Subway trouble
This was great timing:
About 1,000 people were stranded on a subway train for about 40 minutes late Monday night after it came to a standstill because its brakes developed trouble, its operator said Tuesday.
At around 11:55 p.m., a 10-car train came to a halt between Kitasenju and Ayase stations on the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line after its emergency brakes activated, company officials said.
…
One of the stranded passengers said the lights on the train went out after it came to a halt, and that the conductor failed to explain what had happened to the train for 30 minutes after it stopped.
“It reminded me of terrorist attacks on the underground trains in London. Tokyo Metro should have explained what happened much earlier,” said the passenger, 44-year-old Akira Hirai.
If it was a train running at 11:55 p.m., we all know what that means, don’t we? It means the average passenger BAL was a good, oh, 0.07-ish. Also, while the nights have been cool over the last week, I’m guessing that it was not exactly refreshingly breezy in train cars with no air conditioning. At least they’d emerged from the tunnel before the train stopped. Kitasenju is pretty far out in eastern Tokyo, so the chances that it was a terrorist attack would probably have seemed minimal to most passengers. Still, pretty trying.