[HN Gopher] Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts...
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Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"
Author : edward
Score : 125 points
Date : 2024-01-02 10:59 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ianvisits.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ianvisits.co.uk)
| londons_explore wrote:
| Don't clean stuff... Just hide the dirt!
| mgaunard wrote:
| I would guess that the kind of plastic resin that's used for
| the walls reacts with heat and can easily be permanently
| marked.
| SEMW wrote:
| It's glass fibre reinforced concrete (GFRC). Very much doubt
| it's heat-reactive, suspect it's just oil & dirt on a
| somewhat porous surface (so cleaning properly is labour-
| intensive, stickers are cheaper)
| rswail wrote:
| It is very very very unlikely that they would build an
| underground pedestrian station that had walls that reacted to
| heat, unless it was to absorb heat in case of fire.
|
| I'd also think that plastic resins are not the best thing to
| be reacting to heat.
| donalhunt wrote:
| Funnily, the same approach is often used for acoustic / noise
| issues. Add music / other sources of sound to try and mask the
| acoustics issue (unsuccessfully).
| kozhevnikov wrote:
| Isn't it the basis of active noise cancelling? It's pretty
| successful.
| Arnt wrote:
| Yes and no. Active noise cancelling works well at a point
| and against some common kinds of noise, but if you want to
| act on a large area such as a tube station, active noise
| cancelling won't work. Much better to introduce a bit of
| white noise or music, that makes e.g. the clack-clack-clack
| of footsteps on the stairs much less noticeable in the
| wider area.
| Tor3 wrote:
| No, active noise cancelling isn't about masking noise with
| sound, active noise cancelling takes the original noise and
| mixes it back 180 degrees out of phase. The net result is
| zero noise, when done perfectly. In practice it's almost
| like that (for the frequencies covered by the noise
| cancelling equipment - in an airplane it's like the
| background noise just.. turns off. What's left is typically
| people talking. It's easier to hear the flight attendants).
|
| If instead it was by _adding_ sound then it would defy the
| purpose. I use active noise cancelling because if I don 't
| I'll hear a noise in my head for weeks after a long-haul
| flight (I have tinnitus in one ear which makes it even
| worse).
| jm547ster wrote:
| Reminds me of modern API layers bolted on top of crumbling
| legacy systems
| Arnt wrote:
| A common approach. Many of us wear blue and black jeans, few
| white.
|
| The women who wear white tend to choose fabric that doesn't
| stain easily, an approach TfL might have considered earlier.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| No surprise you're taking the least charitable view possible.
|
| Perhaps what they're doing is cleaning and then looking for a
| way to mitigate the need for intensive future cleaning. Seems
| sensible.
| chilmers wrote:
| Unfortunately, the material they chose for the station walls is
| a sort of porous cement that is likely uncleanable.
| Gare wrote:
| Also hostile architecture - benches with no backrests.
| sph wrote:
| The wall is the backrest.
| chilmers wrote:
| Except the wall curves inward, which pushes your head,
| neck and upper back forward. Having sat on them, it's
| rather uncomfortable, and must be worse for people taller
| than me. That said, I'm not convinced it's deliberately
| hostile, I just think it's incompetent design, favouring
| a minimalist style over functionality.
| yardstick wrote:
| The benches are designed to be used for on average 4-5mins,
| maybe 20mins if having to wait for a special train. Their
| purpose is to serve commuters using the trains. Not as an
| alternative to proper social housing (which the UK has lots
| of).
| vidarh wrote:
| Have you looked at patterns on public seating wherever there's
| fabric? Or e.g. hotel carpets and the like? Consider the
| heavily patterned designs often serve a function.
|
| You can regularly clean well enough to address health and
| safety and still end up with plenty of marks that are high
| effort to remove that only really affect appearance, and so
| designs that reduce the visual impact have been used in high
| traffic spaces pretty much "forever" as a means to reduce the
| need for high effort cleaning.
|
| Not really much difference for a wall.
| pavon wrote:
| Or replace the material with one that is easier to clean, which
| is exactly what these vinyl stickers do.
| david90 wrote:
| I prefer they fix the line service instead :D
| maushu wrote:
| Funny that it's so noticeable because of the hostile
| architecture.
| petesergeant wrote:
| What is hostile about the architecture here? The armrests?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| If the (quite useless) armrests weren't there to prevent the
| homeless from sleeping on them, people wouldn't be sitting in
| the exact same spot every time, causing a light smear instead
| of defined person-like shaped on the wall.
| frereubu wrote:
| People would be sitting in the middle of the seats with or
| without the arm rests. I don't think that would make any
| difference.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| While it's an interesting point. I'm not sure I agree that
| these are here purely to stop homeless people from sleeping
| on them.
|
| For a start, I would give anyone on the underground about 3
| minutes, if they attempted to sleep anywhere, before they
| were moved on. It's one of the few places where you
| regularly see staff on the public transport network in
| London.
