Speed kills, but spectrum bureaucracy failed to apply the brakes

[Commentary] The tragic derailment of Amtrak Northeast Regional train #188, killing at least eight passengers in May, would likely have been prevented by a technology mandated by a 2008 law. Alas, the safety system, called Positive Train Control (PTC), has faced delays. Amtrak has tried to shift the blame to the Federal Communications Commission, claiming that the FCC refused to allocate the spectrum it sought. The charge is dangerously misleading.

The FCC’s determination to let Amtrak buy the wireless rights it needed in an active secondary market avoided a contentious and time-consuming reallocation process, and ultimately solved Amtrak’s spectrum problem. If the company had embraced it years earlier, when many private railroad lines were buying wireless licenses for PTC, the tragedy of Amtrak #188 might have been avoided. With Washington conducting business as usual, precious years ticked away. Meanwhile, life-saving technology went undeployed, and prime radio spectrum went unused. That this bureaucratic snafu ended in the deaths of innocent American train commuters underscores the social cost of failing to fix public policies that shift productive activity to jockeying for special favors.

[Harold Feld is senior vice president of Public Knowledge. Thomas Hazlett is HH Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics at Clemson University]