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| Re: SEPTA to spend $100 million on PTC (unfunded federal mandate); other projects take hit (1142652) | |||
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Re: SEPTA to spend $100 million on PTC (unfunded federal mandate); other projects take hit |
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Posted by J trainloco on Fri Mar 2 18:23:24 2012, in response to Re: SEPTA to spend $100 million on PTC (unfunded federal mandate); other projects take hit, posted by Jersey Mike on Fri Mar 2 11:24:39 2012. ~2 million dollars is the Federally defined cost of a human life that is used to determine if a regulation is economically justified or not. If you can't compare costs to benefits when performing a risk analysis you are destined to make BAD DECISIONS. Money doesn't just fall from the sky.Yeah, in other words: there's a level of death that's acceptable to tolerate because it's cheaper to let these people die than it would be to outfit a system that could save them. That's inhumane. If you choose to spend 100 million on something that statictically has almost a zero chance of saving ANY lives and don't spend the money on something that will save lives,YOU'VE KILLED PEOPLE. Except that there have been numerous incidents that would've been prevented with PTC. Thinking that spending unlimited amounts of money to save small amounts of lives is right up there with thinking we can cut taxes and still pay for Grandma's medicare. OMFG,life involves hard choices and tradeoffs. Unlimited money? The cost is defined. It's not 'unlimited'. Considering the cost per mile of constructing new rail projects in this country, the proposed price for PTC doesn't seem exceptional. I don't consider omitting a practical safety concept that many transit properties have been using for decades an acceptable tradeoff. I rail against CTBC because CBTC isn't reliable and presents numerous security risks that signaling vendors aren't equipped to handle. As the sunset limited wreck in Arizona proved, if someone wants to screw with your signals, they will. The big deal with PTC is that 90% of its safety benefits can be realized with off the shelf cab signaling that is a proven technology and comparativly cheap Once you implement cab signalling, making it enforced cab signalling is the next logical jump. …will have operational impacts when it breaks… Standard signal systems have the same issue. …will probably degrade the standard level of safety is in my opinion a bad idea. "Will probably"… sounds like your opinion. Making rolling stock that is crash resistant is the best way to fully secure rail vehicles in an environment with freight trains,grade crossings,industrial sidings,etc. It's a fixed cost that requires no ongoing mantainence and protects from ALL types of collision,not just running through a stop signal. The heavier stock has higher operating costs in the form of increased energy consumption. What other types of collisions were you referring to? Derailing into other vehicles, or wayside equipment? Even FRA compliant cars don't seem to hold up too well in those types of events. We can argue the points to death, but the simple fact is PTC will prevent collisions we will never know about. If that saves even a single life, then since you can't replace anyone's life, it's worth it. But you are insisting that we not do so until a horrific accident with a high body count occurs. If we got rid of ALL the unfunded mandates in the world, we could build a lot more things. The cost of construction, manufacturing and transport would drop significantly. We would also return to the levels of fatalities we saw at the turn of last century. |
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