|
| I think there is a legitimate argument that these arm rests
| are actually providing a useful service by delimiting the
| space for each person. Few people will naturally sit on the
| spot at the end of a bench seat which is already partially
| occupied (and other people will discourage it by sitting
| near the middle). Where as people will take an empty seat
| which is clearly free and separated from the other people
| on the bench.
| yardstick wrote:
| > I think there is a legitimate argument that these arm
| rests are actually providing a useful service by
| delimiting the space for each person. Few people will
| naturally sit on the spot at the end of a bench seat
| which is already partially occupied (and other people
| will discourage it by sitting near the middle). Where as
| people will take an empty seat which is clearly free and
| separated from the other people on the bench.
|
| Yes, exactly this! Especially when the platforms are
| crowded, it makes so much sense to be efficient on the
| allocation of seats.
|
| Now we've still got to deal with some people bag-
| spreading but normally most people take their bags off as
| soon as it gets busy or someone asks.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I assume you mean stations/platforms/etc. -- the trains
| themselves have dozing people in seats all the time.
|
| And yes, I don't recall any opportunity to sleep as I
| shuffled along in the massive crowds for the Waterloo and
| City line.
| some-human wrote:
| People without a home do not have access to the platforms
| that these seats are on. These seats are on the
| underground, past the ticket barriers, and they would
| quickly be removed for trespassing on private property, as
| all TFL stations are staffed.
|
| Typically in London, People without a home would be found
| outside the station, or occasionally in the concourse.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Bro you've clearly never ridden the tube. Homeless people
| are on it all the time begging. They slip in behind other
| people through the barriers at busy or unmanned stations.
| some-human wrote:
| Londoner for 24 years. I don't know what to tell you,
| 'Bro'.
|
| Yes beggars walk down tube trains trying to get money,
| but they don't tend to set up shop on the platform which
| is what we're talking about here. I'm also pretty sure
| most of the people that have asked me for a quid on the
| tube were not homeless people, just chancers and drug
| users.
|
| Besides which, once you were past the barrier, sleeping
| on the tube train itself is likely to be a much more
| viable and comfortable option than the platform.
|
| as for "unmanned stations"? All London Underground
| stations are rostered to be staffed during operating
| hours. Stations located underground have specific
| staffing requirements and minimum staff numbers, which
| vary depending on the size of the station. This is a fire
| regulation requirement arising from the King's Cross fire
| in 1987.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I mean i think the vast majority of them are homeless
| and/or drug users. Lots of homeless people are cos
| they're freezing their nuts off with no hope every day.
| It's honestly impossible to tell which of them are on
| drugs and which aren't. But I find it unlikely that most
| of those people aren't homeless.
|
| And yes I know every station has to be staffed. I mean
| they look for moments of time when no staff are watching
| the barriers at lower staffed stations. I have had people
| slip in the barriers behind me it very obviously happens.
| Homeless people are perfectly able to get in. They don't
| sleep there because everything possible is done to stop
| them.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The stations are indoors and clean. Homeless people could
| sleep on the floor if they wanted to, but that doesn't
| happen.
| midasuni wrote:
| Not unknown to see people sat at the bottom of stairs
| with a "homeless and hungry" signs
| nsteel wrote:
| Some of the small, outer, (above ground) tube stations I
| use have periods where staff leave the gates open and
| leave the public areas. They even do this during busy
| periods. It is easy to get onto the tube network at these
| places.
|
| There's also stations that share common areas with
| overground trains that don't even have gates (West
| Ruislip, for example). And then people also squeeze
| through the pram/wheelchair gates or closely follow
| someone through. It's easy to do because the ticket
| offices are closed and whatever skeleton staffing they
| have is busy elsewhere. These gates (and stations) are
| effectively unmanned in this context.
|
| But I agree. It's actually very rare to see people
| begging on the underground compared to other cities. I
| don't think access is the issue. Maybe the BTP spend all
| their time on it?
| helboi4 wrote:
| Thank you for verifying that what I'm saying is not that
| unreasonable. I'm getting downvoted way too much for
| totally factual claims here.
|
| I do see beggars at least once a week these days I'd say.
| They've increased a lot compared to my first years in
| London when I would safely call it rare. I reckon because
| of cost of living.
| michaelt wrote:
| You're getting downvoted because armrests only act as
| 'hostile architecture' when they stop people lying down
| to sleep, and the beggars on the tube are visibly _not_
| sleeping.
|
| The beggars are constantly moving, and only ask for money
| on trains that are in motion, in order to evade the
| staff. Those that want to stay in one place set up just
| outside the station entrance.
|
| Furthermore, a tube platform is a poor place to sleep,
| not only because the staff will move you on and the
| trains are really noisy, but mostly because _the tube is
| closed at night._
|
| I do agree that some-human was wrong to say _" People
| without a home do not have access to the platforms"_
| though, as you're right that it's possible to access the
| platforms without paying. But some-human was right in the
| broader context of the thread - whether the armrests
| constitute hostile architecture - that we do not see
| rough sleepers sleeping on tube platforms.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Yes, I was responding to the claim that "People without a
| home do not have access to the platforms". That is all.
