Connecticut Pays Double for Substandard Trains
Alstom and Connecticut recently announced an order for 60 unpowered coaches, to cost $315 million. The cost – $5.25 million per 25 meter long car – is about twice as high as the norm for powered cars (electric multiple units, or EMUs), and close to the cost of an electric locomotive in Europe. It goes without saying that top officials at the Connecticut Departmemarknt of Transportation (CTDOT) need to lose their jobs over this.
The frustrating thing is that unlike the construction costs of physical infrastructure, the acquisition costs of rolling stock were not traditionally at a premium in the United States. Metro-North’s EMUs, the M8s, were acquired in 2006 for $760.3 million covering 300 cars (see PDF-p. 16); a subsequent order in 2013 for the LIRR and Metro-North was $1.83 billion for 676 cars. But then over the 2010s, the MTA’s commuter railways lost their ability to procure rolling stock at such cost. The $5.25 million/car cost is not even an artifact of recent inflation – the cost explosion was visible already on the eve of corona.
It appears that some of the trains are on their way to the fully wired Penn Station Access project, expanding Metro-North service to Penn Station via the line currently used only by Amtrak (today, Metro-North only serves Grand Central). The excuse I’ve heard is that it’s happening too fast for Metro-North or CTDOT to order proper EMUs. In reality, Penn Station Access has been under construction and previously under design for many years, and the regular replacement of the rolling stock on the other lines is also known well in advance.
Nor are these unpowered coaches some kind of fast off-the-shelf order. If they were, they wouldn’t cost like an electric locomotive. The Trains.com article says,
The 85-foot stainless steel cars, designed for at least a 40-year service life, will be based on Alstom’s X’Trapolis European EMU railcar, designed to meet Federal Railroad Administration requirements and tailored to meet Connecticut Department of Transportation needs.
In other words, Alstom took an existing EMU, gutted it to make it an unpowered coach, and then added extra weight on it for buff strength, to satisfy regulations that have already been superseded: the FRA rolling stock regulations were aligned with European norms in 2018, in dialog with the European vendors, and yet not a single one of the American commuter rail operators has seen fit to make use of the new regulations, instead insisting on buying substandard trains that no other market has any use for.
Ideally, this order should be stopped, even if CTDOT needs to pay a penalty – perhaps laying off top management would partly defray that penalty. The options should not be exercised. All future procurement should be done by people with experience buying trains that cost $100,000 per meter of length, not $210,000. If this is not done, then no public money should be given to such operations.
Rolling stock costs, Europe version
Meanwhile, in Europe, inflation hasn’t made trains cost $210,000 per meter of length. In the 2010s, nominal costs were actually decreasing for Swiss FLIRTs. Costs seem to have risen somewhat in the last few years, but overall, the cost inflation looks lower than the general inflation rate – manufacturing is getting more efficient, so the costs are falling, just as the costs of televisions and computers are falling.
Even with recent inflation, Alstom’s Coradia Stream order for RENFE cost 8.95 million € per train. I can’t find the train length – the press release only says six cars of which two are bilevel. An earlier press release says that this is 100 meters long in total, but I don’t believe this number – the bilevel Streams in Luxembourg are 27 meters long per car (and cost 2.53 million €/car; Wikipedia says the 34 trains break down as 22 short, 12 long), and other Streams tend to be longer per car as well. Bear in mind that even at 100 meters, it’s barely more than $100,000/m for a train that’s partly bilevel.
Other Coradia Stream orders have a similar or slightly higher cost. An order for 100 trains for DSB, all single-level, is 14 million €/train, including 15 years of full maintenance; Wikipedia says that these are 109 meter long. An order for 17 trains totaling 72 27-meter cars for the Rhine-Main region cost 218.2 million €. A three four-car, 84-meter train order for Abruzzo costs 19 million €.
To be fair, some orders look more expensive. For new regional operations through the soon to open Stuttgart 21 station, Baden-Württemberg has ordered 130 106-meter Streams, mixed single- and double-deck, for 2.5 billion €; I think this is the right comparison, but the cost may also include an option for 100 trains, which makes it clearer why this costs double what the rest of Europe pays. Baden-Württemberg’s Mireo order costs 300 million € for 28 three-car, 70 meter long EMUs – less than the Streams, more than the norm elsewhere in Europe for single-deck EMUs.
But what we don’t have in Europe is unpowered single-level coaches at $210,000/meter. That is ridiculous. Orders would be canceled and retendered at this cost, and the media would question the agencies and governments that approved such a waste.
It’s only Americans who have no standards at all for their government. Because they have no standards, they are okay with being led by people who cost the public several million dollars per day that they choose to wake up and go to work, like MTA head Janno Lieber or his predecessor Pat Foye, or many others at that level. Because those leaders are extraordinarily incompetent, they have not fixed what their respective agencies were bad at (physical infrastructure construction) but have presided over the destruction of what they used to be good at and no longer are (rolling stock procurement). The result is worse trains than any self-respecting first-world city gets for its commuter rail system, at a cost that is literally the highest in the world.
Pedestrian Observations 
Why is there no demand for European transit leaders to be fired for paying over $100k per meter of railcar when the Japanese are paying half of that?
A tad over $100k per meter/$40 million a trainset is what JR Central pays for the N700S…
India is supposedly paying about double /meter for its order of 24 E5 sets. (11,000 crore INR for the order). Not sure if that’s a bad deal, or some financing/currency conversion magic.
Look at the order priced in yen?
Taiwan is paying about double that for N700S too. And that’s after years of protracted price negotiations that included THSR publicly threatening to go to European manufacturers instead.
JR Central: 114B yen for 19 trainsets = 6B per set in 2022
THSR: 124.1B yen for 12 trainsets = 10.34B per set in 2023
THSR trains are also shorter than Tokaido Shinkansen trains (12 vs 16 cars, though I don’t know if car length differs significantly).
THSR and Shinkansen cars have identical dimensions (i.e., intermediate cars are 25 m long).
A few factors might account for that particular price difference:
– THSR’s trainsets will have additional/alternative European-spec equipment for use on their line
– JR Tokai’s 19-trainset order is a top-up to the initial batch of 40 trainsets, for a cumulative production run of 59, which means greater economies of scale than THSR’s smaller and customised order
– International shipping is obviously more complicated than domestic delivery
– JR Tokai almost certainly has sweetheart relationships with its longstanding local suppliers
Then you wonder why many US Transit Agencies are now buying their rolling stock from China instead. Its the RED TAPE that escalated and JACKED-UP the procurement prices of railway rolling stock as well. A good example is the R46’s of 1975 cost $297,000 per car, and the R62/R62A’s of 1983 cost $903,000 per car. Something is not adding up here. Then you wonder why there no longer anymore railway car builders left in the USA since 1978 when Pullman Standard closed-down.
