Enlarge (credit: Getty )

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs the city's Muni Metro light rail, claims to be the first US agency to adopt floppy disks. But today, the SFMTA is eager to abandon its reliance on 5¼-inch floppy disks—just give it about six more years and a few hundred more million dollars.

Members of the SFMTA recently spoke with the ABC7 Bay Area News and detailed the agency's use of three 5¼-inch floppy disks every morning. The floppies have been part of Muni Metro's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) since its installation in the Market Street subway stop in 1998. The ATCS has multiple components, "including computers onboard the trains that are tied into propulsion and brake systems, central and local servers, and communications infrastructure, like loop cable signal wires," Michael Roccaforte, an SFMTA spokesperson, told Ars Technica.

The floppy disks are for loading the software running the central servers, Roccaforte said:

Enlarge / Dragon Sector uploaded a video to social media after discovering an "undocumented ‘unlock code’ which you could enter from the train driver’s panel" fixed "mysterious issues" impacting trains in Poland. (credit: Adam Haertle on YouTube )

An unusual right-to-repair drama is disrupting railroad travel in Poland despite efforts by hackers who helped repair trains that allegedly were designed to stop functioning when serviced by anyone but Newag, the train manufacturer.

Members of an ethical hacking group called Dragon Sector, including Sergiusz Bazański and Michał Kowalczyk, were called upon by a train repair shop, Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych (SPS), to analyze train software in June 2022. SPS was desperate to figure out what was causing "mysterious failures" that shut down several vehicles owned by Polish train operator the Lower Silesian Railway, Polish infrastructure trade publication Rynek Kolejowy reported . At that point, the shortage of trains had already become "a serious problem" for carriers and passengers, as fewer available cars meant shorter trains and reduced rider capacity, Rynek Kolejowy reported.

Dragon Sector spent two months analyzing the software, finding that "the manufacturer's interference" led to "forced failures and to the fact that the trains did not start," and concluding that bricking the trains "was a deliberate action on Newag's part."

Enlarge / No, this is not a screen grab from the movie Logan . It's Parallel Systems' second-generation autonomous electric rail vehicle. (credit: Parallel Systems)

Platoons of driverless cargo trucks cruising across highways is one of those tempting technocrat ideas that doesn't look like it will pan out. As autonomous driving technology matured in the middle of the last decade, we saw trials of the concept, but human truck drivers do more than just throttle, steer, and brake, and they aren't likely to be replaced soon.

A better idea would be to shift some of that cargo to our underutilized railways—here, the idea of platooning is an old one, better known as a "train." Parallel Systems hopes to do just that with its second-generation autonomous battery-electric freight railcar.

"Our goal is to transfer more of the trucking traffic onto the railroad. In order to do that, the railroad needs to be far more flexible," explained John Howard, co-founder and vice president of operations at Parallel Systems.

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