| That therefore rules out that as the main reason that
| homeless people are not sleeping rough in tube stations.
| I never mentioned anything about the hostile
| architecture. That was someone else, so I do not deserve
| a downvote for it. I was only addressing the claim about
| access, so that we could discuss the real reasons for the
| lack of rough sleeping in the tube, not fantasy ones.
|
| In reality the reason is because the authorities want to
| stop them and they do this through policing the platforms
| obviously but hostile architecture is put in place to
| make sure they don't have to be searching for homeless
| people all the time in the first place. It's a joint
| effort, obviously.
| surfingdino wrote:
| They are quite common on the Elizabeth, District,
| Hammersmith & City, and Central lines east of Liverpool
| Street.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Not the DLR stations though. Those are unmanned.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I don't think I've ever seen a homeless person sleeping in
| a London Underground station in 30 years of commuting, and
| many of them have benches without armrests.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > to prevent the homeless from sleeping on them
|
| Seems very unlikely that's why they're there, given the
| station is covered in CCTV, highly staffed, and the train
| itself would be much more comfortable to sleep on
|
| > (quite useless) armrests
|
| Very useful for apportioning space on the seats for
| multiple people to sit
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And even if they weren't there for hindering homeless
| people, they're _still_ hostile for overweight people - the
| ones, aside geriatrics, that most need the seats.
| renewiltord wrote:
| 100% US view haha! There is no chance that TFL lets people
| sleep here.
| staringback wrote:
| It is such a shame how normalized homeless people and
| transit are in the United States. And they wonder why
| everybody drives their car?
| staringback wrote:
| This isn't the United States, other countries don't
| tolerate vagrants sleeping on public transit.
| IshKebab wrote:
| What hostile architecture? This is on the underground. Nobody
| is going to be sleeping on these seats.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| The hostile architecture in this instance is the choice to
| use benches instead of seats with back support.
| yreg wrote:
| To what hostile purpose? Just out of spite?
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's not hostile, it's just practical. Seats with backs
| would take up way too much space. And you don't need it
| anyway because the maximum time you'll be sitting on these
| is like 5 minutes.
| lhnz wrote:
| Interesting that some of the stickers contain significant white
| elements. Is the material used less likely to mark?
|
| Actually, I'm not sure that these are stickers. Maybe it's paint.
| If it's a sticker it'd be very difficult to apply this
| perfectly...
| Havoc wrote:
| I noticed some other weird design choices in the new tube
| stations as well. Eg air vents that are very fine and visibly
| clog up.
|
| It's like they designed it to look shiny for day one but ignored
| decades of practical experience
| lhnz wrote:
| It's very difficult to make thousands of up-front planning
| decisions perfectly. It'd be even more costly to try to perfect
| every aspect upfront within the planning stage and it'd be more
| reasonable to make best attempts but to provide for the ability
| (and budget) to retrofit bespoke alterations to fix problems
| that arise at a later date.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| But surely it should be simple enough to look at what
| alterations have been made on other lines already and start
| off from a basis that is at least as good.
| vidarh wrote:
| Or they decided it was an opportunity to test potential
| improvements. Testing them on a new line where fixing any
| "improvements" that don't pan out will be perceived as an
| improvement might well be better than testing them on an
| old line where any regressions will be immediately
| perceived as such...
| martyvis wrote:
| With a constant rotation of contractors and the government
| staff overseeing them, offering innovative solutions at a
| better price than the next bidder, opportunities to learn
| from experience are difficult to achieve with large multi
| year projects
| lhnz wrote:
| The design and planning process for UK infrastructure is
| already notoriously expensive and we already do
| significantly more "planning" than we used to do 100 years
| ago (when we were actually capable of rapidly building high
| quality infrastructure).
|
| I would expect there to already be consultants doing
| similar to what you've suggested however the work is
| complex and many will be quite cut-off from the build
| process or only around in the short-term.
| bluGill wrote:
| while 100 years ago we built rapidly, there was a large
| cost in human lives. Planning is part of how we solved
| that - only part of it, but it is a factor.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Sounds like many of these issues could be described with
| better knowledge sharing and more tightly coupled
| processes between planning/building/maintenence.
|
| It sounds quite fatalistic what you've said, that we've
| basically reached maximum planning saturation so we can
| only pay the costs afterwards when things go wrong.
|
| But surely questioning these assumptions is good for our
| civic involvement and for the lines.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > difficult to make thousands of up-front planning decisions
| perfectly.
|
| So don't. Just use something well tried and tested and don't
| try to be innovative (in areas we you can't dedicated
| significant amounts of resources for up-front planning)
| concordDance wrote:
| This seems a bit defeatist. Some hope for and striving for
| improvement is good for a society.