But one of the biggest regulatory cost drivers for this order hasn’t even been relevant for years, now. This is just an(other) American transit agency head who’s under no pressure to do their job well because the public don’t expect them to.
I don’t wonder. St. Louis and Pullman were protected by Buy America for so long that they stopped making good product; the R44s were defective and the ensuing lawsuit drove St. Louis out of the business, and the same was true of the R46s and Pullman. The R62s, imported from Japan because Reagan defunded MTA capital funding and this meant the MTA did not need to comply with Buy America, have been a lot more reliable; subsequently, federal funding was restored, but the global vendors would set up plants in the US for that.
Chinese rolling stock doesn’t seem especially cheap, but I only have very incomplete data, namely orders made in Singapore that may come from European or Chinese vendors. Japanese rolling stock is very cheap, on the half as expensive, half the life span principle.
> on the half as expensive, half the life span principle.
The original bargain was “half as expensive and we’ll buy twice as often” but the actual lifespan is much longer than half. Plenty of Japanese suburban trains get refurbished for use both in rural railways in Japan, and overseas.
Promising to buy railcars twice as often for half the cost is a net zero bargain, however it shows that railcar manufacturers have plenty of room to offer better than net zero bargains to those who can pressure them into it.
The 209 series trains, the first to be value-engineered for a shorter lifespan, were supposed to last 13-15 years. Today, some are still soldiering on after 30 years in service.
Funny enough, Yamanouchi Shuichiro, the JR East chairman who reportedly came up with the ‘half-lifespan’ concept, predicted this as far back as 1999: “The big irony is that I think the trains will be able to last longer than the old ones – that’s because of their stainless steel bodies, very simple equipment and components that are easily replaced.”
Wasn’t this half life philosophy also the driver for Stadler’s GWT? The certainly did not last long, compared to the Domino train sets which are only now getting decommissioned by the SBB.
The German Kriegsloks were supposed to have short lifespans, yet there were BR 50 still in service in Bosnia in 2017…
I think it’s more that Stadler’s sort-of-successor FLIRT is a far better offer for nearly everywhere in Switzerland (not just SBB), so the GTWs largely remain in service but there’s no longer a reason to buy more of them.
The GTW was an interesting design with the modular power cube section and all, and definitely a precursor to the FLIRT, but power electronics and suspension technology move on. (Oh yeah, of course various places in the USA still order GTWs, speaking of not ever “moving on”.)
SBB placed an order for 286 Flirts to Stadler in 2021, these are supposed to various local train units, including the Domino train sets (1984 – 1996), the Nina ones (1996 – 2005) and the GWT (2002).
Officially, one goal is to have a more uniform fleet.
The GTW concept was a low-cost vehicle, being able to get some traffic back on rural lines, as well as to provide accessibility, with short travel times. Their comfort is limited (2+3 seating, no armrests etc.), although the entrance areas are multi-purpose, and show very useful.
The very first generation of GTW (aka Bluemeschischtli), 10 units, have been retired, at age 25 to 30 (I (finally) rode one a few months before retirement, and they were pretty run-down, compared to the big batch operated by Thurbo). The mentioned order for FLIRTs will eventually replace the then 25 years old Thurbo GTWs.
First, you’re confusing Buy America and Buy American. Buy America wasn’t in existence at the time of the R44 and R46 contracts. Sure, the R44 and R46 cars had issues, but to infer that this was the reason for St Louis Car’s and Pullman Standard’s demise is to oversimplify the situation. The biggest contributor was likely industry overcapacity at the time, resulting in cutthroat pricing.
Are US transit agencies allowed to buy Chinese products?
Yep – Boston, Chicago, LA, Philly ???, and several other have purchased railcars from China recently, since Kawasaki has been suffering from QC and workers morale at its Lincoln Nebraska plant recently, and Bombardier (a one time excellent Canadian railcar builder) went out of business in 2021, so who else its left ???
That’s also why railcars recently built and delivered by Kawasaki Railcar Corp (also built excellent railcars as well) has a lot of problems and ongoing issues with same. THIW’s.
Both train orders for Baden-Württemberg include maintenance, 10 years for the
Mireos and 30 years for the Corradia Streams, but *not* 100 more trains for the latter.
This means 40% more than DSB pays, but including 15 years more
maintenance and the double decker cars.
The Mireos might be more expensive since they are required to be delivered
faster than most orders, but I’m not sure, they seem much more egregious to me. Especially since the BEMU Mireos ordered a few years earlier only cost 80k€/m with 30 years maintenance and electricity included (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Mireo#Ortenau-Netz/Hermann-Hesse-Bahn).
My understanding is that maintenance is pretty expensive (especially on the tail
end of a trains life), so it’s hard to compare them 1-to-1.
But it’s pretty obvious that Connecticut is doing something very wrong.
I should figure out comparative costs of rolling stock maintenance – I only have numbers for track and right-of-way maintenance, since they’re extensively studied to inform government policy here for the pricing of rail paths under the open access mandate.
This old (2007) slide from SBB re train lifecycle costs is always relevant:
Rollmaterialerneuerung im Zeichen des Kostendrucks — Die Lebenszykluskosten (personal archive from bit-rotted original at http://www.litra.ch/dcs/users/2/Infofahrt_2007_Referat_Blumenthal.pdf )
The breakdown for lifecycle cost over 25 years (of then-newish FLIRTs):
* Purchase price: 56%
* Vehicle maintenance: 25%
* Power (ie electricity): 11%
* Cleaning(!): 8%
ie up-front capital cost is little over half.
Speaking of bit-rotting away, I made the same old comment referencing the same old document re fucking abysmal and unquestionably criminal US rolling stock procurement right here on ye olde Pedestrian Observations blogge back in 2011, when Alon was rightly incensed about Amtrak criminally overpaying for crappy bespoke special snowflake USA-USA-USA electric locomotives. How times change … NOT!
Ooh, thanks for this; I’m cribbing the document for a long document we’re about to release at ETA about through-running, cataloguing how low the marginal costs are of extra off-peak service. The only thing I can’t quantify right now is the impact of the peak-to-base ratio on crew efficiency; the Elizabeth Line and the Hamburg S-Bahn both look like they’re staring at 600 hours/driver from below, same as Metro-North (Berlin S-Bahn: 675), while the RER A is around 460.
