Posted on Thu, 02/21/2008 - 17:41 — by MikeSar
I give up! Please, tell me how to know which car has a seating space? People "seem" to know that the cars at the front or the back are best and stand there with the assurance of a Christopher Columbus. You would think that by now BART would know how to measure the relative weight of the passenger cars. You know, which ones are packed solid and which carry less weight.
A beginner would guess that if you measure the current (or the power) used by every car a simple calculation would idenfity those that have the least weight. Yes, I know they are linked but there is a very small gap between them and the trick is to measure the initial acceleration (the gizmo is the size of a Nicotine patch).
A green light could shine on the boarding area of those cars with least weight at the next station. No marching band please, a BART Ticket (non-empty) would be fine.
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Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 14
The reason that people "seem" to know about the end cars is simple. Look at the lines on any platform. Tons of folks for the middle four to six cars, very few for the end of train cars. Any system based on train car weight won't realistically work in the urban core stations of the system anyway. I speak as one who has spent too many afternoon commutes on BART, standing from downtown Oakland to Lafayette or Walnut Creek. Add in some unwary travellers with the "clothes for a month" sized suitcases going to/from the airports and the usual "you don't really mean me" bike riders who INSIST on getting that bicycle on BART at 5:20 pm, with the deserving wheelchair users and moms with strollers, and you'll see that the laden weight is not going to help determine the passenger space available on any given BART car.
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 3
Riders already push, shove, and trip each other to get in the doors - I can just imagine the how many injuries there would be if everyone knew which car had the most seats or room.... manners are not synonomous with BART ridership - lets not invent more ways to be rude!
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 219
Each BART car has one electric pad and if the current flow is measured you can call it a mass or weight sensor, or a power meter, or an ammeter, since the votage is constant. The calculation of relative weights for many cars is simple for Analog computers, the kind used even after the digital computers. I used Analog computers in the old NACA that preceded NASA. We used them to measure forces on models of space capsules inside hypersonic wind tunnels. They were very reliable and very small, the size of Nicotine patch.
The encoded information can be transimitted together with other data, like position, to all stations with the same line that provides the Direct Current power to the train.
Each station would receive and sort the coded data to identify the "next" train and change the colors that light each pad that lines up in front of each door in the train. There is no reason to imagine that people would become more unruly than they are now while waiting for a train. The choice is not between empty and full cars but between partially full cars, which is not a sufficient reason to launch a people-killing stampede.
MikeSar
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 2
bart cars full?? nevahhhh!!! its easy to tell which ones are full....people go up the stairs or escalator, and wait right there. lets not walk a few feet to the front or back of the platform, lets just go to the middle and be lazy and wait, so the middle cars are full. use some common sense...such as know the schedule. I get on bart in pittsburg, and I know the train leaves at 6:57, but its there at 6:50ish, yet people are knocking each other down the stairs because the train is pulling in. Also, I notice at especially PH and WC barts....why does it seem to be an Olympic event to get to the stairs first to get out? does it make that big a dif to get to your car first??? last I checked, its who leads the last lap that counts, not who leads on first lap
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 2
bart cars full?? nevahhhh!!! its easy to tell which ones are full....people go up the stairs or escalator, and wait right there. lets not walk a few feet to the front or back of the platform, lets just go to the middle and be lazy and wait, so the middle cars are full. use some common sense...such as know the schedule. I get on bart in pittsburg, and I know the train leaves at 6:57, but its there at 6:50ish, yet people are knocking each other down the stairs because the train is pulling in. Also, I notice at especially PH and WC barts....why does it seem to be an Olympic event to get to the stairs first to get out? does it make that big a dif to get to your car first??? last I checked, its who leads the last lap that counts, not who leads on first lap