Before returning to Harvard Law School, Cass Sunstein was Barack Obama’s administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, measuring the benefits of regulations against their costs. Testifying to a House subcommittee on Jan. 26, 2011, Sunstein was asked if he could identify an administration regulation whose ―benefits have not justified the cost.‖ He replied:
―There is only one big one that comes to mind. It is called Positive Train Control, and it is a statutory requirement, and the Department of Transportation had to issue it as a matter of law even though the monetizable benefits are lower than the monetizable costs. There aren’t a lot like that.‖
Concerning Sunstein’s sanguine"
So, why didn’t the RRs fight against it harder? I have a couple of thoughts. What are yours?
How about, that at the end of the day, the equipment needed for PTC will benefit the RRs in other ways such as train handling advice to save fuel, easily increase capacity in dark territory, provide platform for “intelligent” trains (see p 20 of July Trains). Perhaps the current hassle and cost really isn’t so bad in the net. The RRs may be “banking” their political capital for the re-regulation wars…
Agreed: Further that by not wanting to lose their federal exemption. (and give the Open Access and local law nutcases free range to interfere with the industry - The Chemical Rate/ Liability Case issue stuff fits right in.) Saying “no” to a perceived public safety issue would not be prudent and so what [?], if they all fail together there is “no foul” due to the state of technology. GPS and computers (black box technology) are not quite the panacea that the uninformed think it is. Just listed to somebody complain about interuptions to their XM- radio in a garage and just managed to stifle a big guffaw…
I don’t know. Let’s say any kind of systems. I am just asking whether PTC gives the biggest bang for the buck compared to other approaches for preventing accidents.
Was the law vague enough that FRA did not have to issue such draconian REGs ? I have often thought that a modified version of ATS would work almost as well. ATS could be a 4 aspect system: — Clear, approach , restricting, stop. ? That way the many signal aspects that are displayed on various RR line side signals could be still used. ?
As another poster said " GPS " is not the end all. I am worried that if for some reason GPS goes down or cannot provide precise location information. Location requires at least 5 sattelites in view and a prediction that it will be available at destination time ( airline requirement ). If it goes down for any length of time people will die — probably not RRs if they still have lineside signals.
Yes, I think it can be answered by anybody who knows the answer. I think I recall reading somewhere about somebody making the claim that the money could be more effective if spent on measures other than the mandated PTC proscription. So I thought I would ask here.
It’s a big ol’ poker game. The railroads took the hand they were dealt, and played it the best way they knew how. Fighting it would have made them appear to be against safety. So, they bit the bullet, knowing, they they’ll be in a better bargaining position when:
They need to raise rates to cover new expenses due to new equipment requirements
Re-regulation pops up again.
Open access & bottlenecks pop up again
A similar weight is proposed to be around the neck of the railroads’ competition- trucks.
Do the railroad companies oppose PTC just because it does not have enough benefit to justify the cost? Maybe the reason they don’t speak out against it is because they are not against it.
Maybe this is just a version of “seatbelt law” for the railroads. There are a lot of people who will insist if it saves just one life, it is worth it. That is their cost/benefit analysis.
It’s been reported that some of the fairly recent rear end collisions would not have been prevented by the first generation of PTC that is going to be deployed because they happened in restricted speed circumstances.
Conductors have available to them an Emergency Brake Valve handle. They can use it anytime they feel they need to. (I had a student engineer whom I once threatened to pull the air on him if he didn’t approach the next signal, on a blind curve, prepared to stop short of it.) What more does the conductor need?