The “Maintenance and Services” part of the procurements is usually very customised, and very hard to compare, particularly with different service lengths. It may in some cases include the building of new depot/workshops.
Congress and the FRA should define the standard train car, working with train manufactures so that all are standard off the shelf from several suppliers. Probably 5 different trains because of reasonable variations. This is how wide it will be, how tall, where the doors will be (you are allowed a removable plug if you want less ) floor height, allowed wheel gauges, it will take 25kV overhead power. It will be automatically controlled when in operation, except for an optional emergency stop button.
The main allowed variations are around height, width, lenght and floor heigth as this is what you build platforms around and there are good reasons to have 4-5 different choices here.
Door placement is important because that is where your platforms screen doors when you next remodel the station.
Wheel gauge matters mostly to remove a pointless choice to argue about. However by sticking to a standard you get options to trade with someone else when (not if) something weird happens .
25kV overhead power even if you run third rail, because we want you to change to this standard which is overall better.
Automatic operation is critical, not only is the US a labor expensive country, but transit is often limited because they can’t get enough qualified operators at any price. This is also about safety and schedule, automatic operation won’t compromise either, and the exceptions are handled by an emergency stop button. Of course once you have it we then talk about frequent running all day which should be a goal anyway.
Since the standard is set nobody will look at obsolete regulations as they don’t qualify. Either that or they don’t get federal subsidies and that makes it a local problem.
Congress should probably have a few standard stations as well, but this is hard as there needs to be enough customization points to fit the local geography. Still a modular station for local (up to say 6 tracks) would cover most stations and bring down costs if done right. I don’t really know how to propose this in a way that results in useful stations that everyone will use.
Difficult for congress to enforce a standard if the median swing voter drives everywhere.
The FRA already defined this, in the alt compliance process. The commuter rail agencies don’t even seem aware that this happened. The MTA can just spec out normal trains; American RFPs for rolling stock are on the order of 10 times longer than their counterparts here, because of this kind of incurious incompetence.
It feels to me that if you knew a few well connected train fans in Connecticut you could get this sorted.
I mean if you could get this pointed out to the equivalent of the well connected elite in the Home Countries, oh boy. And I’ve canvassed enough of them in elite parts of the Home Counties to know they know their shit – and that they are extraordinarily well connected.
American casework is different from British casework. In Britain, the Home Counties NIMBYs can influence the government in general on issues they perceive as local, which include NIMBYism but also better local rail service. In the US, the equivalent power only includes blocking change rather than effecting it; thus, suburban NIMBYs block housing and create a ruckus over infrastructure (like widening US 1 through Darien, on the drawing board for almost 100 years), but they can’t really get positive infrastructure investments that are good for them on the agenda. Some of the Connecticut residents who Gregory Stroud connected me with were floored when I pointed out how to do speedups; one, living on the New Canaan Line, was floored when, in response to her complaints about train horns, I gave examples from Denver for how upgraded grade crossings that would eliminate the horns only cost $750,000 apiece. It’s noticeable how the state listens, or purports to listen, when the complaint is NIMBY (“don’t build high-speed rail through the Old Saybrook marina”) but not when it’s about anything else (“please install quad gates at level crossings,” “please stop having 25% train timetable padding”).
Please write a letter to the governor and the dot about not buying the cringe coaches
Please write a letter to the governor and the dot about not buying the cringe coaches
I think a lot of the British projects that have happened make sense directly. For example you improve the speed of the Chiltern mainline and that increases the direct fare revenue on that line.
In contrast if you improved Maidenhead to High Wycombe you could run more Crossrail trains to Maidenhead than you can right now as the freight could go a different way. Additionally it creates more of a network. This sort of project has not typically been built in Britain.
When you have proposed increasing New York subway service off peak you said it wouldn’t cost much money but wouldn’t be free – so the state would still have to spend more. However you probably have better odds of winning the argument on this EMU project where it would literally be cheaper to buy EMU trains here.
The ALT compliance process is only concerned about safety of the trains when the collide with a different train. A very important thing that needs to come first, but it is not what I covered. What I covered won’t make trains cheaper directly (though some things being standard allow manufactures to reduce variations and build simpler jigs so indirectly it may long term), but will make operations better in ways incurious management is not looking at.
Is there any reason to leave the old process in place? Can we ask the FRA eliminate the other standard for passenger cars and thus force buying the cheaper version.
@HenryMiller, I complement you, this is an often overlooked but very important point. A gauge standard would make rolling stock cheaper by eliminating customization/design cost, increasing competition (every manufacturer offers a product that fits), let smaller operators to piggyback on larger orders (or re-order the same thing later), and allow a re-sale/re-use market (small factor since most cars are used to end-of-life, but useful on the margins). Congress should ABSOLUTELY specify this and refuse to fund any car purchase outside the standard or any infrastructure that does not accommodate the standard.
For commuter/regional/intercity rail this standard should be AAR Plate B (10’8″ wide, 5’7″ platform offset), 4′ floor/platform height, 85’/26m length, 25kV pantograph, quarter-point doors for single levels/end doors for bi-levels. Basically an M9 should be able to pull up to any mainline platform in the country and find level boarding. You could ambitiously specify AAR Plate E for more bi-level headroom, but Stadler KISS fits in Plate B and I don’t know how much the higher clearance would affect route options (New Jersey Transit is most affected with Multi-levels being sub-Plate B height, but that restriction needs to be engineered out with new Hudson tunnels and refurbishment of existing tunnels). You could go for 25m length to standardize internationally, but I’m not sure if there is any benefit.
A quiet tragedy of US transit is that Congress didn’t do this for mass transit when the “Great Society Subways” (DC Metro, BART, MARTA) were funded in the 1960s. Here the standard should have been NY Subway B-division cars (10′ wide, 60′ length, 3’9″ platform, 600V DC). NYS B-Division has more cars in service that any other agency by far (more than all the others combined?) and is also used for Philadelphia’s Broad St and I think Boston’s Red Line. Had it been mandatory in the 1960’s and beyond then NY, SF, DC, LA, Miami, San Juan, etc. would all be using identical rolling stock, instead of three different voltages today, two different widths, three different lengths, 3 different platform heights, etc.
“good reasons to have 4-5 different choices here.”
