Hi Dear Folk,
I think yesterday was my worst commuting day to Philly in the year I have been traveling to work by train. I already told you of my commute in, so commute home, running on a Saturday schedule my train leaves at 5:31PM I get down there on time, first thing I see is thirty minutes late and it just kept getting worse, until an hour had gone past. Now all this time you are sitting in an underground platform totally open to the elements, there is no heated waiting room, it is 10F out.
It just reminded me of the scene in the sixties version of Dr Zhivago, where the Pasternak's are sitting on the Moscow train platform in the middle of winter waiting for a train to come to take them to the Urals, and they can't leave the platform because they don't know when the train will come and they will loose their spot, that's how I felt. With my crochet shawl wrapped tightly around my shoulders and head. Trying to keep warm was a major problem.
Train gets to University City and it cannot come any further another frozen switch, so from somewhere probably the yard, a totally empty train pulls into the station that says Trenton on it, opens the doors and across the speakers they say "don't get in," I don't know why we would have as all on the platform were waiting for the Manayunk/NST train, then they announce this is now the NST Train, we all get on the train, and proceed to sit there for another twenty minutes in the station with the doors open, because now there is not going to be a 6:31PM train and maybe not anymore for a long while, so they are trying to get everybody on the train. On to Jefferson Station in Philly and we wait there another ten minutes with the doors open. After that it was a regular ride home the usual hour. I did not get home gone 8:00PM having been out of the house for over twelve hours and five of those were traveling and out in the cold. Needless to say I was frozen and had a bad headache.
The transportation system in the USA is so archaic and fractured as is most of everything. SEPTA runs some of it's own branch lines, but other lines they run on belong to AMTRAK so rent those. In some places SEPTA lines run on the outside and AMTRAK runs two lines in the center, so very often SEPTA has to wait for AMTRAK as they own the lines and also have to cross over AMTRAK and therefore switches, but train switches are normal. It boggles my mind that they get frozen, what do they do in Norway and Sweden? Nobody wants to spend any money in infrastructure, that's the problem.
Wa! Wa! Wa! I know just had to get that off my chest.
Beautiful sunny day today, and the whole day ahead. Hope your weekend is good.
Talking about fractured and fragmented, I was listening to a program about apprenticeships in Germany, where a young person can learn a trade. They are apprenticed for a period of three years and at the end they come out a master worker in their trade. A company sponsors this at about a cost of $10,000 and they earn a lower wage while being taught, by the second year they are doing about sixty percent of the work they would be doing when totally qualified. It seems Trump wants to implement that here, but as was bought out our school system is so fractured, for one thing from state to state. But it gets worse than that because the money to pay for schools is collected from your local borough taxes, not even county taxes. You can see how there can be a wide difference in quality of schooling according to wealth of area. Progression is Borough, County, State, Federal.
We do have trade schools but not closely associated enough with companies, also thought is not clever enough to go to college, so stigmatized, which is ridiculous and therefore a deficit of skilled people in the trades.
Christine
I think yesterday was my worst commuting day to Philly in the year I have been traveling to work by train. I already told you of my commute in, so commute home, running on a Saturday schedule my train leaves at 5:31PM I get down there on time, first thing I see is thirty minutes late and it just kept getting worse, until an hour had gone past. Now all this time you are sitting in an underground platform totally open to the elements, there is no heated waiting room, it is 10F out.
It just reminded me of the scene in the sixties version of Dr Zhivago, where the Pasternak's are sitting on the Moscow train platform in the middle of winter waiting for a train to come to take them to the Urals, and they can't leave the platform because they don't know when the train will come and they will loose their spot, that's how I felt. With my crochet shawl wrapped tightly around my shoulders and head. Trying to keep warm was a major problem.
Train gets to University City and it cannot come any further another frozen switch, so from somewhere probably the yard, a totally empty train pulls into the station that says Trenton on it, opens the doors and across the speakers they say "don't get in," I don't know why we would have as all on the platform were waiting for the Manayunk/NST train, then they announce this is now the NST Train, we all get on the train, and proceed to sit there for another twenty minutes in the station with the doors open, because now there is not going to be a 6:31PM train and maybe not anymore for a long while, so they are trying to get everybody on the train. On to Jefferson Station in Philly and we wait there another ten minutes with the doors open. After that it was a regular ride home the usual hour. I did not get home gone 8:00PM having been out of the house for over twelve hours and five of those were traveling and out in the cold. Needless to say I was frozen and had a bad headache.
The transportation system in the USA is so archaic and fractured as is most of everything. SEPTA runs some of it's own branch lines, but other lines they run on belong to AMTRAK so rent those. In some places SEPTA lines run on the outside and AMTRAK runs two lines in the center, so very often SEPTA has to wait for AMTRAK as they own the lines and also have to cross over AMTRAK and therefore switches, but train switches are normal. It boggles my mind that they get frozen, what do they do in Norway and Sweden? Nobody wants to spend any money in infrastructure, that's the problem.
Wa! Wa! Wa! I know just had to get that off my chest.
Beautiful sunny day today, and the whole day ahead. Hope your weekend is good.
Talking about fractured and fragmented, I was listening to a program about apprenticeships in Germany, where a young person can learn a trade. They are apprenticed for a period of three years and at the end they come out a master worker in their trade. A company sponsors this at about a cost of $10,000 and they earn a lower wage while being taught, by the second year they are doing about sixty percent of the work they would be doing when totally qualified. It seems Trump wants to implement that here, but as was bought out our school system is so fractured, for one thing from state to state. But it gets worse than that because the money to pay for schools is collected from your local borough taxes, not even county taxes. You can see how there can be a wide difference in quality of schooling according to wealth of area. Progression is Borough, County, State, Federal.
We do have trade schools but not closely associated enough with companies, also thought is not clever enough to go to college, so stigmatized, which is ridiculous and therefore a deficit of skilled people in the trades.
Christine
You must have been so pleased to get home! There are certain lines that have a bad reputation here but I don't think ours is so bad although there are a lot of complaints about the trains especially as they are so expensive. The excuse is usually leaves on the line. There are apprenticeships through the colleges here but you have to have somebody to sponsor you ie give you work experience so that is a problem sometimes. Not like the old apprenticeships.
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember my cousin Jeff was an apprentice at the GPO and from there it just grew. Communications, computers, designing software.
DeleteI do not envy you that trip, I am cold just thinking about it.
ReplyDelete