safety regulations governing the frequency of manual visual track inspections under another regulation that permits a suspension if it is necessary for a test to evaluate new technology or operational procedures and th its public notice summarily stated that the suspension was necessary for that test which was expressly described as one to test an automated track inspection technologies but after a did not actually explain why the suspension ability elation was necessary to test the new technology that the purpose of the test was to assess the new technology was clearly stated in the decision and then noticed the decision said the test was designed specifically to test and then geometry car as a viable alternative to manual visual inspections and to test it is an optical digital platform to supplement manual visual inspections clearer but it does talk about utilizing track inspection technologies while evaluating appropriate supplemental manual instruction promises there is some communication about the combinations and then the description of phasing also seems to a different combinations well i understand that they noted that what they were going to do which somewhat reduce the frequency with which the man with visual inspections were done but every description of the purpose of the already did not even attempt to justify a conclusion that the cast that suspension was necessary to test the equipment but then again it's wrong the notes they talk about this is mentioned in the decision test something as an alternative meaning an on off switch all this or all that but i would think ordinary mortals accustomed to need  many others an inter alternative is usually actually described as as either or but more to the point if you look at the record if you look at everything in the f r a record leading up to the final decision there isn't a mention look the denial reconsideration joint appendix page one hundred and twenty dollars that's where they said oh actually this is about testing the death mix of manual visual and automated there was no citation to the record you know their answer there is kind of a chicken and egg problem and when you have a technology which the agency alternatively describes is as new and also known for thirty years but you have something about which certain capacities are unknown and you need to put into operation and test to see whether can be used in a new way or a new scope and the thing i don't follow is your contention that it could there could be a bona fide test with that continuing inspection going along and remediation because if there's continuing many on special remediation we don't know what contribution the automated technology will make in the absence of the same frequency of men on section sure so if what you are testing is what they said is to see how the new technology works they can be done side by side that the in the track inspectors can do their regular job twice a week inspecting the track and the machine goes over and the machine can pick up whatever defects if it picks up so existing technology use geometry cars and use them for something they've not been used for before and see how they do that's a test of the technology and there is nothing in the record the n s f never said that in their petition that we're proceeding that's a public proceeding in which we can participate and address the various issues including necessity and you know or people on the actual track inspectors nobody doubted that any ability of the things that we're talking about of the twice a week visual inspections for the section of freight track in nebraska in wyoming in order to test the different combinations of visual and automated inspection technology and you can see that from the test structure it's cell which has these different phases and each phase involves a different combination although i think mr adelman has been reading  going also reasonable which is we're going to freeze a damn carefully with an eighty two dollars full substitution but of course because it's a transition and there are some unknowns we're going to do that you know we're not going to go zero to sixty we're not you know mix rationale that's much clearer and reconsidered and at least proceed so i do think just in the federal register it lays out this test program and it says therefore it's necessary right that sets that  can for inspection of the colleges but what i remember the decision on review is the reconsideration decision which connects those dots that you start a federal register from here is the test with these different testing these different mixes and then i reconsideration ha one hundred and twenty the agency explains that it the purpose of this test is to test these different mixes and and one hundred and sixteen and also you see this in their original request for the test at j fifty five there's really exciting potential here because this this is a possibility to instead of having people every two weeks and over time and see how it's changing and send inspectors to the places where problems might be developing before that even starts before the problems start when retards like that in their proposal or fifty five such that i mean people have been going up and down train tracks and looking at the tracks for much longer than thirty years that's the old technology so this possibility and then the use of  the automated technology as a straight supplement just you know will add that i made it to the tracks and continue doing the visual that we've also been doing the agency itself has a fleet of the i mean i'm sorry what i meant was let's see if we ran the visual inspection and automated inspection on the same track at roughly the same time what's picking up more and you can see for example eighteen this chart that shows that the automated inspection sketching in this match the visual inspection is catching that much we know that these are the made it inspections have the potential to catch a lot of things that the visual inspections