Actually no, you want things very standardized because of infrastructure interface (“schedule, rolling stock, infrastructure”). Width affects platform offset, floor height affects platform height, door placement affects platform screen doors, etc. Other than mainline vs subway the only variation should be AAR Plate F as a mainline option to accommodate greater headroom in double deck trains (Superliner, Bombardier Bi-level, etc.). In the interim you would need an exception for power since Metro North and LIRR have so much third rail, but 25kV overhead needs to be the goal going forward. Otherwise the exceptions are places where tunnel gauge precludes the standard (NYS A-Div, parts of Boston, etc.). The exceptions become 4-5 ‘alternatives’, but you let those agencies deal without making it an option for anyone else.
There is a place for low platform trains (not on a subway, but if your bus doesn’t have capacity then a streetcar is next). While I like the idea of just two trains, between all the trains already in use and the need to political make modifying existing lines “cheap” I think 4-5 is more realistic, allowing the final switch from whatever train you have to the standard to happen at all stations in one night.
All dimensions should be in metric. Even if we convert the old feet/inches to metric. I really want to push the US to align to world standards unless there is good reason not to. Besides, engineers already work in metric, so we eliminate conversion issues by making the standards metric as well.
Ideally we would go through ISO: the FRA process should be if it is safe and an ISO standard that at least 3 different manufactures make every component (track, switches, trains – getting components right is tricky – I don’t expect the brakes to interchange between different manufactures, coupling cars from different manufactures is debatable, and running trains from different manufactures on track made by someone else should be assured) then it is approved. This would give people who really want things like monorail a path forward that doesn’t result in a gadgetbahn.
I’m not concerned about rail gauge too much because it is not hard (or so I’m told) to adjust the width of the wheels: only a few parts need to be changed out in manufacturing. (doing it on the fly is harder, but most trains will operated the same section of track and use the same maintenance yard its entire life.
What I am concerned about most is operations. Thus bi-levels should not be part of the standard. There are too many compromises running bi-levels and so that shouldn’t be done in general. Maybe Amtrak land cruises can – but I use land cruise to be strictly that: if anyone using the train is just trying to get around then spending less time at intermediate stations is important to them and so there should be no bi-levels.
There is a place for low platforms – if you are running low platform trains/streetcars. All train boarding should be step free – for disabled accessibility, dwell time, and convenience with strollers/luggage/etc. Platforms on the NEC are 4′, which given the state of US passenger rail is a de facto standard. There will always be more passengers on the NEC than anywhere else (both intercity and commuter) so the US should not buy trains that cannot run on the NEC or build infrastructure NEC trains cannot run on.
If you set 4-5 standards then you will never get a “final switch” because you have been funding the 4-5 alternatives. There are some operations (NYC A-Division, etc.) that will NEVER change due to infrastructure lock (tunnel diameter, etc.) Those are your 4-5 alternatives. You can work out a deal to fund legacy track with tight controls on extensions, but new build and conversions should be standard. Since you mention it, in addition to the mainline & subway, there should be a street-running standard, given the multiple widths and low floor heights for trams. Maybe people movers too, so airports are not vendor locked to Alstom/Mitsubishi and as a light metro option for mid-size cites, like Vancouver’s success with Skytrain.
Agreed on metric, “4′ platform” just sounds more familiar than “1,219.2mm platform”
This isn’t a job for ISO. The US uses AAR/Janney couplings, Europe uses Scharfenberg. AAR Plate B is different than Berne gauge. NEC platforms are 4′, Europe a mix of 550/760mm, Japan a mix of 760/1100/1250mm. This, as you first noted, is a job for Congress to set the US standard (mentioning couplings reminds me that an automatic coupling standard for brakes/power/data should be added to my list above, as well as ETCS for signals).
Rail gauge is VERY important. Not for procurement (Toronto does fine buying trains with its non-standard gauge, same with Philly and PA Trolly gauge) but for operations. If rail gauge is not standard it affects maintenance ops (you cannot sub a train from Line 1 to Line 2 in a pinch) and passenger ops (Line B can’t branch to Line D to it even if it makes sense).
Switzerland has one of the world’s most developed train networks and uses bi-levels extensively. The most important interoperability happens low (rail gauge, platform/floor, third rail) and most loading gauges have the height (but not British!). I tend to depreciate bi-levels since many heavily used lines are mostly/exclusively single deck (from LIRR to the Shinkansen) but I see no reason to exclude them.
The radio spectrum is allocated differently in North America, you can’t use ETCS here. The installed, interoperable, base of what is already in use, is good enough. It’s big enough that it has reasonable prices.
@adirondacker12800 radio spectrum is easy. You specify the protocol you use in car for the train controls to talk to the rest of the train control (CAN bus, Ethernet, and 100-250VAC 50-60hz on a connector with some pinout) . Then you leave a space someplace to plug into the radio in the car (8u of a standard rack). You might throw in a standard for how to control all those LCDs scattered around while you are at it.
The important part is figuring out what variation is allowed and what is not. Some variation is US only (maybe nobody else can agree on platform height with us – but at least we constrain variation), some manufacture (I don’t care about metal alloys or fiberglass – so long as it safe and fits, but a factory has to choose), and some are each train (paint is cheap). Some things though cannot vary – you cannot put your doors where you want, even though manufactures don’t care, you have to be consistent for the future platform screen doors.
If you aren’t using European radio spectrum it’s not ETCS. The installed base along the Northeast Corridor is big enough to interest vendors and it’s good enough. The freight railroads send locomotives all over the continent. That’s enough of an installed base to interest vendors and it’s good enough.
ETCS is independent of the radio frequency. ERTMS = ETCS + GSM.
So is ACSES and the alphabet soup of stuff the freight railroads use. Finding radio spectrum was one of the things freight railroads claimed was a problem. That doesn’t change that the installed base of North American stuff uses North American radio spectrum allocations, that it works and has an installed base that is large enough to make it cheap. And it’s all interoperable.
Colloquially “Amtrak” loading gauge. There are hundreds of stations across the Northeast, Chicago and Denver that use it. Approximately forever there will be vendors supplying it.
Exactly. We missed the boat in the 60’s when we built subways south of Philly and west of Chicago but didn’t set a gauge standard – if the US is about to have a mini-rail renaissance with CAHSR/TX Central/Brightline West/ConnectUS then we shouldn’t miss the boat again with mainline/HSR rail standards.
This is all just nuts.
You do realize that exactly the same bottom-of-the-barrel incompetent asshole rent-seeking contractors (paging LTK Engineering Services!) and unemployable-elsewhere US agency staffers (all of them, all the agencies) would be writing and enforcing these “standards”, and “designing” the US standard railroad “cars” to meet the challenging unique special national railroading environment of the 1940s, tailored to the state-of-the-art domestic manufacturing processes capabilities and technologies of the 1930s, right?
