Our Rolling Stock Database Draft is Out
As mentioned in the writeup, this database is still incomplete, in systemic ways that matter to the analysis. In particular, European metros show a diva effect in which Paris and Berlin have higher costs than the rest, and the database has more trainsets from them and fewer from cities where costs are lower, like Madrid, due to data availability. (For the same reason, I would not trust the database on European tramways until we add more items.)
Pedestrian Observations 
Great ! Thanks, Alon & the Transit Costs Project team.
What is the standard of data? Does it have to be from some official report or something?
There’s tons of Japanese rolling stock purchases with the price in the news, so it’s surprising that you’d have trouble finding it.
It is more readily available for smaller operators’ purchases (e.g., Fukuoka Subway 4000 series has a publicly known price, JR East E235 series just has some estimates), which would skew the results towards what the small railways are paying, but from the estimates you see of E235, etc., the big railways don’t seem to be getting a massive discount for their order volume.
After actually digging, yeah the data for Japanese trains is pretty sparse. When you just read the news it’s easy to notice that prices are available for many train orders, but when you look for something specific, yeah prices are available for a very small subset of train orders.
However, it seems like the government publishes a regular industry summary report https://www.e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/file-download?statInfId=000040213529&fileKind=2
It breaks down the numbers by private/JR/public/export, motor/cab/trailer, and regular EMU/Shinkansen/DMU, and new/refurbish. So not exactly what you’re looking for, but if you want averages, then the government has done that for you already.
And Japan produces so few trams, and even low speed intercity trains represent a small slice of the pie, so you can probably assume that the regular EMU average tracks the typical urban/suburban train pretty well.
I did some searching for Alon a couple of weeks back so its partly on me. Yeah, its frustrating and there is clear upward bias (e.g. Kyoto’s new series). The big ones in particular (JRs, Kintetsu, Tokyo and Osaka metros) are cagey. It is private proprietary information, in Japan rolling stock doesn’t usually get direct subsidy*, so the documentation that exists for physical infrastructure isn’t available for rolling stock.
I found similar averages for the cost of overall rolling stock (plus maintenance costs) in the official Ticket Price regulations the government publishes, but they weren’t much better than the link you provided (which is useful).
N/B This was just me spending a day trawling online, so there are probably ones to find (best numbers I got were for Yokohama and TX) among the public railways which produce more public documentation that Legacy and New Privates. Unfortunately at lot of them (Sapporo, Hiroshima Astram) like their bespokery. Worse the most valuable info is generic Legacy private and JR EMUs plus the 3 big metro operators.
*If it does happen its through the rolling stock manufacturers getting their share of Japan’s massive system of industrial soft-loans.
They also publish average costs of components, so I wonder if the cost increase can be traced to something.
Just from how and when costs grew from 1 oku JPY/car to 1.5 oku JPY/car, I suspect it’s either SiC power electronics (also supported by the fact that many trains are using hybrid SiC instead of full SiC), or a general cost increase from trains being a variant of a manufacturer’s standard product instead of a variant of a train type of JR East/etc. that was built by many manufacturers.
There has been inflation too plus consumption tax so we should expect some level of increase (especially given imported content). Again its opaque as hell, and there is probably some real problems “Galapagos Island” of self-dealing, which is most obvious in the refusal to adapt to ETCS taking over the world.
To be honest the main reason I’m skeptical about Tokyo metro privatisation is that given the through-running there are big hurdles to rationalise the fleets given the growing troubles getting enough technicians for maintenance. I actually think
The cities and the national government need take seriously how aging is going to force more structural change on the railway industry. Instead, its “keep doing what we always do but harder” and “仕方がない”. The privates themselves are clearly get some of this, with Nankai and Keisei absorbing Semboku and Shin-keisei subsidaries plus their pushes to elevate their lines onto viaduct and add PEDs. But they exist in a regulatory/tax/loan environment where the government is imposing choices while pretending not to. This is even more true of buses.
And Japan is clearly a laggard in automation with only JR East really showing any initiative, because its sheer size means it can rationalise its workforce relatively easily, even the Yamanote is less than 5% of its workforce, whereas everybody else has a mainline which to automate basically destroys the backbone of their operational workforce. Yes the sheer number of level-crossing impose a lot of restrictions especially in through-running Tokyo, but that’s a problem that will be solved. Kanto, Kansai and Aichi prefectures need to start helping their operators pool their workforces.
