It's helpful for people to know just how "sticky" antiquated interfaces can be in a complex, mission-critical system - and how expensive they can be to replace (even though it's just one part of the overall upgrade of course).
So in that sense I find the reference to be useful, and not clickbait.
A previous news story claimed that the system used 5.25-inch disks, instead of 3.5-inch, which would have been strange for a system that was purchased in 1998. It turns out that it actually was 3.5-inch disks.
I was about to comment that the proper spelling is MUNI but the I looked here [1] and they're spelling it Muni now? I can't seem to find anything written about the change, while I find plenty of older documents with the all caps spelling. I wonder if some branding agency got paid for this brilliant idea.
A lot of subways have accepted the use of contactless credit cards or debit cards by touching the readers at the gates to pay for the fares. BART and MUNI still use Clipper card only.
I’ve asked someone work inside and he said the suppliers of the readers won’t upgrade them. Not sure what the deal is.
Given that you can, fairly easily, get a virtual stored value card on your phone, arguably little reason to change. As a visitor to SF, I was able to set up a virtual Clipper card and top it up in a few seconds, and it's presumably a lot cheaper and less complex for the operator (doesn't require talking to card networks).
Though, I still have ~$8 Clipper credit on my phone that I may or may not ever use...
I had $20 on the old magnetic strip card that was never used and got obsoleted. I had Clipper cards laying around with various remaining balances. I suspect the loose changes gained by the operators gave them less incentives to move forward.
They also support Apple’s Transit card (Clipper card in your Apple Wallet) so it works by tapping your phone, without unlocking it. It should also work with your iPhone turned off (newer models I think iPhone 14+ only)
> he said the suppliers of the readers won’t upgrade them. Not sure what the deal is.
It's not worth the money to the suppliers to go through the trouble of managing the upgrade of that one system alone; likely there's an opportunity cost where they have limited resources and they want to focus on the bigger projects making bigger impacts and bigger sales.
The last building I lived in, the sliding balcony doors were all starting to wear out. Building management called the company that made the doors to ask them about repairs or replacement and were told that the cost of replacing the doors for people isn't worth their time; basically, why would they come fix our old balcony doors for $x when they could spend their time on building and installing new balcony doors on a new build for $xx?
Too bad word gets around too slowly to actually make a difference in those new install numbers. Ideally, a company like that would lose sales to someone who offered better service to existing customers (who want to spend more money with you).
IMO, prepaid/stored value is fine. Not everything has to be rolled into the legacy monolithic global realtime-but-batched-too post-pay credit card infrastructure.
The headline's kinda clickbait (they're not charging $212M to replace some floppy drives or anything; it's a whole new system).
However, I always wonder with these weird old floppy-dependent systems... Where on earth are they getting the floppy disks at this point? They don't last forever. As far as I can see, no-one actually makes them anymore; are they just depleting a reserve supply?
The other slightly odd part is that the system was put in in _1998_, at which point floppy dependence was already a _bit_ on the archaic side. Possibly Hitachi just had an old system going cheap...
Just that thinking about the "floppy drive in 1998" question.
I can think of a couple of things at play
The system was likely designed a long time before 1998, because of how this type of contract works
Even in 1998 USB was very new, so thumb drives weren't an option
CDs were ubiquitous, but cd writers were not
Proprietary tech was available, Zip and Jazz drives come to mind, or maybe even minidisc in that timeframe, but any would have been a poor choice in hindsight
Tape would presumably have been considered, but was already notorious for long term compatibility (in 99 I had to restore from a tape backup that was only a couple of years old and we couldn't easily find compatible hardware)
There were other proprietary optical storage media in the market, but they were expensive and aimed at the long term storage market (heaven help you if that's how your archives are stored)
If they needed a cheap, easily written, and distributable media, they didn't have a lot of good choices.
We still don't have a good choice for this if you want your system air gapped. I sure as hell wouldn't let anyone plug a USB device into a safety critical system
It's probably a case where their warranty/support contract doesn't support MUNI replacing the existing hardware, and they don't want to certify new hardware for a 26 year old system.
I do wonder if they just have a stack of hermetically-sealed floppy disks that they have to swap to when one of them dies, or if they're just raw-dogging their redundancy.