It’s not like you say “ooh 25kv plate F, it’s a STANDARD!” and all of a sudden you have a choice of the Zürich S-Bahn or Hong Kong MTR or Rodalies de Catalunya something.
No, what you’ll get is the worst combinations of MBTA and LIRR and Metra, with scamming scambags kicking you in the face, forever and ever and ever. Guaranteed. 100% proven track record.
M9s and R211s exist, carry hundreds of thousands of people daily, and bear no resemblance to 1930s tech. The R211s have extra wide 58″ doors for better passenger flow, even wider than Hong Kong MTR at 55″, and the R211Ts have open gangways, just like other big players. I can’t fix stupid – like making R211Ts prototypes instead of the whole order – but I do know if Atlanta, Baltimore, Miami, etc. were told they wouldn’t have gotten money unless their platforms, track and tunnels matched West 4th St then a smart person at those agencies (or DC, SF, Philly, LA) could tell Kawasaki “I want R211Ts” without any of the “challenging, unique, special” factors you note cripples US transportation planning.
Instead, a smart person in Miami is told no custom open gangways because they need a custom 700V DC power system it only shares with Baltimore’s powerhouse subway system. DC and MARTA have the same train power, DC and BART the same platform height, BART and MARTA the same train width. Oops! None of these systems opened 7 years apart can share rolling stock orders, let alone take advantage of the R221s New York already designed. We can’t undo the past, but we don’t have to look back in 40 years to see CAHSR, TxCR, and grandson-of-Acela in the same boat (or three different boats, as it were).
Yes, Zurich S-Bahn has nothing to do with the superiority of UIC gauges vs AAR Plates. But there is also noting wrong with “Amtrak gauge” or B-division railcars. Lack of standardization is more a symptom than a cause of US transit failure, but it can be treated easily. People follow the money. Caltrain wouldn’t be digging in the CBOSS rabbit hole if Congress made New Starts grants (for anything) only available to lines with ETCS. There’s no room for consultant and staffer incompetence like “broad gauge will make these trains so stable crossing the Bay” when basic parameters are force fed to you. I.e., when there is a standard.
If anything, looking to Congress IS treating the cause. For all of its own issues, Congress now and then passes legislation that breaks the paradigm and forces never-will-change-bureaucrats or entrenched-special-interests into line (Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Defense Dept., Section 230 of the DCMA and trial lawyers). Using federal transit funding to force adherence to basic standards and prevent some stupid choices is a good start.
Here’s your Standard American Passenger Railroad
Built from scratch.
In the twenty-first century!
To the finest American Railroading Standards.
With no expense spared!
By American Railroaders.
For American Railroaders.
With Standard American Trains.
Money was no object!
Fucking futuristic.
Every red-blooded American must want this. Congress needs to act! Everybody must have this.
Geoge Jetson is wetting his pants with excitement about this future.
It’s standard. It’s American.
Wow! Golly!
The problem with this video is what exactly? That transit stations were empty during 2021 due to continued work from home? That a station halfway between downtown and the airport in an undeveloped area won’t be packed?
No complaint you can level here has anything to do with the fact that the trains you see can run between New Haven and Boston unmodified. The station isn’t futuristic but plenty of stations around the world (even on lines that are better used like the RER or better run like an S-Bahn) look like this station (well, the background scenery is probably nicer elsewhere.) You have lots of valid complaints about failed US transit practices. Standardizing rolling stock requirements to speed procurement and lower cost isn’t a failed practice, it would be a best practice. Why complain so much about a policy that would help when there are so many policies that do the opposite?
It’s just awful the way they have electric trains and level boarding. That has a loading gauge that someone somewhere will have in the catalog forever because SEPTA exists. And all the other railroads in the Northeast. And Chicago. Awful.
…hows that whole Caltrain thing going?
“It’s just awful the way they have electric trains and level boarding.”
Thank you Adirondacker for saying this more succinctly and (deservedly) sarcastically than I could. Doesn’t this station even have cross platform transfers from the Silverliners to the Denver light rail system? You know, the kind of Verkehrsverbund integration and passenger focused design that America’s Finest Transportation Professionals (TM) are forever incapable of providing forever and ever…
Sounds like the americans dont even want to learn from us. As pretty much all our trains are DMU/DEMU/EMU and have been for 25 years.
Only the sleeper has standard carriages other than the 125 at this point.
Yep. This is something Richard Mlynarik pointed out many years ago – that since the privatization of British Rail, many different companies had been operating trains, and all were buying MUs rather than locomotives and coaches. (The same is true of Japan – the only unpowered coaches and locomotives there are for freight or for the handful of remaining night trains.)
ÖBB “railjet” is the only significant locomotive-plus-passenger-cars non-EMU/DMU outlier I can really think of from the last couple decades. A huge ÖBB’s (over-?)purchase of Siemens “Taurus” locomotives may have had something to do with needing to find something for them to haul. (A bit like SBB with its late 1990s orders for IC2000 intercity double deck coaches and ubiquitous Re460 locomotives.)
Anyway, ÖBB is now down with Stadler KISSes for the next order of what they brand as “Railjet”, though Wikipedia informs me that ČD (and of course maximally retarded Amtrak) has continued to buy unpowered Siemens railjet sets (branded “Viaggio Comfort”) and in fact transferred some from the Austrians.
A certain class of railfans do of course go on and on about “flexibility” and sometimes “comfort” of old-style unpowered carriages, but it’s really just nostalgia combined with insularity and innumeracy.
There’s the ICE-L and most other Talgo products for starters, plus the TGVs if you count them as loco-hauled.
If the TGV carriages don’t have motors then they seem similar to the 125 or 225 in Britain – so they aren’t EMUs.
If they count as DMUs/EMUs then we have had few non EMU/DMU trains since the early 2000s.
Deutsche Bahn has been buying Bombardier TwinDexx coaches to be pulled by DBAG 146 locomotives for InterCity service since 2015 or so. Of course they are also buying Stalder KISSs for the some of the same services.
Yeah, it seems that loco-hauled is making a come-back.
After ÖBB’s Railjet there are now orders by DB (ICE-L, Talgo cars + Vectron or Talgo locos), Danish DSB (Talgo cars + Vectron loco) and Czech CD (Railjet derivative + Vectron loco?)
I would describe the TGV and similar trains (like the ICE1, ICE2 and Renfe 102) as EMUs, even though they don’t feature distributed traction, since they are a unit not to be separated out in the field. There are quite a few other EMUs with less obvious power cars like the Desiro HC that only feature traction at the ends.