| captaincrisp wrote:
| I feel the point is a bit subtler. We should strive for
| improvement. We should also understand that that takes
| more than the normal amount of resources to do something
| different and better & either commit to spending what's
| required or, if we can't afford to, use something already
| proven instead.
|
| The half-done or broken improvements still get called
| "innovations" and give innovation overall a worse
| reputation.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I feel the point is a bit subtler. We should strive for
| improvement. We should also understand that that takes
| more than the normal amount of resources to do something
| different and better & either commit to spending what's
| required or, if we can't afford to, use something already
| proven instead.
|
| Indeed. I wish this point were articulated that way more
| often.
|
| > The half-done or broken improvements still get called
| "innovations" and give innovation overall a worse
| reputation.
|
| We fetishise innovation as an abstract concept, for good
| reasons because you cannot have progress without
| innovation. What we tend to miss is that while innovation
| is good, some specific innovations are terrible. This is
| particularly infuriating when they are re-surfacing old,
| solved problems. Looking at wall tiling for example (or
| the cladding that can be found in much of the
| Underground): this was a good solution to a common
| problem. Bare concrete walls have obvious downsides,
| which is why we don't tend to use them in building
| anymore. Doing away with tiling or cladding sounds like
| an architect being innovative, but if the replacement
| does not solve the problem, it's a regression. It will
| look modern and clean as long as it will be properly
| maintained, which is to say for about a year, and then it
| will decay the way concrete does. It will eventually be
| clad, or reviled as a post-modern monstrosity the way
| some bad brutalist buildings are today.
|
| Innovation for innovation's sake is cargo culting
| progress. This is giving innovation a bad name.
| bluGill wrote:
| What innovation is left? Concrete has been around for
| centuries in modern forms - we can tweak the formula a
| lot, but still the same basic idea as when it was
| invented 100 years ago. Most of what passes for
| innovation has been tried before. Other things were not
| tried because anyone who understood the problem knows
| they are cannot be cost effective. Unfortunately the
| people who fund this cannot be experts in the field, and
| thus can easily be persuaded to fund things by scammers
| that anyone who really was an expert could tell you in a
| few hours of study are a bad idea.
|
| The problem isn't that the politicians are not experts in
| construction - there is far too many things politicians
| fund for them to become experts in even a fraction of
| them all (they also have to fund medical studies,
| military spending...). The problems is politicians don't
| respect trained experts, thus don't keep people around to
| become deep experts, and in turn there is nobody around
| with deep technical knowledge to say what is a good idea.
| Or if there are such people around they are not in a
| position where they can be listened too, instead any
| scammer is allowed to present their pitch for
| "innovations".
| bluGill wrote:
| There is improve and there is trying something new. Rails
| have been around for nearly two centuries - they are a
| solve problem. We don't need to innovate on many parts as
| there is nothing wrong with the old technology with some
| minor updated. We already know what works well for a
| standard train system. Innovation generally tries things
| that look good to politicians who don't understand
| trains, but in reality people who understood trains 100
| years ago had the idea and rejected it as a bad idea -
| and the reasons they are bad ideas didn't change!
|
| there is a lot of room to improve trains. However it all
| starts with standard gauge steel track, with standard
| sizes tunnels, standard switches, standard control
| algorithms (with computers this had recently had a
| revolution, while there is room to improve this is again
| in the mostly solve area), standard "rolling stock" and
| so on. Let me bring out here two standards that are a bit
| new: platform doors - now that someone invested them and
| proved they work everyone should retrofit to them; and
| elevators - it is criminal that many stations around the
| world still haven't been retrofitted (criminal as in I
| think someone should be in prison anywhere you find they
| have not been retrofitted) Once you have all the standard
| stuff laid out you can make a few tweaks to see what
| works, but only a few as we know the standard stuff
| works.
|
| Make sure when you look at standards above you look at
| what others have done. If you have an idea odds are
| someone else has already tried it: find them and figure
| out how it works - sometimes you can tweak to be better
| sometimes you realize it is a bad idea.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Rails in particular have improved quite a bit. Modern
| newest generation slab designs requiring very, very
| little maintenance and are fast to install.
|
| > Innovation generally tries things that look good to
| politicians who don't understand trains, but in reality
| people who understood trains 100 years ago had the idea
| and rejected it as a bad idea - and the reasons they are
| bad ideas didn't change!
|
| I'm all for respecting old ideas but this idea that
| modern engineers are idiots and can't think of anything
| people 100 years didn't think of is also wrong.
|
| > Make sure when you look at standards above you look at
| what others have done. If you have an idea odds are
| someone else has already tried it: find them and figure
| out how it works - sometimes you can tweak to be better
| sometimes you realize it is a bad idea.
|
| I don't disagree.
|
| In the context of Crossrail, this seems to be what they
| have done for the most part. So I don't understand the
| criticism.
