On Sun, 19 Nov 2006, Dave Plumb wrote:

I know short units double the fleet maintenence intervals but it
shouldn't be at passenger detriment. Footy demand is easily planned
and addressed but better would be make them all 8's off peak and
weekends.

At off-peak times, shorter trains make women and others safer from crime.

Then the rail company need to put security guards on the trains, it's not
an answer to run short (packed) trains to make people feel safer.

Hang on, wires have become crossed here - John was making a safety
objection to running long trains when they *aren't* packed, ie off-peak
times when there's no football. When they are packed, long trains are just
as safe from that point of view, since (i assume) the safety comes from
having a sufficiently high density of bystanders to deter have-a-go
villains. Indeed, when you've got football crush loads, longer trains
would *increase* safety, due to less, er, crushing!

Still, i agree that trains should be safe spaces for passengers,
regardless of how busy they are. Bringing back guards to DOO trains, and
giving them better training and support, would help in this. CCTV in all
cars would be good too (do we already have this?). Another possibility
might be to designate a protected carriage, perhaps the front one, which
would be continuously monitored over CCTV by the driver (er, perfectly
safe, i'm sure), so that if anything untoward happened, help could be
summoned.

tom

--
If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence
of heightened sensibility -- Peter Medawar