IMHO if loco and cars are separately developed components and/or intended to swap out in the field (like ICE-L, Railjet, …) it’s not an EMU, but otherwise it is. My impression is that loco+car sets are mostly bought now for international use in europe, because getting an EMU approved in many different countries is a huge pain. Classic single passenger cars that can be flexibly interchanged are really dying out, with many of them reaching the end of life and few new ones being bought (except for Poland, Hungary, …).
> Deutsche Bahn has been buying Bombardier TwinDexx coaches to be pulled by DBAG 146 locomotives for InterCity service since 2015 or so. Of course they are also buying Stalder KISSs for the some of the same services.
The specfic makeup of the Bombardier-IC2 trains results from the fact that there were running contracts with DB Regio for Twindexx coaches and DB Cargo for Traxx locos, which at least for the former were not utilized because DB Regio lost quite a few tenders or couldn’t use Twindexx coaches where they won. It was a short-term bandaid because ICE4s were delayed (that didn’t help much because the modifications for the Bombardier-IC2 trains led to them being delayed as well).
The Traxx 146/147 locos had to be modified quite a bit to work well with the Twindexx locos (leading to software issues to this day and also one of the reasons why only those locos are used with IC2, not even interchanged out in the field) and I have little doubt that DB would have wound up with BR 445 or something like the KISS if they had started a new tendering process.
The Stadler KISS were similarly just happenstance, Westbahn was looking to sell theirs and DB FV was in desperate need of reliable slower rolling stock and getting to Switzerland.
The whole IC2 thing is just bandaid upon bandaid, without something that resembles a real strategy.
Japan never really many electric locomotives to start with. The urban privates are EMU from the start since they were basically interurbans and they set the pattern for electrification of the older urban lines like the Yamanote loop. There were delays on the national railways because the military pre-war saw steam as more reliable against air attack (electric) and blockade (diesel). When they switch to diesel postwar its DMU. My guess is they treated EMU’s as the norm and DMU’s as a non-electric extension.
Whereas the UK postwar has the biggest hang-ups about abandoning steam and outside the London area with EMU dominant TfL a lot of the operations show steam era hangups in the infrastructure and operations. Very long idle times in city centre terminals, little facility with timed overtakes etc.
I think one of the issues with timed overtakes outside Japan is that either the slow train needs to stop for a long time or you “lie” on the public timetable (i.e the public timetable has the express leaving at 00 and the stopping train leaving at 00, but the working timetable has the express leaving at 00 and the stopping train leaving at 03, this means that if the express has to pass the stopping train later on you aren’t screwed as the stopping train can just run early)
And with online timetables there’s no reason the public arrival time can’t be 05 and the departure time 02 for example.
I don’t get what you’re saying here. Laws of physics are the same in Japan.
If we compare with UK, the main obstacle is simply the lack of passing loops and to some extent signalling. The more you have the shorter the headways necessary and more capacity for timetable recovery when something goes wrong. (Japanese HSR lines have loops roughly every 30km basically, conventional about every 6-7km roughly everything 3rd station).
There is a trade-off between having high frequency, timed overtakes and interlining as all add complexity and risk of timetable cascades. We need to go on an interlining diet to get more frequency and reliability in the UK because like Japan we are a densely populated and urbanised island.
@Borners, I went to the Amalfi coast on holiday earlier this year and we wanted to go to Paestum. The train we ended up catching was the weekend only 10:22 from Salerno to Paestum which takes 43 minutes to complete the journey as there is a timed overtake by two express trains at Battipaglia where it waits for 16 minutes. The other trains appear to take 27-32 minutes to complete the same journey which is significantly quicker.
In fact if the weekend only 10:49 service stopped at Paestum as well it would cover all the stops of the 10:22 and only be ~8-10 minutes behind it – plus it would also connect more generously with the boat from Amalfi.
To go back to Britain the slow train from High Wycombe to Marylebone takes 52 minutes to complete the journey – this is compared to 29-37 minutes for the faster trains. If you made the slow train wait for the faster trains to pass with the same allowance as Italian example above then the slow train would take ~67 minutes – which is a lot slower. Better perhaps would be to 4 track the line between the Whitehouse tunnel and Gerrards Cross – that way the fast train(s) could overtake over a longer stretch of train where the stopping trains make three stops at Beaconsfield, Seer Green and Gerrards Cross. It takes the stopping train approximately 8 minutes longer than the express to complete the journey from High Wycombe to Gerrards Cross so that would be a good overtaking opportunity with some slack and without holding up the stopping train.
I do agree with you that if there isn’t the money to do that level of investment that more passing plasses for times where things haven’t gone according to plan would still be a good idea – but I am not sure how much value they have in terms of timetabling.
My understanding is that Penn Station Access will be run with M8’s. Those cars cannot run on ex-PRR power, so the third rail will be extended onto the Hell Gate line, and the trains will change over east of the phase break near Gate interlocking. Since the third rail shoes are fixed, those cars will be captive to Penn Station and won’t be able to run to Grand Central without having the shoes changed.
I have read that MTA has figured out adjustable third rail shoes.
The entire M8 fleet already has dual over- and under-running third rail shoes. See this photo for the top and bottom contact surfaces on the shoes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M8_(railcar)#/media/File:M8_railcar_-9101_contact_shoe,_September_2016.jpg. Those same shoes are common to the MNRR/LIRR M7 and M9 fleets too, for what that’s worth.
Yep. (But they have to be modified in the shop for this.)
No they don’t.
The SBB just placed an order for a new lot of Stadler KISS EMUs at 1.3 MCH₣ for 60, 150m long units, so that would be ~150K€ / meter.
https://www.bahnonline.ch/9189/die-sbb-bestellt-60-doppelstock-zuege-bei-stadler/
Yeah, these are fully bilevel.
They are exercising options (although the modifications of the original design are rather extensive). Otherwise, they would have had to do a full international RFP procedure, which would have taken several years longer.
BTW, the first units are already delivered, and operate currently between Zürich and Schaffhausen.
I was curious how WMATA’s recent order for their 8000-series railcars compared and did some quick checking. It seems the contract with all options exercised is 800 railcars at a total contract price of $2.2 billion dollars. Which works out to $2.75 million per railcar or about $120,000 per meter of length. This contract was only signed two years ago, and involves Hitachi building an entirely new factory in Maryland and isn’t just modifying an already existing design. How it’s twice as expensive boggles the mind.
