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Fed auditors to Congress: extend PTC deadline
How many people have written their Congressman or US Senator?
Its been law since 2008, how much longer do RRs need? With technology ever evolving whatever comes online will be outdated soon after. Like Ive said in the past, Reagan-era star wars. Some theories of technology can never be applied in reality.
As it’s been documented repeatedly on trains, it’s not the railroads that are the main holdup. FCC spectrums are too congested in some areas to allow PTC to proceed and Indian groups are fighting antenna installations in other areas. If freq. spectrum isn’t available in an area, there is no point in installing a system that cannot be tested until a much later date. By that time, repairs/modifications could be very expensive (above and beyond the already crushing expense of it to begin with).
Britt, please try to remember that this is NOT off-the-shelf electronic toys that we’re talking about. These are highly sophisticated, multi-channel, multi-user, multi-everything technology that has to be tested, debugged, tested again, repeat ad infinitum. The FCC has been a major problem during the whole process by requiring multiple geo, environmental, sociological, etc., testing and reports for EACH and EVERY transmitter site. Now multiply all of that by 70,000 route miles and see what you come up with. I personally am amazed that the railroads are as far along as they are. The old joke runs: the truly amazing thing is not that the bear dances so poorly, but that the bear dances at all!