> The other slightly odd part is that the system was put in in _1998_, at which point floppy dependence was already a _bit_ on the archaic side
Yeah, but stuff like train signalling systems don't get a full overhaul every year. The system in question was probably designed a decade earlier, and just evolved bit by bit.
But it's definitely funny in context. For reference, in the same timeframe Paris was constructing its first fully automatic (no driver) metro line, after the successes in Lyon, Toulouse, Lille a decade prior. Toulouse and Lille have fully automated metros.
Expo '86 in Vancouver is when they launched the Skytrain, a completely automated, driverless system which continues to be automated and driverless today.
Granted Vancouver is smaller than probably any of the other cities mentioned, but it's still interesting that the technology existed so long ago (and, apparently, ran on OS/2? That's what I've heard, anyway).
Perhaps this time they’ll put a maintenance and upgrade path clause into the contract so they don’t get into the same bad state as before. Who am I kidding there’s no way.
Readit News
So in that sense I find the reference to be useful, and not clickbait.
The correction is in this article: https://sfist.com/2024/08/07/muni-to-update-train-control-sy....
https://www.sfmta.com/muni-transit
“Muni” isn't an acronym, it's short for “Municipal Railway”.
I’ve asked someone work inside and he said the suppliers of the readers won’t upgrade them. Not sure what the deal is.
Though, I still have ~$8 Clipper credit on my phone that I may or may not ever use...
They also support Apple’s Transit card (Clipper card in your Apple Wallet) so it works by tapping your phone, without unlocking it. It should also work with your iPhone turned off (newer models I think iPhone 14+ only)
It's not worth the money to the suppliers to go through the trouble of managing the upgrade of that one system alone; likely there's an opportunity cost where they have limited resources and they want to focus on the bigger projects making bigger impacts and bigger sales.
The last building I lived in, the sliding balcony doors were all starting to wear out. Building management called the company that made the doors to ask them about repairs or replacement and were told that the cost of replacing the doors for people isn't worth their time; basically, why would they come fix our old balcony doors for $x when they could spend their time on building and installing new balcony doors on a new build for $xx?
However, I always wonder with these weird old floppy-dependent systems... Where on earth are they getting the floppy disks at this point? They don't last forever. As far as I can see, no-one actually makes them anymore; are they just depleting a reserve supply?
The other slightly odd part is that the system was put in in _1998_, at which point floppy dependence was already a _bit_ on the archaic side. Possibly Hitachi just had an old system going cheap...
I can think of a couple of things at play
The system was likely designed a long time before 1998, because of how this type of contract works
Even in 1998 USB was very new, so thumb drives weren't an option
CDs were ubiquitous, but cd writers were not
Proprietary tech was available, Zip and Jazz drives come to mind, or maybe even minidisc in that timeframe, but any would have been a poor choice in hindsight
Tape would presumably have been considered, but was already notorious for long term compatibility (in 99 I had to restore from a tape backup that was only a couple of years old and we couldn't easily find compatible hardware)
There were other proprietary optical storage media in the market, but they were expensive and aimed at the long term storage market (heaven help you if that's how your archives are stored)
If they needed a cheap, easily written, and distributable media, they didn't have a lot of good choices.
We still don't have a good choice for this if you want your system air gapped. I sure as hell wouldn't let anyone plug a USB device into a safety critical system
https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/floppy_disk_business/...
You can get a 10 pack for 15 bucks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulato...
Still just as slow, but no read/write failures.
Not sure if there’s an actual disk doohickey that plugs into any drive, but probably.
I do wonder if they just have a stack of hermetically-sealed floppy disks that they have to swap to when one of them dies, or if they're just raw-dogging their redundancy.
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-s...
Yeah, but stuff like train signalling systems don't get a full overhaul every year. The system in question was probably designed a decade earlier, and just evolved bit by bit.
But it's definitely funny in context. For reference, in the same timeframe Paris was constructing its first fully automatic (no driver) metro line, after the successes in Lyon, Toulouse, Lille a decade prior. Toulouse and Lille have fully automated metros.
Granted Vancouver is smaller than probably any of the other cities mentioned, but it's still interesting that the technology existed so long ago (and, apparently, ran on OS/2? That's what I've heard, anyway).
https://vancouversun.com/news/metro/inside-the-skytrain-cont...
seltrac is fine. MBTA's green line does just fine with block signaling