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The Importance of Redundancy

The NY Post is reporting (via Drudge)that a fire knocked out an entire subway line in NYC for 5 years:

A fire in a subway control room has put the C line out of service for up to five years and caused serious problems on the A line that will make the commute miserable for hundreds of thousands of subway riders, officials said yesterday.

The unstaffed room containing 600 electrical devices called “relays” that are used to power signals and switches along a segment of the vital Eighth Avenue line were destroyed Sunday in the blaze.

And guess what, they didn’t have backups! This is why it is important to have redundancy:

The TA said there is no backup power system in place at that location. Without a signal system, Reuter said, “you could only get so many trains on a line. Chambers Street is the choke point in the signal system.”

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