don't catch what's new here i want different things and i was i thought that some of the agencies present his were somewhat article and talking about numbers of things car by the union was pretty clear in saying but there are types of things that are not really that well caught by the geometry just so that the agency addressed that when twenty whynot the decision these things that visual there are things that visual inspections are going to catch earlier most things automated inspection culturally but there are some things visual inspection will catch earlier now most of those things will affect the track geometry before they cause a problem and i do mean it in system because it has the potential to detect these very minute changes and tract test on a defined section of track and in that nebraska wyoming to make sure that this actually does work and the thing that's new here i do want to go back to that because there is a lot of potential here to make railroads safer the agency is interested in this data because of the potential that it could lead to new safety regulations that that make trains more safe by using the data from these i mean it's systems to see where there are slight changes that  from from from time to time that a person would not have had any way to see but can tell the railroad that a problem is developing there and then send the inspector to that part to look at it very carefully instead of having a regulation is to allow for this kind of test to look at whether there are are ways to make things safer and lead to these kinds of improved improved technologies and i do want to say one quick thing about assuring safety which is the way this test is set up you can see if you look at that chart in the federal register the rd column shows that at every stage the safety metrics get more challenging to meet so with visual inspection the baseline is they're missing about seventy six dollars defects per one hundred miles of track and at each stage they have to show that there are fewer defects for one hundred miles of track so that's how we're sha how we're making sure that these things that the automated system is not as good at catching and quickly are making the tracks less safe overall if there are enough for the question of what to data so that it could then be in a position to evaluate whether these new testing methodology is work just pillar you asked about where the agency said in its original order about the idea that this is in fact the next that it's not the automated technology will fully replace the old fashioned way of doing it m j a sixty eight dollars b agency in its original order states in reference to the optical he will platform which is the automated technology or one of the automated technology  they say they want purpose is to test an optical visual platform to supplement manual visual inspections and of course the concept that these automated technologies will be working in tandem with the old fashioned manual visual inspections is further made apparent by the remainder of the order where it clearly lays out in the four phase structure that i think your honor correctly described as baby steps this is a process that is rolling out under the extremely close affectively real time supervision of the federal railroad administration you're seeing the data as it comes in they're conducting their own double checking to make sure everything is going along well and of course before be n s f is permitted to progress from one phase to the other the agency has to review what's come in and sign off on it to make sure that everything is going exactly as it should be n s f currently has basically completed phase two the results in fact are magically exceeded the expectations in the of we anticipated that it would catch certain number of defects in you to achieve some level of safety and in fact the results from phase two dramatically exceeded in terms of overall performance where we expected the automated technologies to go we don't have a record terms of the safety benefits that are being delivered so this is really just a test both of technology but also of methodology is because of course a critical element of this new technology is that rather than have inspectors stand their gaze walking up and down fifty miles stretches of track looking for loose joints and bolts in the like the technology alerts them to places where they need to focus their attention so that's the answer to their argument when they say well why can't you do both at once that's why you can't do both at once because the new methodology is required to be deploying the inspectors not to spend their days following just the endless march up and down the line is required by the regulations but rather to see what the data is generating what it says hey there might be a problem  mile thirty two to thirty four they redeploy they go out in the inspected and as i said phase two shows that this is working marvelously so for those reasons we asked that the patient and i know it's not in the record on appeal but that public an and it's one of the concerns about for the workers so i was just curious right there right i understand well it's entirely possible since obviously the workers are part and parcel of this that they're well aware of what the early results of show thank you great thank you  changing them without changing the core frequency of doing them you're just running the optical visual machine in addition so i thought what about mr dupree's argument that part of the system for which the test is designed and that that that this has assigned to test is whether the workers could actually be deployed in a more efficient way and raise safety overall by using the technology and sending the letters to places where pretend the problems are are or other people crack inspector seniority who could do that work there was nothing in maintaining a regular schedule that would preclude the relevant from the sending inspectors to do focused inspections based upon the