| bluGill wrote:
| > is idea that modern engineers are idiots and can't
| think of anything people 100 years
|
| That is not what I was trying to say. I'm saying that
| politicians and managers are unable to think of things
| that people 100 years didn't think of. While that isn't
| 100% true, it is very close.
|
| Though most of the time engineers today couldn't think of
| anything they didn't think of 100 years ago. However
| sometimes advances in other science means ideas that
| wouldn't work back then could work today. This is almost
| entirely incremental improvements though.
|
| Crossrail didn't follow the same practices as building
| 100 years ago. And the results are terrible. (of course
| some of this is good - better safety standards - but the
| whole is a system that costs far more than expected for
| lower quality than possible elsewhere using modern
| standards)
| Someone wrote:
| So, are you arguing waterfall is the better process for
| innovative designs, and agile should be used only for small
| renovations?
|
| I think I agree with that a bit. For hardware, Apple might
| be an example showing that dedicating significant amounts
| of research to your designs is more likely to lead to good
| hardware designs.
|
| I don't see that happen soon in the software industry,
| though. We're still constantly replacing libraries and
| frameworks with stuff that promises to, eventually, be
| perfect because the current approach isn't perfect.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Or you know, be innovative learn what works and what
| doesn't. With each project improving the state of the art
| forward.
|
| The real cost of these project is the big tunneling, the
| trains and so on.
|
| Going for something innovative makes sense, because it can
| be easily changed later if it really fails (and that has
| yet to proven).
| palemoonale wrote:
| > It's like they designed it to look shiny for day one but
| ignored decades of practical experience
|
| Modern software development, and especially UI design, in a
| nutshell.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I have seen stations refurbished less than 10 years where the
| new benches had to be replaced because they were already
| falling apart after that time outdoors...
|
| On my commute they are fitting new cladding to hide a brick
| wall on an outdoor, not covered, platform. All the studwork is
| standard timber screwed into the wall. Any water ingress and
| this will rot quickly. Oh well.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Might be pressure treated timber - looks largely the same as
| untreated wood from a distance and can last a long time in
| damp conditions. Many sheds and timber fences are pressure
| treated and last well - sure they wont last a _lifetime_ or
| whatever, but will probably not rot "quickly"
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| There are also some heat treated modified timbers now which
| don't look like pressure treated sheds or fences but which
| are supposed to last well.
| bluGill wrote:
| All buildings - including stations should have maintenance
| schedules. There are things to do hourly (or when open),
| every 2 hours, 4 hours, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.
| In addition you have 5, 10, and 30 year remodel cycles.
|
| Of course you always have someone do urgent maintenance - if
| a pipe breaks you fix it now. However replacing that pipe
| might leave a poorly patched wall until the next 10 year
| cycle when the fix is made invisible.
|
| You have to empty trash, clean the floors, and other similar
| things several times per day.
|
| Every year you replace filters and do a deep cleaning. (check
| the documentation for equipment - sometimes this might be a 1
| month cycle not 1 year!) You also do a full inspection of
| everything, touch up paint, and patch anything else. This
| should be very routine, and thus always cost the same
| (inflation adjusted).
|
| Every 5 years you repaint. You also replace carpet where
| overly stained. That is touch up the cosmetics in a more in
| depth way. However this is a small cost.
|
| Every 10 years you have to do significant work in the
| bathrooms (While toilets can last for centuries they start to
| look bad when you try in a commercial setting). If there is a
| kitchen it also needs significant work. Avoid moving major
| things, but this is a higher cost. You should probably be
| replacing benches on this schedule.
|
| Every 30 years you do a major remodel. Here is where you
| update everything at sometimes high cost. Add elevators if
| you don't have them. Expand the station footprint if it is
| too small (you need more stains). Move where the doors are.
| Change the station approaches. Add more bathrooms. This will
| be expensive.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Might be better to clean the vents often than have something
| inside break due to debris.
|
| Of course, it requires to actually clean the vents...
| deutschepost wrote:
| I heard that these small holes are supposed to be Helmholtz
| Resonators. If tuned to the right frequency, they can help with
| noise reduction.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2023/12/24/absorbing-traffic-noise-with...
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| With holes like that, birds, bees and rats will nest in those
| bricks.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I bet birds make excellent noise-absorbers.
| ametrau wrote:
| Rats also
| adolph wrote:
| Probably clean up discarded biological matter pretty
| well. Rats have decent cognitive capabilities. I wonder
| if trained cleaning rats would displace the naughty
| variety.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/swedi
| sh-...
