The Cascade Effect
This incident happened after I moved to our own house in Pallavaram (old house was at Korattur). To go to college, I started from home at 9 in the morning, fully prepared to embrace the consequences of taking the public transport at the peak of the rush hour. Anyways, since the train station was near my home, I took the train to guindy where I would get down to take a bus to collg.
Picture of Suburban Train in Chennai
At the morning rush hour, the govt. tried some innovative stuff. Since the long distance train traffic was quite less in the morning the train frequency was doubled. Now, today happened to be the first day of this experiment. However great the planning may be, the steps to counter the drawbacks are never ever taken into account by the Indian govt, until the point that the drawbacks themselves start to ruin the plan. With this incomplete planning, the train frequency was doubled. But the signal system worked only for alternate train. So if one train is inserted between every two trains, this would mean that when the first train leaves the station, the 2nd train arrives at the station and it would leave only when the signal goes green, originally intended for the 3rd. So the 3rd train would leave the station only when the signal is green, originally intended for the 5th train and so on... (remember the sequences and series we learnt in school?) .
However, I knew nothing of such a plan but I was merely skeptic. First, the train which arrived on station was fully loaded that no one got on the train, and a second train arrived the moment this train left the station. However, this 2nd train left only after 5 min. It was kinda indicative that this was an "inserted" train. Kinda getting bored with the train journey, I worked on the above mentioned theory and hoped that there were no other "inserted" trains ahead of my train. And lo! The train stops just before Meenambakkam station and what do we see? There are 2 trains ahead of my train and 2 trains behind my train waiting for the track to get cleared. A cascade effect that was too easy to predict. (f@%! the govt...)
When all the people abandoned my train as well as other trains behind/ahead me to take a bus/auto/taxi at the highway nearby, what a sight it was! I have never even seen massive crowd (may be woodstock video crowd beats this, not my collg rock concert crowd). It just looked like a massive cross border refugee movement. I really wished I had a nice mobile phone with a camera to have taken this pic.
So my point really is that if you like to present me with a birthday gift, please do so with an Apple iPhone.
Picture of Suburban Train in ChennaiAt the morning rush hour, the govt. tried some innovative stuff. Since the long distance train traffic was quite less in the morning the train frequency was doubled. Now, today happened to be the first day of this experiment. However great the planning may be, the steps to counter the drawbacks are never ever taken into account by the Indian govt, until the point that the drawbacks themselves start to ruin the plan. With this incomplete planning, the train frequency was doubled. But the signal system worked only for alternate train. So if one train is inserted between every two trains, this would mean that when the first train leaves the station, the 2nd train arrives at the station and it would leave only when the signal goes green, originally intended for the 3rd. So the 3rd train would leave the station only when the signal is green, originally intended for the 5th train and so on... (remember the sequences and series we learnt in school?) .
However, I knew nothing of such a plan but I was merely skeptic. First, the train which arrived on station was fully loaded that no one got on the train, and a second train arrived the moment this train left the station. However, this 2nd train left only after 5 min. It was kinda indicative that this was an "inserted" train. Kinda getting bored with the train journey, I worked on the above mentioned theory and hoped that there were no other "inserted" trains ahead of my train. And lo! The train stops just before Meenambakkam station and what do we see? There are 2 trains ahead of my train and 2 trains behind my train waiting for the track to get cleared. A cascade effect that was too easy to predict. (f@%! the govt...)
When all the people abandoned my train as well as other trains behind/ahead me to take a bus/auto/taxi at the highway nearby, what a sight it was! I have never even seen massive crowd (may be woodstock video crowd beats this, not my collg rock concert crowd). It just looked like a massive cross border refugee movement. I really wished I had a nice mobile phone with a camera to have taken this pic.
So my point really is that if you like to present me with a birthday gift, please do so with an Apple iPhone.
