Let's not get all sick and nervous
I don't see any real reason for them (or us) to expect to suffer from premature evacuation from the new frequencies.
Every system, especially new, large systems - and there aren't too many as large, geographically and equipment wise, as CHP's - suffers a lot of growing pains when reinventing themselves. I could tell you plenty of horror stories about LAPD's travails in the early 1980s when they went from 70-watt VHF radios to 2-watt UHF portables - and a
very buggy CAD system in essentially one fell swoop. And in 2001 the sky nearly fell again when they switched from analog to digital. Everyone from the RTOs to street cops to helicops was beside themselves, and didn't hesitate hollering it from the rooftops... especially the L.A. Times' rooftop. Only the /\/\ folks and some of the department brass said everything was hunky-dory, that it was simply that
"We have to get officers used to using this type of equipment." (page 2). The exact same Saber III radios they'd already been using for 5 years, but simply switched from analog to digital.
There were, to be sure, some very serious issues, like "simplex" (tactical) no longer working on the dispatch channels, with virtually no tac-frequency alternatives available for several years. Initially there were no aircraft-certified digital UHF radios, so they had to carry MX350 portables on board to try to communicate with the ground troops. And of course the sea change of often-crappy audio replacing the analog which had served them, crystal clear, for 70 years. But most of the wrinkles were eventually ironed out and the thing works pretty well today, and to my knowledge, nobody was ever killed or injured because of radio issues.
And speaking of "crystal clear," think how ticked off
we'd be if we were still back in the $5.95-per-crystal days of the 60s and 70s and just bought a division worth of 39, 44, and 45 mHz xtals!
I wouldn't get too excited just yet. I just spent Christmas week in Ventura County, and using my $69 Pro-83 with a VHF
high-band rubber ducky,
inside my mother-in-law's metal-clad mobile home, I was hearing both sides of the conversations on several LACC area frequencies, which I previously couldn't receive there at all even outdoors, before CHPERS.