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Railroad Reregulation ...and Some New Stuff As Well
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<p>[quote user="jeffhergert"]</p> <p>They've only been working on this is some form or another for about the last 30 years. While I myself wouldn't mind if they worked on it another 30 before deployment, so they could get the "perfect" version, many others would not.</p> <p>Remember, too this is one consultant's opinion. Maybe he has an interest in another, more expensive angle of PTC technology? Besides, most articles that I've seen usually mention that the first deployment of PTC is just the first generation. Eventually they'll have their rolling blocks and elimination of wayside signaling.</p> <p>There was a letter once from a class one signal department higher up manager in a trade magazine. He lamented the fact that some, kind of like this Banks person, wanted to scrap the existing signal systems in favor of some of the pie in the sky PTC systems, that weren't yet available. His chief complaint was that some, and usually they are people that have to listen to "experts" to make their decisions because they don't have any real world/field experiences, were ready to abandon things that have been refined and worked for over 100 years for an unproven technology. </p> <p>Jeff [/quote]</p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;font-size:small;">Jeff,</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;font-size:small;">Well maybe you and BaltACD are right about Banks. I really don’t know, but there does indeed seem to be two ways of looking at this. Initially, my impression was that the railroads are against this mandate because they feel it is the wrong approach and that it will set back progress and force them to waste a lot of their money. They also feel that they are currently developing PTC on their own, and without the mandate, they will arrive at a better execution of PTC. If that is the railroads’ position, I would expect everybody in the industry to be on the same page.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;font-size:small;">However, there is an opposite position held by Congress and the non- railroad-industry advocates of PTC that wants PTC to be implemented as quickly as possible. And this position also includes the belief that the mandate is necessary because the industry will not act quickly enough without it. Generally, it paints the industry as a greedy villain for resisting a noble safety improvement in the same way they resisted other safety improvements such as automatic couplers and the air brake. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;font-size:small;">Apparently the position within the industry that the PTC mandate is bad for them is not universally held within the industry. Maybe it is only the position of management, but not of labor. Management and labor are often at odds with each other, so it would not be surprising for them to differ over the PTC mandate. Or maybe even management itself is divided over the PTC mandate. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;font-size:small;">It is true that a consultant such as Banks might have an agenda for selling his own services which might conflict with where the mandate will lead. However, it is also quite possible that the mandate will open the door for consultants such as Banks. In fact I would expect the mandate to be a bonanza for consultants in general. So I would not discount Banks for the assumption that his position is self-serving.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;font-size:small;">The mandate will also be a bonanza for the signal workers union, so they would certainly have a powerful motive to discredit Banks for his opposition to the mandate. </span></p>
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