By Craig Smith
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Copyright 2007 Tribune Review Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — A statewide emergency radio system — 10 years in the making and millions of dollars over its original budget — still won’t be fully implemented for two to three years, officials said.
Some state lawmakers want public hearings about delays in the project. It began in 1996 with a price tag of $179 million, but is expected to cost more than $360 million when completed.
“It’s one of the biggest boondoggles in the state of Pennsylvania. We need to be called on the carpet about it,” said Sen. Donald White, a Republican from Indiana County and former chairman of the Senate’s Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee.
The Statewide Public Safety Radio System would allow state police to communicate directly by radio with PennDOT and other state agencies, as well as municipal police and county dispatch centers.
When state police Cpl. Joseph Pokorny, 45, of Moon, told dispatchers Dec. 12, 2005, that he was pursuing a car on the Parkway West, Carnegie police officers who were in the area didn’t know it because they can’t hear state police on their radios.
Pokorny was shot and killed during a traffic stop near the Rosslyn Farms exit of the Parkway West.
“One of our officers was in the general area,” said Chief Jeff Harbin. “Carnegie is not that big -- 1.2 square miles. We had two officers on duty that night and we knew nothing about what was going on.”
The new radio system was used by PennDOT, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard during the Valentine Day’s snowstorm that stranded thousands of motorists on interstate highways in Eastern Pennsylvania.
PennDOT’s radio transmissions during the storm increased from a daily average of 7,700 uses to more than 80,000, said Charles Brennan, deputy secretary for public safety radio.
Officials lauded the system from a technology standpoint, but cited breakdowns in human communications and protocols during the storm.
The ability to communicate with various agencies makes the radio system attractive, despite its delays, said Robert Full, Allegheny County emergency services chief.
“When Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, there was no state system ready and the public safety radio system couldn’t handle the more than 1,000 responders who showed up there,” he said.
A demonstrator model of a mobile radio system was brought in to allow agencies to communicate, said Full.
“At first, it was pretty chaotic,” said Brad Shober, deputy chief of the volunteer fire department in Shanksville, the village nearest the crash site.
Parameters changed
State officials said the $311 million spent over the past decade on the Statewide Public Safety Radio System went beyond original estimates because the parameters of the system changed in the post-9/11 world.
The system’s original goal of covering 95 percent of each county’s land mass would have missed miles of roadways running through valleys in northern counties, Brennan said. That required more cell sites, increasing the cost of the system.
The state expanded the system to all emergency responders, requiring connections to county dispatch centers and further inflating costs. That helped push the cost from $7,000 a square mile to about $30,000 a square mile.
Brennan said $57.1 million is needed to complete the system, which he described as a “process of continual adjustment.”
“The choice was between doing the project fast and doing it right. We’ve chosen to do it right,” he said.
Lawmakers said the delays have made the price tag even less tolerable.
“The idea of a statewide system is good, but this is almost like a financial black hole. I think we have to take a look at this,” said Rep. Joe Petrarca, D-Armstrong and Westmoreland, a member of the House transportation and appropriations committees.
Halfway point
The state is nearing the halfway point in erecting the more than 1,100 towers and cell sites needed for the radio system.
The system has 217 high-profile towers and 244 low-profile cell sites. Thirteen towers and 180 cell sites are expected to be added by the end of the year. When completed, the radio system will consist of 235 towers and 900 low-profile cell sites.
Acquiring land to hold the antennas remains the biggest challenge, Brennan said. The state approved the system 10 years ago without knowing if it could get access to sites on which it wanted to place the radio towers.
But even if the system is ready, some state agencies might not be.
It could be two or three years before state police switch to the new system, said Capt. Adam Kisthardt, who is overseeing implementation of the radio system.
“We have very complex needs,” he said.
State police are testing the system and made 2.7 million data transmissions during January.
In addition to rising costs, there have been other problems, lawmakers said.
If something could go wrong over the past decade, it probably did, said State Rep. Timothy Solobay, a Canonsburg Democrat who serves on the House Transportation and Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness committees.
A company that was awarded a contract to build radio towers went bankrupt, halting construction for nine months, and some state agencies battled over placing the towers on land they controlled, he said.
Brennan said disputes over the towers were resolved through negotiations. Radio structures and antennas are placed at over 300 state and local government-owned sites, he said.
Full is disappointed by the project’s slow start.
Until last year’s Major League Baseball All-Star game, Pittsburgh had little coverage Downtown on the statewide system, Full said. An antenna was eventually placed on top of the State Office Building to allow use of the system during the game.
“It took some arm twisting,” he said.