N/B A lot of these problems are about the public-private divide so much as the entire Japanese organisational setup, seniority, permanent employment, reliance on keeping a wage-restraint/high-savings social model inherited from the high growth era etc. All of these are wrecking everything in Japanese society not just trains.
Indeed the recent issues with freight service derailing is a symptom of the government refusing to engage with the problems of the never-privatised JRs (Hokkaido and Freight in particular).
I need to walk back a bit of what I said. Once I added together the very real campaigns to install Platform Edge gates (doors less so), and to elevate lines to eliminate level crossings plus the long shift “1-man car” across urban services its clear rail operators themselves have some idea. The issue is that these things are concentrated in urban areas where the cost per driver is low because of high ridership.
Again this where some policy interventions using JRTT as a hub, and workforce poling, plus looking at the easy-to-automate lines (the small metros plus all the smol-lines in Osaka).
Still its better than my home nation which just had its best operator (TfL) reject automation for the forseeable future because they can’t build anything cheaply, even a PED.
@Borners how much should a 100m PED cost?
I haven’t looked into it in detail. It depends on a lot including rolling stock. I’ve found Nagoya spent 8 billion yenn (80 million in PPP dollars) to PED (that’s before likely cost overruns in the last line the Tsurumai). Other places e.g. estimates that to convert, e.g I found an estimate from Ministry of Land that the whole works cost as much 10 million PPP dollars per station (but thats the maximum).
Certainly its not quite the level TfL expects. Japanese PEDs are relatively low expense because they aren’t doors so much as gates.
https://www.kotsu.city.nagoya.jp/jp/pc/SUBWAY/TRP0004864.htm
The standard is that we’d like it to be published somewhere reputable, where vendor and agency press releases are considered reputable (Alstom isn’t going to lie about how much it got for a train order).
Borners sent me a couple Japanese lines; we haven’t put them in because his sources were general media reports, which are biased upward because the media notices the boondoggles more.
With the new little expansion, Barcelona is spending 15 million to buy 3 new trams Alstom Citadis, each with a length of 32,5 m, the ombudsman office even explains why the difference in the expected cost of buying the trams between the initial project in 2017 and the tender in 2022:
https://www.sindicatura.cat/documents/36414/85841/2023_22_es.pdf (pages 47, 48)
“se preveía el proyecto MR1, de adquisición de 3 nuevas unidades de material móvil, por un importe previsto de PCA de 9,75 M€ (…) El 11 de agosto de 2022 se adjudicó el contrato a ALSTOM Transporte, SAU, por 15,54 M€,”
The tender is here:
https://contractaciopublica.cat/ca/detall-publicacio/2e671731-c9ba-7b22-bded-eb992ef5c144/106577570
15.547.802,26 € sense IVA 18.812.840,73 € IVA inclòs (21,00%)
From the pictures leaked I think the new ones are Citadis 305, while all the trams already in service are 302.
Another one: Catalan government buying trains for a new airport shuttle in Barcelona. 177 milions for 10 trains, 100 meters long each one. Including 15 years of maintenance. Tender done in 2022:
https://contractaciopublica.cat/ca/detall-publicacio/105511141
Import: 214.838.730,70 € amb IVA
Import sense IVA:177.552.670,00 €
Another one: Barcelona Metro buying new trains for lines L1 and L3. These are two different series because L1 trains have to be built to a different gauge.The numbers are a bit confusing, because initially the tender was for 42 trains, but it got expanded to 50 trains. Tender done in 2019.
https://contractaciopublica.cat/ca/detall-publicacio/7c897c3f-067c-0cc2-0201-b1739e95c92b/48948637
https://contractaciopublica.cat/ca/detall-publicacio/7c897c3f-067c-0cc2-0201-b1739e95c92b/53019815
But the contract PDF in the tender has the specifics that each train series 8000 costs 6.412.812,65€ and each train series 7000 costs 6.344.011,66€. The technical specs are here, the platforms of both lines are 90 meters long, but the trains are a little bit shorter, around 85 meters long:
https://contractaciopublica.cat/portal-api/descarrega-document-antic/48948637/1d1c8e7594c45937cff1338626bb13c6
There seems to be no Swiss data, am I looking at the sheet incorrectly, or is this actually missing?
Do you have a mechanism / process to submit data, or at least press releases that could be used to built it?