cybadger's comments

This just in: the Surface Transportation Board is requesting additional data from the Class Is for reasons that sound highly relevant to the original article. https://www.progressiverailroading.com/federal_legislation_r...

My time in rail was all related to positive train control (PTC), which is a safety overlay that stops the train before anything bad happens, at least in theory. The railroads generally despised the idea because it would slow down overall network velocity. It was only when it was mandated that they really got started with it beyond science projects.

I'm pretty far from rail these days, so I know I'm out of date. But as I recall, the prediction algorithms didn't work as well with distributed power (locomotive in the middle of the train, almost required for trains this long). So it's entirely possible that these super-long trains aren't able to predict unsafe conditions. I also vaguely recall they didn't predict anything to do with buff and draft forces (or other in-train forces) that could lead to the kind of derailments the article discussed.

This seems odd given the safety culture of railroads (every meeting I attended as a vendor, even if it was just a handful of people who had known each other for years, started with a safety briefing that included evacuation instructions and who was CPR qualified, along with tripping hazards and such). But around the time I was leaving the industry, CSX was spending lots of millions of dollars to bring the (now-late) Hunter Harrison in to implement Precision Scheduled Railroading. That led to a rush for other roads to implement it, to the point where I believe BNSF is the only Class I that does not do PSR. And PSR is all about reducing costs, cutting manpower, mothballing locomotives—which absolutely could lead to the sort of stuff this article is about. And, because it is (at least was) so fashionable in the industry, a road moving away from PSR (whether announced or just in practice) would likely see a stock price plunge and a CEO change.

Makes me wonder if, stuck between a rock and a hard place (ballast and the rail?), the roads are hoping the STB steps in and makes a rule to stop their game of chicken.

I agree 100%, based on my own experience both as having been a kid and being a parent.

Like a lot of other folks have already posted, I was also the weird sort of kid that spent time "playing on the computer" and talking about what I'd learned and asking about "modems" and "BBSs" or "the Internet". My parents would listen, supported getting an extra phone line to run my own BBS, would drive me places to support my hardware and books habits--and that all was important to continuing to explore this niche.

As a parent, well, I have an interesting mirror experience. My oldest daughter got really into basketball. This is absolutely inexplicable to me, because neither I nor my wife ever played, nor did we ever watch a basketball game at home before her interest developed. (Schools these days, exposing children to strange new ideas!) I knew the basics (orange sphere through orange ring = points; double dribbling and traveling are bad; no tackling) but really had no interest. But we've enabled her interest: let her join the school team, signed her up for summer camps or 3-on-3 leagues, encouraged her to practice in the driveway (oh, yeah, bought a hoop for the driveway), have watched or taken her to college women's games.

She still knows more about the game than I do. Even with years of watching, "volunteering" for scorebook duty at some of her home games, talking with coaches and refs, there are still a lot of subtleties of the game that escape me. But it's okay. She plays, she enjoys it, and she knows her parents support her strange, strange interest.

Even if you don't really, completely "get it" as a parent, supporting and enabling ("enabler" is such a good word here) is worth a lot.

I used to ride my bicycle to work most days. I like to ride. I am all for "a bicycle is a vehicle", but I still think this adjustment makes sense.

Being able to treat a stoplight like a stop sign is great. It's pretty common for stoplight sensors to not detect bicycles. It's also common for polite folks in cars to stop far enough behind a bicycle that their cars don't get sensed. It's not a good feeling to sit on the sensor loop, watching the walk lights cycle and reset, knowing that if you don't run a red or walk out of the intersection, you'll be stuck.

As for treating a stop sign like a yield sign, I agree with a lot of other posters who come citing sources: bicycles move slower and are at a lot of risk from cars coming up from behind. It's not about the extra effort to get started (though in a hilly place, I could see that being a problem for some riders).

As a cyclist, bike safety is hard. You're squishable and very aware of it, surrounded by big, fast, solid cars whose drivers often aren't paying close attention.

As a driver, bike safety is hard. A lot of drivers get weird around bikes (e.g., they yield the right-of-way when they shouldn't). Cyclists often aren't well-trained in the rules of the road. And the rules of the road often force bikes and cars to intersect in ways that aren't ideal.

So I think making it clear that yes, bikes are vehicles, but making a few exceptions to improve safety by reducing the chance of bicycles getting unintentionally hit from behind--seems like a win to me!

Hey Adam, it's pretty fun! I agree with some of the other posters that landmarks and businesses could be a good addition.

I did have some trouble understanding how it's calculating distance and drawing the dashed line. It does not always draw the shortest distance from the pin to the polyline for the road. I tried a few rounds with some deliberately wrong guesses and I'm still not sure I know what it's doing. Some examples:

(1) A road that runs from southwest to northeast. I placed the pin to the southeast of the road. Eyeballing it, the shortest distance is roughly northeast. The dashed line was drawn 10-15 degrees east of north. If it's significant, it drew to an intersection (not the nearest, but reasonably close).

(2) A road that runs east-west. I placed the pin north of the road by 50-60 meters. The dashed line was drawn 15-30 degrees west of south. It did not draw to an intersection or other point of interest. It may be drawing a ray from the center of the circle of interest.

(3) A road that runs north-south. I placed the pin east of the road by 40-ish meters, near the north edge of the circle. The dashed line was drawn 15-30 degrees west of south (my guess in #2 about a ray from the center was wrong), to an intersection, giving a 102 meter distance.

