San Francisco’s train control system still runs on floppy disks

The rapidly growing list of accidents on U.S. railroads in recent months could be added to at any moment. The reason for this is the train traffic control system of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which has been using old floppy disks for more than a quarter of a century.

The paradox of the situation is that San Francisco is home to the famous Silicon Valley, the birthplace of unique IT technologies, which have never “reached” the local transportation infrastructure.

According to SFMTA spokeswoman Mariana Maguire, the train control system was put into operation back in 1998 and has not been updated since. It still uses 3.5-inch magnetic floppy disks. The system was designed to last 25 years, meaning its official “shelf life” expired last year.

SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin says the system has worked without comment so far, but a “catastrophic failure” could occur at any time. A state-of-the-art traffic management system costing hundreds of millions of dollars could solve the problem, but it could take up to 10 years to implement.