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| Wild rats aren't naughty. They're just animals trying to
| make their way in the world the same as the rest of us.
| But they do make a mess and carry diseases, again maybe
| the same as the rest of us lol.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| I've seen similar things where I work. In a new building, the
| architects called for small air vents that would look nice
| according to some aesthetic criterion. Unfortunately, the vents
| were so small that, to maintain air flow, the fans inside them
| had to spin so fast they screamed. This made for a very
| unpleasant environment.
|
| This was where high-profile events tended to take place, to
| show off the bright new shiny things. But you couldn't hear
| yourself think there. The solution? They turned off the fans a
| short time before important visitors arrived.
|
| I learned of this when I was chatting with a worker who deals
| with such things. Apparently, the people who were installing
| these vents knew that they would be a problem. But who were
| they going to complain to? The architects don't work here, and
| the local managers don't listen to their underlings.
|
| There are lots of stories like this in many work environments.
| I think the common thread is that high mucky-mucks are not
| interested in talking with the people who are doing the labour.
| lhnz wrote:
| This is a negative outcome of the Town and Country Planning
| Act. We've mandated by law that all planning is done upfront
| and due to the possibility of construction fraud provide
| detailed designs to building contractors that disallow them
| from substituting any materials or design choices without it
| being explicitly requested by the employer. In theory, there
| can be conversation between individual subcontractors and the
| project managers or architects, but in practice these are not
| always on site at the same time and there are significant
| costs involved in changes as well as issues with trust.
| Therefore, we effectively have a very expensive waterfall
| process that everybody is legally obligated to follow.
| michaelt wrote:
| If it's your project, you can order the builders to
| reconfigure the ventilation ducts pretty much however you
| like.
|
| Building control require that an architect sign off on
| things like the size of the beam holding the roof up. If
| you change that, the architect will have to sign off on the
| building as constructed before building control will
| approve it.
|
| Planning permission is given on the basis of external
| appearance, so you can't change too much in that area - but
| go look at some planning applications, they're very light
| on details.
|
| But other than that? If it's your project and you tell the
| electrician putting in a socket to put it somewhere else,
| he'll tell you if it's legal under the wiring regulations,
| and if it is, he'll move it.
|
| The main reason that in _large_ projects builders are
| required to build exactly to the plan is to stop them
| substituting cheaper materials. They 're under great
| pressure to do that, because if you allow your builders to
| replace expensive zinc cladding with cheap ACM cladding,
| and you ask several builders to tender and choose the
| cheapest builder, you'll _always_ choose the builder who
| quoted on the basis of the cheap ACM cladding.
| bluGill wrote:
| In a small house you can move outlets. In a large
| building the space for every wire and pipe is accounted
| for. Moving the outlet means that the wires to it have to
| move and in turn that means a plumber later can't come in
| and put the pipe where it must go. In a house they solve
| this by having the plumber come in before the electrician
| (the order is much more complex), but in a large building
| you need them working at the same time or you will never
| get done. Even in a house you still need to plan the
| plumbing as often a pipe and a beam need to go through
| the same place - either the beam moves or the toilet
| moves.
| michaelt wrote:
| Sometimes - but some large buildings have loads of space
| above suspended ceilings and in cable trays and suchlike.
| Office buildings know every new tenant might want to move
| internal walls, rearrange sockets, reconfigure the
| kitchen and so on, and they're built with that in mind.
|
| You're right that making arbitrary ad-hoc changes during
| construction can be _expensive_ , of course. Especially
| if it's wrong and has to be torn out and redone.
|
| But it's not _illegal_ - if you 're in charge of a
| project and an installer tells you the specified vents
| are going to be a problem and they recommend a bigger
| one, nothing in law prevents you from telling them to go
| ahead and make the change, right there on the spot.
|
| Of course, how often the person with in charge of a large
| project will be talking to the vent installers while
| they're working is a different matter...
| ajb wrote:
| Building is not a waterfall process because of the Planning
| act. It's waterfall because of the cost structure of
| building. Every time you iterate physically, you are
| throwing a lot of money away in time and materials. So any
| iteration is pushed back to the paper part of the exercise,
| in which case it might just as well happen before planning
| approval.
|
| Also, it's possible to request a variation, especially if
| something wasn't going to work. There is a category called
| 'non-material variation' which the planning officers are
| lenient with.
|
| If you got rid of planning (and building control) I
| guarantee that the quality of buildings would go down.
| Before building control, many unhealthy buildings were
| built due to bad drainage, etc.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It's waterfall because of the cost structure of
| building. Every time you iterate physically, you are
| throwing a lot of money away in time and materials.
|
| Also it's because of the financial structure. People
| invest a lot of money in something with a delayed,
| sometimes for years. Delay increases everyone's risk,
| increases interest expense, and defers revenue.
