The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway Authority, have applied to the FCC for a license to implement a 700 MHz, five-site, Project 25 simulcast system. Will this become part of the proposed Bay area wide-area TRS?
And the Golden Gate Transit bus drivers need to be on an incredibly expensive P25 digital trunking system... why?
I recall reading the proposal a while back and how much they were throwing around the encryption option, and it's a huge over-reaction. Security of an iconic landmark like the Golden Gate Bridge is extremely important, but the fact that they were talking about encrypting bus and ferry transit operations is ludicrous. (That's why they need so many sites, to cover all the transit districts in Marin, Sonoma, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties.)
DES encrypting bus drivers ranting about their union contract disputes to their dispatchers will NOT protect a transit system from being the target of a terrorist attack.
Encrypting district security may be warranted if they can operate mixed mode, but putting them on another band and trunking system type will further complicate communications interoperability with the bridge district and surrounding law enforcement agencies...Requiring hard patches between systems or access channels to be engineered, or a field deploy-able ACU-1000, which takes time to get there.
not only the protection, but i was more thinking that in the event of an attack, their coms might be just that much safer....and id imagine theyd still have some kind of uhf for interop
That is kinda weird that a highway authority would be granted public safety 700. Unless its an area-wide multi-agency cooperative for PD, Sheriff,fire,trans,parks etc etc.
All of the activities (security, bridge maintenance, traffic management, ferry, and transit) of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District are eligible activities in the Public Safety services.
The license was issued yesterday (WQLN447) by the FCC.