to be an individualized problem to render local-first useless.

Also, what do you mean by trains being local-first? Trains by definition need to share the same tracks with catastrophic consequences for getting it wrong. You can't figure out if a train is going to possibly be on the same route locally, or if your route has been obstructed. Somebody gets a schoolbus stuck on a crossing, it takes over a mile to stop a train.

>If you can't send updated schedules or emergency alerts through the system, I also don't want service started.

In the days before systems existed for publishing such schedules and emergency alerts, should public transit service not have been attempted at all?

> Trains by definition need to share the same tracks with catastrophic consequences for getting it wrong.

Just because it uses the same rail gauge as intercity freight doesn't require it to run on the same set of tracks. But if it did, I assume "local-first" entails other traffic just being excluded when an emergency in the local system necessitates it.

You can go down a very deep rabbit hole learning about the history of train signaling. Trains and subways have had centralized signaling for…I’d have to look it up, but 100 years surely? It’s the only way to safely have more than one train running at a time (i.e., sharing the track) with a dense schedule. The “local first” procedure when it fails is to radically reduce service and slow down the trains.

Wikipedia has a good survey [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_signalling