(4) A discontinuous street. (Replicated for a different street! 4th St and 5th St in Marion, IA, if it helps.) The street runs north-south but has a quarter-ish-mile gap. I placed the pin not far from the southern section of the street. The dashed line was drawn from the pin, past (and nearly parallel to) the southern section, then connected to the southern tip of the northern section. Interestingly enough, the distance looked like it was pin-to-southern-section.

(5) A north-south road in rural Iowa taking advantage of the 1-mile grid. I placed the pin near the center of the circle, slightly less than one mile from the nearest point of the road. It drew the dashed line northwest and showed a distance of 2002 meters. I would have expected due west, and ~1500 meters.

(6) A road that runs north-south (with a bit of southeast a half mile south of the circle), that happened to just barely peek inside the circle on the far west. I placed the pin near the outer edge of the circle, roughly northwest. It drew the dashed line nearly due south (several miles!) but reported a distance of 281 meters.

Sometimes the distances seem reasonable even if the dashed line is drawn to a different point on the road. Sometimes the distances and the dashed lines both seem to be off. Intersections seem to have something to do with it, but there also seems to be something else going on too.

For testing, if you're interested, the intersection of "White Road" and "North Alburnett Road" in Iowa (between Marion and Alburnett) is great. It's sparse, gives you nice straight roads, with just a few driveways and other points-on-polyline to confuse(?) algorithms. If you get C Ave Extension just barely in the circle on the west, that's #6.

And for what it's worth, I had fun trying to figure this out!

There were two things that helped me overcome perfectionism. Well, probably more, but two that stand out.

One was getting focused on the purpose of my activity. I'm writing a letter to persuade X of Y. I'm writing documentation so users know how to do Z. I'm coding a module so the system can do W, which lets users do A and B. I'm patching this drywall so my house looks nicer. Then I can subvert whatever perfectionistic impulse comes my way. Maybe what I can do in the time I have, with the knowledge and skills I have isn't perfect, but it's better than what exists now. Maybe I can't write a full manual with screenshots, but I can at least create a Help page with a few bullet points--it's now better than it was, and that is progress toward achieving the purpose I set out after.

The other was having fun. Not necessarily at work or other tasks (I do have a friend that loves doing drywall; I do not feel the same!). But I found the more fun I had in life, the less hold perfectionism had on me. If I go throw a frisbee around with a friend, it doesn't matter if not every throw is perfect. It can be kind of fun to try goofy shots on a basketball court. What if I try playing a board game with a completely different strategy than usual? I might learn something, my friends or family might tease me, I might lose. Oh well. What if I try telling jokes and they fall flat? It wouldn't be the first time! Just having fun and enjoying the moment seems to keep me from focusing on myself, and that's a big part of it.

Come to think of it, being a parent (especially of small kids, because nothing is perfect in a house with small kids--wait, and older kids, because there's no way to keep older kids thinking you're perfect) helps too. And managing people (at work, or coaching a team, or coordinating volunteers), because in the practice of tolerating imperfections in others, I learned to tolerate them in myself, too.

And as I skim this over before posting, I realize that a lot of it is being less focused on myself. Easy to say. Tougher to do. And almost impossible to do when trying it.

As a framework, I've yet to find something better than the Manager Tools "Trinity" which includes coaching [0].

The short version: work with each of your directs to have a coaching goal. Help them define one or more next steps. Then let them get after it, with you holding them accountable for the steps that you defined together. You can do effective coaching in ~5 minutes per week per direct. That's not just what the Manager Tools podcast says; I've done it.

Just have one coaching goal at a time. It should be something that is pretty apparent if they've achieved it. "Get better at $COOL_TECH" is a lousy goal; "learn enough COBOL to be allowed to take $LEGACY_APP pager duty" is a nicely-measurable goal (if lousy for other reasons).

Steps will be small. You'll start by brainstorming resources with your direct. Then it might be tiny steps like "email me to confirm you bought $BOOK from Amazon by end of day today", "send me a note on Slack with the date of your meeting with Bob about $TOPIC; complete scheduling no later than noon Friday", "show me your 'Hello World' program by end of day Tuesday." Small steps early help keep the coaching work in-mind for your directs. Reporting steps to you helps them avoid putting tasks aside for a week, then scrambling to catch back up. That slows the coaching project down and stresses them out.

One of the biggest stress-relievers of the model is that "coaching" isn't the same as "teaching". Coaching resources can be books, courses, other people in the company, etc. It's also not (necessarily) related to the projects your direct is working on. Providing projects where they can stretch and grow is great (keep that up!), but there might be other skills they need to learn. Running meetings, sales, design, interviewing customers, working with other departments... Your company has its own set of skills. And it's okay if they want to learn something unrelated. A while back, I felt like I needed to learn to draw better, and I had a great boss that agreed that was worth learning on the job, even though I am not and never will be a designer-type. YMMV based on your organization, of course.

How many direct reports do you have? Having too many can make things a lot more difficult, not just for coaching.

This was a bit quick, but if you have questions I'd be happy to help!

[0] https://www.manager-tools.com/2009/07/coaching-model-revised

I second the recommendation for Manager Tools. Start with the "Basics" casts on one-on-ones, feedback, coaching, and delegation to get up to speed. Their book The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman is a great place to start, too.

The podcast was super helpful to me in transitioning from IC to management.