The Leftists who run Western Washington have been attempting to get people out of their individually-owned vehicles, and into “public” transportation for years. Their new “light-rail”/100-year-old technology choo-choo-train has been promoted twelve ways from Sunday, but of course the vast majority of citizens of this relatively low-density area still use their own private vehicles to get around.
This weekend, the UW-WSU football game, the Apple Cup, was held in Seattle, and many game-goers took the (un)Sound Transit train downtown for the game. However, their return trip had a little hiccup. Here’s the headline from the KOMO article on what happened.
Passengers stranded in light rail tunnel after Apple Cup; Sound Transit investigating. I just had to laugh out loud at that. If your car breaks down, mostly only you and whatever passengers you have are inconvenienced, but when the bus or train has a mishap, many people suffer. Here’s a quote from the article.
Sound Transit says the train became disabled in the northbound tunnel around 8:30 p.m. after the electronic cable linking the first car and the trailing three cars was severed, causing the train to immediately stop.
The severed cable prevented the operator from communicating by intercom with passengers on the trailing three cars. Passengers on the train eventually used the emergency exits to leave the cars as there was no communication and some riders were reportedly starting to panic.
Tsk. I feel sorry for the people who got stranded. The transit company has no obligation to compensate any of them for their lost time or panic when they had no idea what was happening.
Caveat Emptor, transit-riders. The worst thing about it is, I am paying for this boondoggle with my property taxes, sales taxes, and car-tab fee; I will never, ever ride the choo-choo.
Calling-all-RushBabes 
Investigation per similar article in the Seattle Times will be looking into ways to keep stuck passengers in their train cars (locking the doors?),
and “how to better communicate with riders during service disruptions.” How would they have known the passengers in the back three cars couldn’t hear the disconnected intercom? Public transportation vehicles must be designed with working emergency exits. The exits worked as intended, I imagine. Passengers exited the vehicles when in their judgment it became unsafe to remain because ventilation ceased and the windows started getting fogged. One person came close to having an anxiety attack. The service and emergency access walkways worked as designed and people were safe walking even though the train overhead powerlines had not been turned off. The failures of Sound Transit in this case were a failure to take care of their stranded customers and possibly lack of sufficient procedures to prevent severing of a critical electronic control cable. Vandalism involved?