In case people think all of this talk about headways and link times and clouds of data points and 19th-century railway timetables is getting far too technical, a respite.

In the course of this analysis, I have often thought that there may be some relationship between Quantum Physics and the operation of the Queen Car.  After all, a cup of tea can provide a model of random motion (and power the Infinite Improbability Drive).  We may presume that some deeper forces are at work on Queen Street that are manifest at the visible level in what passes for service on that route.

By analogy:

Einsteinian Time Dilation tells us that the faster we run for the car, the slower time will move, and we will never quite catch up before the car leaves the stop. 

Schrödinger’s Cat is a paradox demonstrating the concept that we cannot know the state of something until we actually look at it.  This is roughly akin to not knowing where the Queen Car is going until we have been on it long enough that the gods of improbability reveal our ultimate destination.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle deals with the problem that the act of observing an event can interfere with the event itself, and that we can never know simultaneously the position and momentum of a subatomic particle.  Applied to the Queen car, we all know that there are always lots of streetcars, except when you want one, and then you can never be sure that the one that has space is also going to your destination.

I invite suggestions for other possible explanations for the behaviour of transit service.  With centuries of scientific thought, we can unravel the mysterious behaviour of the Queen car.