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232 points ksajadi | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.683s | source
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VonGuard ◴[] No.45140823[source]
Sooooo much snark, and so little interest into what BART actually runs on!

Originally, BART was a master stroke of digital integration in the 70's, and it's digital voices announcing the next trains were a thing of the future: An early accessibility feature before we even knew what those were, really.

Reading:

https://www.bart.gov/about/history

https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/traincontrol#:~:text=To%...

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dlcarrier ◴[] No.45143468[source]
I know what it runs on! It's a 5' 6" in gauge, usually used in India, and used no where else in the US.
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1. dehrmann ◴[] No.45145496[source]
https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2022/news20220708-2

The larger engineering lesson from that is you're probably better off making standard solutions work for your situation than custom solutions. The wider gauge solved(?) the stability problem, but at the cost of always needing custom rolling stock, but more importantly, making Bart build-out significantly more expensive and unable to take advantage of existing track. That hurts the viability of the Bart ecosystem.

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2. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.45147495[source]
> wider gauge solved(?) the stability problem, but at the cost of always needing custom rolling stock

Why not use Indian rolling stock? Modern Indian metro trains are quieter and more comfortable than BART.

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3. rsynnott ◴[] No.45147929[source]
Indian _metros_ generally use standard gauge. The BART _may_ be the only metro using this gauge in the world.