Given WMATA’s chronic railcar shortage, or at least its desire to eliminate some of the older rolling stock, I’d expect them to exercise all options like they did with the 7000-series. But if they don’t the base contract is about $1 billion for 256 railcars (and the factory) or about $3.9 million per railcar and about $170,000 per meter of railcar. Still much less expensive for a custom multiple unit vs a modified unpowered car, and again Alstom doesn’t need to build a completely new factory.
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/rapid-transit/hitachi-rail-wins-wmata-8000-series-contract/
“Even with recent inflation, Alstom’s Coradia Stream order for RENFE cost 8.95 million € per train. I can’t find the train length – the press release only says six cars of which two are bilevel. An earlier press release says that this is 100 meters long in total, but I don’t believe this number”
More specific information that I found on part of this big buying spree in Renfe, at a bit more than 75k€ per meter of train.
https://rodalies.gencat.cat/es/detalls/article/Nuevos-trenes
“Alstom construirá en Santa Perpètua de Mogoda 49 trenes de 100 metros por un importe de 367,6 millones de euros. Stadler proveerá el servicio de Rodalies de Catalunya con 20 trenes de 200 metros y una inversión de 307,7 millones”
…..buff strength, to satisfy regulations that have already been superseded: the FRA rolling stock regulations were aligned with European norms in 2018, in dialog with the European vendors, and yet not a single one of the American commuter rail operators has seen fit to make use of the new regulations,
“FRA regulations” is ambiguous. Does that mean the old regulations or the new regulations? The new regulations, harmonized with European ones, are still FRA regulations.
Montreal likely has a more than a few relatively new Bombardier Multilevels that they would probably sell cheap. They work fine on the New Haven Line. According to Wikipedia NJTransit optioned 100 Multilevels in 2010 for 2.67 million a piece. Adjusted for inflation it would be 3.75-ish.
This means the old regulations.
And yeah, in 2010 the American rolling stock acquisition costs were pretty normal; in the 13 years since, this changed. I was pointing out in 2010-11 as I was building the first cost comparisons that New York subway rolling stock costs were not at all high, and (per meter of train length) neither were those of the M7s; since then, the situation has changed.
“This means the old regulations.”
And your evidence is?
The arithmetic is …unsure… and it’s mixed specifications, power cars, unpowered cars, unpowered cars with ADA restrooms and cab cars. Assuming NJTransit and SEPTA exercise all the options, the MU Multilevels are 3.6 million per car. I’m sure Alstom could paint a red stripe and slap a CTDOT logo on them.
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/its-official-bombardier-signs-with-nj-transit-for-multilevel-iii-contract/
This past week, Brightline ran test trains at 110 mph on new track in Florida (Brevard County, the Space Coast between Palm Beach and Orlando). Did they overpay for construction? For rolling stock?
Conveniently enough, Brightline’s contracts with Siemens are online. Inconveniently enough, the exhibit attachments to the contracts, most particularly “Exhibit 7 (Prices)”, are not.
But looking through Amendment 3 to the Vehicle Terms and Conditions, between All Aboard Florida Operations LLC and Siemens Industry, Inc., dated June 1, 2018, section 2, costs “Phase 2 trains” (11 locomotives and 50 carriages) at $257608375.75, or let’s say $25m per diesel loco+5 coach train, which seems does seem like a fuck-ton for … nothing great, honestly. Hello, 1985 called and wants its trains back!
Also, “Owner is granted an option to order 2 additional Type 1 (Smart) Coaches for an additional $8.5 million”, so bottom line seems to be $4.25 million per 25.908m long unpowered passenger coach, which doesn’t seem like much of a bargain, but it’s their money, and as far as I am aware there was no “Buy American” gun being held to their head (though more likely there was, and it was cheaper to buy from Siemens in Sacramento than to engage with the the bullshit, even if it was extra-legal bullshit) to make them pay $164k/m
This isn’t unintentional. It’s on purpose. It’s in the interests of many in the US that passenger trains not be successful. Passenger rail success threatens existing bureaucracies, housing markets, and road construction interests. This is sabotage/corrupt, not incompetence.
Very true statement. However, you left out the dreaded and wasteful Military Industrial Complex that has NOT won a war since May 7, 1945.
The US military’s job is to maintain American power, not win wars. It has achieved its goals very successfully, if at enormous cost.
(It also wins wars. Iraq was a US military victory: Saddam Hussein was overthrown, and the ethnic group that Bush wanted to put in charge is in charge. The war aim happens to have been stupid for long-term American geopolitical interests, but “the war aim was stupid” and “half a million people died” are not the same as “can’t win wars.”)
Korea was also a military victory; the communists invaded but didn’t take over the South, look at a satellite photo of the Earth at night sometime.
Grenada was a military victory, the island did not become a small Cuba.
The US won the war against Iran in 1988, it only lasted a day, but it brought Iran’s Tanker War to an abrupt halt.
Panama was a victory, Noriega died a prisoner, not a dictator.
The US won the Gulf war, the Kuwaitis got Kuwait back.
Afghanistan was also a military victory, until the decision to withdraw US forces it was a US backed government in Kabul not the Taliban.
I’m curious to hear more about how this “lose the war but maintain power” policy works. After your enemy wins, do they let you re-invade and submit to you because they feel bad at how easy it was to defeat you?
Yep – like two years ago on August 15, 2021 Amerika also WON its almost 20 year old war with the Taliban in Afghanistan (aka the graveyard of empires). Also see – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjZifLBsv0E&ab_channel=GeckoGamer0209 and this as well – https://usawatchdog.com/full-faith-credit-of-a-bankrupt-insolvent-government-bill-holter/ Lets use some of that money wasted on wars to rehab our mass transit and rail infrastructures so that it does not become another Calcutta LOCAL, which it has already begin recently. Have a nice evening pal.
Graveyard of empires
Which empire, exactly? The USSR collapsed internally, the UK won (it lost once and then won the next time, which was pretty common while it was building up its empire), the US within seven months proved more than capable of organizing NATO’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Edit: the US did lose in Afghanistan, don’t get me wrong, but that’s because it’s too unimportant to care about. Hell, the invasion of Iraq happened precisely because Afghanistan was so unimportant the neocons wanted a more important country to invade after 9/11 (see for example description by Tanner Greer); in that more important country, the people the US wanted to be in charge are still in charge (and this is bad for American geopolitics but, again, neither “stupid war aim” nor “500,000 people died” is the same as “failed to achieve the war aim”).
