Thursday, May 22, 2014

Oops

France has a very good train system and has had for years. The country's 8,700 stations probably exceed the number we have in the U.S. A few years ago they decided to add almost 2,000 more trains to their system at a cost of $20.5 billion. But, there was a slight error in analyzing the platforms the trains would use.

They only considered platforms built less than thirty years ago. However, there are about 1,000 platforms built more than 50 years ago when trains were a little slimmer. Thus, the platform edges are too close to the tracks in about 1,000 stations; hence,the trains cannot get in. Thus far they've spent almost $70,000,000 rectifying the problem.

Thanks to our Suffield correspondent.

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