| bluGill wrote:
| Building is - or should be - iterative. However each
| building is a separate iteration. Once you are done you
| stop and look at what works and what doesn't, then adjust
| the next one. The more you make your building
| different/unique from what everyone else around you is
| doing the more expensive it will be as nobody knows what
| changes really work - and even if they are for the better
| the lack of experience means you are paying extra for the
| laborers to figure out how to do things.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Same issue as UX and features in enterprise software. When a
| product is sold to people who don't have to use it then
| optics are more important than practicality
| surfingdino wrote:
| This reminds me of the weird AC behaviour at one of the
| London office buildings I used to work in. The AC or heating
| would turn on or off seemingly at random and when enough
| people complained about it (i.e. our CEO got sick one more
| time) it was revealed that the building is managed remotely
| by a company from Iowa and the thermostat that controlled our
| building was installed in their office and not in London. I
| was glad my contract ended and was not interested in
| renewing.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Very many older (and not even that old) tube stations have
| glossy tiled walls[1], presumably because they're easy to clean
| with just a cloth.
|
| Choosing bare concrete looks cool, and you don't need to pay a
| tiler to install them, but anyone who has ever done any amount
| of cleaning ever will tell you a smooth, porous surface like
| that will look grungy soon enough and be basically impossible
| to clean by hand.
|
| [1]: not only the London Underground: glossy wider-than-long
| tiles aren't generally called "metro tiles" for nothing
| bane wrote:
| Just to note, most of the underground stations on the
| Washington D.C. metro system are bare concrete. The way the
| stations are constructed, using a low barrier wall,
| discourages people from touching the main station walls. The
| low light kind of also helps hide some of the grime. But
| overall they're relatively clean.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro
| surfingdino wrote:
| If it was bare concrete, you could put tiles over it, but
| these are removable panels made of "glass fibre reinforced
| concrete" according to their proud manufacturer
| https://www.brydenwood.com/projects/elizabeth-line-
| cladding-...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This is the obvious outcome when society rewards the manager
| who boosts the stock price this quarter (at a future cost) more
| than the manager that makes sure the company will survive for a
| hundred years.
| switch007 wrote:
| It's so British to bodge the bodge: the stickers don't hide all
| the dirt...
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| Did they think people wouldn't sit on these seats? LOL
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| A 21st century antimacassar!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimacassar
| adfm wrote:
| You'd think they'd consider using a clear oleophobic
| overlaminate instead of flashy graphics that attract attention
| to the issue. Good design is more than visual.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > One would be to replace all the seats with new designs with
| backs to lean on, but that would be expensive
|
| Hmm indeed, how could a rail line that makes a mere PS1 billion
| in yearly revenue afford such an egregious expense.
| armaanbanerjee wrote:
| Whilst the Elizabeth line makes a lot of money, TFL doesn't and
| currently is missing around half its funding needed for
| maintenance, trying to justify new benches on a line that's
| only 2 years old would be hard to justify when other parts of
| the network need funding much more that the core stations on
| the Elizabeth line
| rswail wrote:
| It's arguable that it shouldn't make a lot of money, but it
| _should_ be properly funded.
|
| What funds TfL is basically fares and city and central
| government taxes. Ideally the taxes fund the improvements and
| fares fund the operations.
|
| But fares are down since COVID, while the service kept
| operating.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| It seems they are trying to make the stickers as small as
| possible. Why not make the sticker bigger and curved at the
| sides? A feature could be made of it. Any graphic designer will
| tell you the value of padding.
| dghughes wrote:
| Option C to hose down the peasants as they entered the tube
| station so they didn't scuff the walls was not used.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| People would pay good money for that stream
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Other people would pay good money to watch. Hey, this is
| sounding like a sustainable business model with real
| potential!
| gchamonlive wrote:
| We should somehow cram AI in it and lure sweet VC money.
|
| Maybe a counter overlay on the stream keeping track of how
| many people got hosed that day, which would increment using
| computer vision, GPT and a very expensive production
| pipeline.
| JackFr wrote:
| I was going to suggest that they hand out soap and laundry
| detergent to riders.
| bsza wrote:
| I'm pretty sure a lot of the discoloration comes from
| pigments/microplastics from the clothes rubbing against the
| wall. Look how dark the shoulders of these "ghosts" are. If it
| were just grease, you'd expect the head part to be darkest.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| Hands. The general public's hands... clothes mark far less
| troymc wrote:
| Another solution would be to hire some folks with proton packs to
| lasso the ghosts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_pack
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| I used to work in a building that was once a factory, the room I
| was in was once a break room. For years workers would come in for
| their lunch and lean back against the walls. Years of (probably
| Brylcreme'd) heads being placed against the walls led to a
| situation where no amount of painting would cover it up. All
| these little brownish-grey spots appearing on the walls a few
| hours after each painting.
|
| Then one day the room was properly refurbished and management
| paid the decorators to put in a special barrier layer and the
| grease spots finally dissipated.
| taylorius wrote:
| I think I'd prefer the "ghosts" to those hideous eye-disrupting
| wall decals.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Used to have grease spots on the living room wall adjacent to my
| dad's computer, where 6yr old me and my 4yr old brother were
| leaning against the wall while watching dad play Duke Nukem and
| Quake. (mom didn't allow us to play these games)
| ametrau wrote:
| Have any other games ever captured that feeling for you as
| those two releases? Not for me.
