Comstar...while a lot of what you say is true, as a (now retired) 26 year veteran of the Denver PD, that there are advantages to TRS. When I first started back in '71 with Denver, we had fixed radios in cars, 4 police districts and 4 channel radios. 1 channel for all detectives, 2 channels for dispatch of 2 districts each plus 1 channel for surveilance. Over the years, we moved to pop-out hand helds, more channels, from 150MHz VHF to 450 MHz UHF to 800MHz EDACS system. There are now over 100 "channels" (TGs) available yet only 24 radio frequencies are used. That's for the cops alone. We share the system with PW, Sheriffs, Fire and EMS. We now have separate dispatch channels for our now 6 police districts, separate clearance channels, tactical channels, detective channels, even separate TGs for the different detective bureaus. Plain and simple....you could NOT do that wil conventional analog radio. Besides not being enough frequencies avaialble, I can't think of any hand held radios with that many channels avaialble nor a simple way to activate or deactivate channels (TGs) "on the fly." Not every radio has every talk group activated (obviously). I don't think even the chief's radio has all of them activated...but if they were conventional....each radio would have to be capable of all 100 or so channels.
The coverage under VHF was superior to coverage under 450MHz and 800MHz, so Denver build out the system with more voting receivers and has now just changed from a single point transmitter site (in the mountains...so great coverage) to multiple transmitter sites spread out through the city.
Is it perfect? No....nothing is. We had some gaps in our VHF coverage. Take a while to turn on the radio? No...especially when compared to the old fixed tube type 4 channel radios we had...they took at least a minute to "warm up" before they could be used. Added safety for the officers? Yes, the older hand helds didn't have panic buttons on them and when they first came out...they were constantly being set off accidentally. Not nearly as much anymore.
I can't speak about any system but Denver's....but I can guarantee you I was MUCH happier with our radio system when I retired than I was when I first started.
