L.A. Transit Agency Fears Revenue Hit if FCC Approves Spectrum Plan

WASHINGTON, September 3, 2024 – Los Angeles County’s transportation agency joined hundreds of amateur radio operators in asking the Federal Communications Commission to deny a proposal to reconfigure the lower 900 megahertz band.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is worried the in-car transponders used for its toll lanes would see interference, the agency wrote to the FCC on August 30. The toll program processes 110 million transactions annually and has more than 850,000 active transponders, according to the county.

“If all existing licensed and unlicensed users of the lower 900 MHz frequencies are compressed into a significantly reduced portion of spectrum, Metro will face potential significant difficulties identifying frequencies that can be used for its transponder communications without being subject to interference moving forward,” wrote Mark Linsenmayer, the head of the county’s toll lane program. He argued that interference would “contribute to missed transponder reads, degraded customer experiences, and lost toll revenues.”