| jxf wrote:
| It's funny that a significant fraction of human effort goes to
| counteracting that humans (as a whole) are pretty gross --
| constantly shedding a fine, moist mist of dead skin cells and
| waste products wherever we go.
| alecco wrote:
| Why is this Hacker News?
| surfingdino wrote:
| These are Eduardo Paolozzi's ghosts taking their revenge for the
| destruction of the beautiful mosaic at old Tottenham Court Road
| Station, obviously.
|
| Seriously, though the Lizzie Line is an example of really grand
| design but poorly executed. Here are some of my observations:
|
| a. The quality of material is poor and hinders easy maintenance.
|
| b. The high-res information displays show train arrivals in
| incorrect order, e.g.
|
| 1. Abbey Wood 4 min
|
| 2. Shenfield 2 min
|
| c. All advertising spaces are now LED displays, some with
| additional LED-lit frames which use a lot more energy than the
| old printed posters, which used none. There are hundreds of these
| things at each station. They heat up the air inside the stations
| making them unbearably hot in the summer. The solution is more AC
| and ventilation using even more energy. I stopped caring about
| saving the planet when I saw what the TfL did.
|
| d. The western section of the line beyond Paddington basically
| doesn't work in any reliable fashion and should just be repainted
| green and given to the GWR where it would fit with the rest of
| the often cancelled services.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| The heat generated by the LED ads is tiny compared to the heat
| generated by the actual trains and I think they handled that
| one very well.
| frantathefranta wrote:
| Presumably the LED ads are also cheaper than employing people
| to change the posters.
| notatoad wrote:
| i doubt it's less actual cost, but they definitely make
| more money overall by being able to rotate the ads more
| frequently.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Generally agreed.
|
| In DC we had a similar change over. My complaint is just that
| it is incredibly tacky. It's much brighter than ambient
| lighting is.
|
| Our metro system is facing a huge budget crunch (the Feds
| stopping COVID money, and the 2.5 states involved have been
| very unhelpful at providing funding). I get that advertising
| is an appealing revenue stream. I just wish we could do it in
| a way that wasn't so rambunctiously over the top; I wish we
| could preserve some level of taste.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Transport for London's [1] revenue should be PS9100 million
| this year. Revenue from advertising was PS130 million last
| year, so around 1.5%.
|
| It would be nicer if they would just end the advertising.
|
| [1] London Underground (metro), several within-London urban
| and suburban rail lines, buses, trams, river ferries, major
| roads
|
| https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-
| releases/2023/march/...
|
| https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-advertising-annual-report-
| aug...
| google234123 wrote:
| Just increase tax a bit more to make up for it :)
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Metro is a balm compared to the PenFed illuminated tunnel
| at Washington Dulles airport.
|
| For non locals, this is in a long walkway between access
| train and terminal, is lit in bright blue moving images,
| and plays a silly song about interest rates at high volume
| for the entirety of your time in the tunnel. It has
| cemented my desire to never do business with PenFed, for
| sure.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| My favorite thing about the DC metro are the micro-
| targeted ads. Obviously, there's all the defense
| contractor junk at Pentagon City, but I also remember one
| at Foggy Bottom that was like "so-and-so is on the
| payroll of ISIS and the State Department should BAN
| them."
| drexlspivey wrote:
| How much energy is "wasted" to print all those paper posters,
| ship them to all stations, have people periodically replace
| them, discard the old ones etc?
| throwup238 wrote:
| Probably a lot less than it costs to build, ship, and
| _actively power_ the displays.
|
| It's easy to estimate: if the displays + lifetime power costs
| more than all the posters, then chances are they use a lot
| more power. The cost of electricity isn't one of those
| externalities a business can hoist on society - it has to pay
| for each kilowatt-hour and that cost is easily quantifiable.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Eh, poor material and execution is the subscription model of
| construction..
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Imagine that, in the past, the tube was steam engine powered.
|
| If there are peoples who can handle heat deep there, they're
| the English.
|
| But, yeah, it's stupidity.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Cruel cruel world, how has such evil been allowed to flourish,
| information in the wrong order, how will London recover.
|
| > I stopped caring about saving the planet when I saw what the
| TfL did.
|
| Ok, dude, you are high on your own drama.
| sgu999 wrote:
| I guess paying a local to put tiles as we were doing a century
| ago is deemed too simple and expensive at the same time? Better
| to use some polymer derived from Saudi Aramco's oil, printed on a
| machine made in China, somewhere in east Europe at the very best.
|
| At least a couple British managers got paid a fair amount to
| discuss the proposed designs in a meeting room with their
| contractors.
| geocrasher wrote:
| These vinyl stickers are an elegant hack. Vinyl is cheap and
| easily replaceable, in fact it might just be easier to put
| another sticker over them in the future.
| alricb wrote:
| The same problem exists on the granite walls of Laurier Station
| in the Montreal Metro:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurier_station_%28Montreal_Me...
| (picture)
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