Passenger Trains > OPED rail infrastructure investment

http://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/editorials/2017/03/17/editorial-investing-rail-non-negotiable/99315628/

Posted from Android

Good editorial piece.

The Bergen Record has been notably silent about the years long delays on repairing the GWB bus terminal. Which affects a lot of Bergen commuters.

Posted from Android

Good editorial.  It looks like the administration's much applauded infrastructure program is down to the wall and the Pentagon.  It is curious to me that administration spokespeople like to talk about how programs will need to learn how to be more effective if they get less federal money put this does not seem to apply to the military.  Anyone remember those $500 wrenches and $900 toilet seats from years back?  I wonder what they are going for today.

It is interesting how maligned the procurement process is for defense department platforms.  It is easy to sit back and armchair quarterback the cost aspect.  At one point in my life, I was just as stupefied as many others are regarding not how much things cost for the DOD, but more to the point, why.  In a previous life, I was employed in the quality assurance field for what many would consider to be a 'nothing' entity......a threaded fastener....a bolt.....a nut.....a rivet.....a screw.....etc.  Before I understood just how critical this simple widget actually was, I couldn't fathom why the local prime contractors just didn't run down to the local big box store and grab a bunch of bolts, nuts, screws, etc.  Who in their right mind would pay such insane costs for such a boring, simple, every-day-run of the mill item?  It was only after I began to understand that exotic materials used to fabricate specialized parts that would ultimately be used to secure and hold together complex assemblies in submarines, aircraft carriers, safety-critical aerospace components, etc, that I slowly adopted the very real, and scary realization that the wrong part in the wrong area at the wrong time could (and would) initiate a cascade failure event that would needlessly destroy equipment and worse, harm and / or kill those service personnel who signed of their own free will to protect the home front.  Those simple nuts and bolts are subject to exacting specifications that require specialized tests, inspections, and controlled fabrication practices.  All of that drives cost.  One might laugh at the concept of a $600 toilet, but when all is said and done, those challenging and exacting specifications for nuts and bolts can be equally applied to a toilet.  Shock testing occurs for all assemblies for surface and sub-surface Navy craft.  You don't want sub-standard materials to be compromised under duress, and as we learned from the loss of the Thresher 50 years ago........loss of life should never be attributed as 'ok' because someone chose the generic item vice the real McCoy.  (Climbing down from my soapbox now.)
 

Excellent comment, SANSR

Ray

Was Thresher an equipment failure or a training / operational failure?  I've heard persuasive arguments on each.

Not trying to be argumentative, but the change of several operational procedures following the tragedy suggests "equipment failure" wasn't the primary cause. 

Concur.  The initial investigations as reported to Congress in the mid 1960s focused on silver brazed joints and ineffective non-destructive testing.  Radiography was in its infancy at the time and speculation today is that that NDT technique, had it been functionally operational and in place would have had been much more likely to have disclosed indications that, upon further analysis would / could have ultimately been classified as out of tolerance to established acceptance criteria.  At the very least, if this scenario had occured, many of those brazed joints would have been rejected and reworked.