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[quote user="ontheBNSF"] [quote user="Bucyrus"] [quote user="CSSHEGEWISCH"] While the PTC mandate may not have been well thought out as far as implementation time is concerned, it was in response to a perceived popular demand for tighter safety requirements.  I get the impression that there are many feel that regulation pertaining to safety is restrictive and unnecessary.  Some believe that the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Mine Safety Act are restrictions on the free market and should be revoked.[/quote] It is not just the fact that the implementation time frame is short or resistance to safety regulation at issue here.  The larger question goes to the issue of failing to get the best system by mandating one that is inferior.  Here is a quote from the PTC link in the first post: He’s [Charles Banks] president of rail consulting firm R. L. Banks and Associates. He called PTC’s implementation <a href="http://www.enotrans.org/ctp-blog/positive-train-control-good-idea-terrible-implementation-and-blame-all-the-way-around" target="_blank">"terrible"</a>and said it’ll cost as much as $12 billion to get it running. Despite that cost, he told me the PTC technology might already be obsolete. Both in the form recommended by Congress and potential alternatives to it, PTC would use both wireless technologies and parts of wired technologies constituting existing signal systems, he said. The proposed system would overlay wireless technologies on top of existing signal systems. Alternatives would utilize less of the underlying technologies in existing signal systems. To some, the overlay of the two technologies is seen as an advantage because the alternatives would require a more thorough (and expensive) overhaul of the rail system. But Banks argues that failure to make PTC more robust equates to a jury-rigged solution and will minimize the benefits of the original concept. "Instead of improving the technology, they are overlaying new tech onto existing communications and signals systems," he said, and that’s a problem. "If you make the wrong investment, it actually postpones making the best investment," he said. Rushing PTC’s implementation now, in other words, will stall any tech advancements in the future.   [my emphasis added in orange] <div style="clear:both;"></div> [/quote] Often major decisions will leave out good or alternative technologies. <div style="clear:both;"></div> [/quote] True enough, and this was a major decision, but that does not minimize the immensity of the point being made by Mr. Banks.  His point is that this major decision was made by Congress, and they being an outside interest, bear no financial responsibility for better alternative technologies that they may have unwittingly left out of the decision.  Furthermore, the scope of this mandated commitment is so large that the potential setback resulting from the best technology being displaced by inferior technology will be extremely large.  If the railroads were making the decision to spend their money on this development, I would not expect them leave out or overlook the best technological approaches except for very minor short term departures from a straight line course of development.   But when somebody else spends the railroads’ money on such a project, it has the potential to waste immense resources in going a long ways down the wrong road. This has the potential to set back the proper solution by many years.
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