When I said PTC will never reach a conclusion, but will forever be a work in progress, I did not mean that as a philosophical platitude generalizing about “everything in life.” I meant it literally, just as all the things in life that actually do get finished.
Obviously the PTC mandate was for a job that had a beginning and an end. When I say it will never reach a conclusion, I mean that the entire project objective will keep evolving with new parts added and older parts made obsolete in a forever expanding timeline. That was not the intent.
When I read this summation in Railway Age that BaltACD posted in another thread, considering how screwed up the progress is in the first seven years, I would say it is going to take a lot longer than three more years to finish it if it actually is finished.
Please define “end.”
Euclid is never ending!
Larry, think about the automatic air brake. Once Westinghouse perfected it in the late 1800’s that was the “end.”
Oh, wait…
[Y]
A comparsion of the costs of PTC might be possible. Take Amtrak’s yearly reports on how much the spent on the PRR portion of ACSES and divide it by the miles New Rochelle - WASH; PHL - Harrisburg and compare it to the costs by several freight RRs. New Haven - BOS was completed many years ago. Of course the New Haven - Springfield and NYP - SDY costs might need some computing.
Bucky claimed that the Congressional mandate had no teeth. If that is the case, that would mean that the actions proposed by the several Class I railroads were just attention-getting devices since the threat of fines by the FRA wasn’t real.
Paul,
The mandate had teeth in legal terms. It still does. The threat of fines was real and legally established. When I say it had no teeth, I mean the threat of a shutdown prevented the deadline from being enforced even though it was legally enforceable. The threat of shutdown overrode the terms of the mandate, leaving Congress no choice but to cancel the current deadline.
Imagine that, a political body responding to political pressures. How novel. Isn’t that what the American political system is supposed to be all about?
[quote user=“Euclid”]
tree68
Euclid
PTC will never reach a conclusion, but will forever be a work in progress.As noted, just like everything in life. In fact, it would still be true if PTC was able to be fully implemented by the end of the year.
When I said PTC will never reach a conclusion, but will forever be a work in progress, I did not mean that as a philosophical platitude generalizing about “everything in life.” I meant it literally, just as all the things in life that actually do get finished.
Obviously the PTC mandate was for a job that had a beginning and an end. When I say it will never reach a conclusion, I mean that the entire project objective will keep evolving with new parts added and older parts made obsolete in a forever expanding timeline. That was not the intent.
When I read this summation in Railway Age that BaltACD posted in another thread, considering how screwed up the progress is in the first seven years, I would say it is going to take a lot longer than three more years to finish it if it actually is finished.