I'm not much of a believer in conspiracy theories, and that
goes as much for BART as it does for government plots to
hide Little Green Men from us all. I think the wider track
base was an honest attempt to make rail travel safer. A
wider track base is, obviously, safer than a narrow track
base. And, BART's designers really did believe (however
wrongly in 20X20 hindsight) that they were designing the
rails for the future.
A far bigger "crime", by the way, is the design of the
stations. Anyone who has taken rail in Europe can
immediately see that BART was designed by freeway engineers
who know little about rail. Ride a train in Britain, and
note that the stations -- where the train is going slow --
are curved, while the Victorian engineers did everything
they could to keep the rest of the tracks -- where the train
is going fast -- straight. BART, of course, has perfectly
straight stations and curved tracks, the exact opposite of
the way it should be.
-- Donald
_________________________
Donald F. Robertson
San Francisco
donaldrf@hooked.net
Donald's Space Exploration page:
http://www.hooked.net/~donaldrf/index.html
The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually
we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of
inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to
reclaim a little more land. -- Thomas Huxley.