Alon – you asked me – what is the GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES – here’s your answer https://thediplomat.com/2017/06/why-is-afghanistan-the-graveyard-of-empires/ and this as well – https://www.npr.org/2021/09/08/1035125396/afghanistan-the-center-of-the-world Maybe we should be rebuilding our own road and rail infrastructures instead of wasting trillions in losing battles abroad. Have a wonderful evening.
Yes, and I gave you a counterexample to the “Afghanistan broke empires” line: no it didn’t, the Diplomat piece neglects to mention that the British Empire won the second Anglo-Afghan War and got what it wanted (elimination of the threat to its control of India). The premodern history in that piece is wrong too – the Greeks settled Bactria and dominated it for centuries after Alexander.
And I would also like to add that if we keep doing what we are doing now – we will collapse like the USSR did between 1989 and 1991. Remember this – EMPIRES RISE & EMPIRES FALL and the USA is really No exception at this point, and it will collapse internally as well, if we do not get our act together to fix our own problems such as our education, healthcare, roads and rail systems, and etc. Is that the best we can do by wasting our valuable resources and money by going after Trump all the time ??? Have a nice evening my friend.
Alon – this is also the main reason everything is going UP in prices, including the standard cars and railcars as well – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Th-oPhx8es&ab_channel=BeAwakened and this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW5TorUJZBw&ab_channel=GeraldCelente You can comment there as well if you disagree with them. Have a nice evening.
I’m not going to comment on YouTube. Give me a break.
The US lost in Afghanistan by choice. Until the US chose to pull out in 2021 the presence of a very small number of troops taking very few casualties for half a decade kept the Taliban out and the people the US wanted in charge in charge. In no way did the Taliban defeat the US militarily, although some might say they defeated the US politically by convincing two Presidents in a row that the US should pull out.
Agree – also check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW5TorUJZBw&ab_channel=GeraldCelente
Yeah, and FLN defeated France by politically convincing de Gaulle to prioritize his own racism (“Colombey-les-Deux-Mosques” said the turd) over everything else. Political victory is still victory.
“Political victory is still victory.”
Yes, but Joe Wong’s original comment was that the US Military had not won a war since VE Day. The US Military did win in Afghanistan, the US just decided to leave anyway (I guess my sarcastic remark about winning then giving up to the loser actually happened, just with the US on the winning side….)
“the Greeks settled Bactria and dominated it for centuries after Alexander.”
Fun fact, the city of Kandahar, spiritual home of the Taliban, was likely founded by Alexander the Great and was originally named something like Alexandria. Alexander -> Iksandar -> Kandar -> Kandahar (roughly).
Somebody should have told the Japanese the war was over. Very very technically we haven’t been at war since 1945. If you aren’t at war you can’t lose one.
Typically a State Agency has to have at least three bidders to be able to award. If that’s the case and this was the most responsive and responsible bid then it seems like rolling stock prices in the US are on the rise. And it’s not just the managers the oversight on a bid of this size would be significant, someone would have had to do an independent cost estimate to determine if the bid was responsible. CTDOT would likely have had to include for this bid in their Capital Plan and have included an estimated amount for the procurement. The Capital Plan should be on their website and include details of how the Capital Plan budget was developed. Would be interesting to see what they included for this. Of course they may have done this out of a separate State budget but typically this kind of stuff is in the approved Capital Plan.
Not sure about Connecticut, but New York had some one-bid contracts, e.g. on the 7 extension.
Yes they can if its a negotiated contract, we negotiated the CM019 Cavern excavation for East Side with a single bidder. It’s possible but definitely not encouraged. Negotiating against yourself is never a good idea. Whether this is what happened here I have no idea, even though I live in CT. If there were multiple bids it’s a bigger issue regarding rail car costs than if it was a single bidder. Again sole source procurements for this kind of stuff is pretty difficult under the various State and Federal procurement guidelines and never represents good value.
in the private sector it is common to go with a single bid after selecting the vendor. Sometimes it is a call to do things time an materials. So long as your vendor is honest this will be your best deal. However what makes this all work is reputation, and history of a good deal on similar deals that you repeat all the time. Private industry gets bids on anything that isn’t do the same thing you do for every other customer.
The important part here is trains should not be a contract anyone bids on. You look at the catalogs and choose Hitachi and call them to place an order at standard prices with whatever color scheme you want. They should have catalog options for seat layouts, wheel gauge, maintenance plans, and other such things to choose from, but you get the train performance and basic shape from the catalog. You might discover Hitachi’s factory is full for longer than you want and so call your second choice, but you don’t get a bid as the price of trains should be transparently published for all to see. You don’t need a bid because everyone knows the prices on this standard part.
That might be possible in the US if the country had 50 metro systems instead of 5 1/2, and they were all built to a standard design …
Which is why if you read elsewhere on this page you will see me advocating for standard metro trains. Ideally a world wide standard, but there are enough small cities with train (tram, metro, and regional rail) systems that I think we can pull this off and in turn bring prices down because train manufactures need to compete on list price and catalog features now custom designs.
This is called a sole source award, since their was only one sole bidder wanting to do this project, and no one else was interested or submitted a bid, probably because of the complexity of the task required to do the work for same.
I’m well aware of what a sole source contract is, and its not what your describing. Sole source is where the agency only approaches a sole source not if they go out with an RFP and only one company responds, Typically an agency like MTA is required to avoid sole sourcing, but if only one bidder responds and its a negotiated contract it may proceed.
Then scrap the only one bid, and re-bid again to see if any other vendor is interested in bidding on this task. Sometime, the specs are written to favor one vendor against another, so you have to take that into consideration as well.
Interesting that the CTDOT Capital Plan for 2023 to 2027 has $450m in FY 2024 for rail fleet.(coaches) ….. very few details in the document itself though, just a single line entry in the list of projects.
Sounds like a sole source procurement or only a sole bidder was interested in doing this project. Then scrap the bid, and re-bid to see if any other qualified builder would bid on this contract to see if they can attain a lower bid. Maybe this bid was written to favor one builder verses another. What else can i really say.
A useful discussion here. Does anyone know whether the $315 million includes anything more than 60 railcars, such as maintenance?
None of these cars are for Penn Station Access. These are to replace the Mafersas on the Hartford Line. Not everything can be an MU.
Additionally, rail cars are not priced by meter of length. There is a standard American passenger car length – the new design features drive up the price. Logistically, keeping with the standards that already exist for station platforms is more cost effective.
The vendors can make you a train in any reasonable platform height you’d like; the UK has high platforms, almost as high as the Northeastern US, and doesn’t pay a premium for equipment.