Taking the fun out of funicular
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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I start the radio, France Info, host is interviewing a woman ans says "there's international coverage because there are so many tourists in Lisbon".
A bit unsensitive but whatever.
I missed the beginning so I look it up, and the first article is France Info again: "18 deaths, no French victims"
Specifying because your fellow citizens are part of the victims is one thing, but just saying there aren't feels chauvinistic.
welcome to western world.
It's so interesting how you go from never even having seen a word before to it popping up in multiple places. I just learned about funiculars like two weeks ago thanks to this YouTube video about diagonal elevators in video games https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M2oELc61XHE
The same thing happens to me with various things, roughly at a pace of 2-ish per year. It's always weird. Like, apparently this thing has been common since the seventies, but somehow I stumbled about it only now and now I keep encountering it all the damn time!
I guess it's a combination of your interests having changed a tiny little bit and your brain having ignored the unknown word as irrelevant until you learn about it. If you don't believe, watch this short video and you will get what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
It annoys me that my human brain works like this. It means I cannot really trust it.
Yeah it's the Big funicular™ conspiracy.
Yeah that's funny. I just learned about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon last week, and now I see it mentioned everywhere.
Going fully recursive I see.
Very sad. Let's just hope that this was just a tragic accident and not something that could have been prevented by proper maintenance.
I think that is a bit contradictorary. Unless there is an earthquake or other mayor event, technical systems should not fail under proper maintenance. Especially if the system has been operated since more than a hundred years now.
That realistically only leaves inadequate maintenance or sabotage. Both aren't "tragic accidents".
That realistically only leaves inadequate maintenance or sabotage. Both aren’t “tragic accidents”.
Even if you have adequate maintenance , there is always the possibility you use a defective part.
That's what redundancy is for.
True, but I've seen more than one case where the damaged item destroy (or make it unusable) even the redundant part.
Redudancy is good, but it is not a silver bullet to solve anything.
You check security critical components to be non defective before using them. Security systems have fail-safes and redundancies.
With due diligence it is not possible for established systems to just fail in a way that is killing a dozen people. The technology isn't new and there is plenty of cable or cog-wheel railways operating around the world, so there is established practices for security.
You check security critical components to be non defective before using them. Security systems have fail-safes and redundancies.
Obviously.
With due diligence it is not possible for established systems to just fail in a way that is killing a dozen people. The technology isn’t new and there is plenty of cable or cog-wheel railways operating around the world, so there is established practices for security.
Ok, so you have two cables, one principal and the other one as redundancy. The main one snap and in doing so damage the backup cable (or any other part that must use the backup cable) more than what falls within safety limits, so even the backup cable (or mechanism) fail. Then ? (I personally see something like that btw)
Look, I am not saying that there could not have be some problem with lack of maintenance, it looks this way, but that even fail safe and redundancy have limits to what they can do. And since some tests are destructive for the tested item you can only trust the fact that every item would be built the same way at the same quality level, which do not remove the possibility that one item end up being defective.
This is not how redundancy works on cable cars. These systems are not copies of another, but different systems with different working principles. On systems with a pulling component (like the cable here) and a suspension component (like a suspension rope or rails), a safety brake on the cabin is only held open by the tension of the pulling cable. Should the pulling force bee too low, the brake clamps onto the suspension component.
Most of the time there's sadly no medial coverage of the safety systems. So with the accidents I followed either I don't know why the safety systems didn't work, or they were manipulated. For example in the 2021 case at Monte Mottarone, the brake was propped open with maintenance tools.
Given the age of the system in Lisbon, I hope it was updated to these safety standards. The most informative I could see was this image showing the underside of the wagon. It is still difficult to tell how it works in detail, but the thing protruding from the cable mount could be such a catching brake working on the inside of the cable guide I think. And to me it looks like the cable pulled out of the holder due to cracks in the holder.
You can perform QA on parts.
Obviously, but QA is based on statistic.
You need to destroy or damage the item tested If you want to check how a steel cable hold, You test it to the limit but after that you cannot use it anymore. So you get another one with the same specification. But if this one is defective for some reason, you would never know it until it fail.
Not all QA is destructive. For example, X-rays can be used to detect internal cracks without damaging the sample.
Or you trust the manufacturer of the part's QA since they should know. After all they designed and built the thing.