Decision 2020

 With all the election talk going on there was one take noticeably absent from the public discourse.  That would be who should one vote for if their number one concern is railway signaling.  Of course this is probably an uncommon point of view, but thanks to the law of large numbers and the internet generally supporting long tail interests, I might as well take a crack at it because I am in need of some filler content. 

 In 2016 the major issue affecting the historical quality and interestingness in the United States was the PTC requirement.  The $15 billion unfunded mandate was signed into law by a Republican president in 2008 with a 2015 deadline and then kicked down the road when the initial date proved unworkable. The law doesn't ban old signals or even require their replacement, but it does require new hardware and testing and at that point it was suddenly cheaper just to replace the whole kit and caboodle. In 2016 Donald Trump was presented as the pro-business, anti-regulation candidate and therefore presented a chance that the PTC requirement would be eliminated.

Four years later Trump has gone on crusades against efficient light bulbs and non-toxic detergent, but not only has the PTC mandate been left untouched, the Trump controlled FRA was at various points threatening popular commuter rail systems with shutdown if they did not waste more money on it.  The truth of the matter is that in 2020 the PTC issue is pretty much dead because there is almost nothing left to save.  Historic signaling has been burned like a California wildfire and with nothing left to lose there is only someone to blame and that would be the Trump Administration.

While the coal industry is completely collapsing even with Trump's support, from a signaling perspective a complete coal collapse would actually be beneficial as past a certain point there would be no business case to upgrade the last patches of N&W/C&O signaling in the coal regions of the east.  As we have seen in Florida and Michigan, CSX short line spin-offs have preserved large amount of classic Seaboard and Chessie signaling.  It's a shame coal didn't collapse a decade ago as it would have likely saved much of the historic West Virginia signaling scene.

The last major signaling related issue I want to discuss is the ability to document signaling from passing passenger trains, which requires A) passenger services and B) traditional rolling stock.  In terms of A, Amtrak has been brought to its knees with Trump connected CEO's axing both private cars and rare millage excursions.  The failure of the recent stimulus talks has now cut Amtrak LD services to tri-weekly.  In term of B, nothing has been done to toe the line in terms of American style crash resistance requirements and more and more European style rolling stock is showing up on the American rail network.  I will give Trump credit for working with congress to ban the Chinese rolling stock company, CRRC, but the regulatory environment is not helping the case for front or rear facing windows on passenger rolling stock. 

In 2020 the choice is clear.  "Amtrak" Joe Biden literally cannot make things any worse in terms of PTC or crappy rolling stock, but he will most certainly increase passenger rail funding which means more trains on more lines and more kinds of signals.  They might not be the most interesting *cough*Denver RTD*cough*, but at least it's something and uses traditional cab signaling.