Commuter Rail Contracts

electricron wrote:If Amtrak had really wanted the contract with VRE, it might be a good idea to actually show up at the VRE committee meeting making the decision. Not even showing up can only mean one thing....

I don't think it's common for vendors to show up at the meeting where the contract is voted on. Keolis wasn't there either. Amtrak and Keolis (and the other two vendors) have doubtless had many meetings with VRE, and multiple chances to present their information. The two unions (UTU and BLET) were present and both gave speeches in support of Amtrak.

VRE Board minutes here: http://www.vre.org/about/Ops_board_item ... inutes.pdf

taoyue wrote:I don't think it's common for vendors to show up at the meeting where the contract is voted on. Keolis wasn't there either. Amtrak and Keolis (and the other two vendors) have doubtless had many meetings with VRE, and multiple chances to present their information. The two unions (UTU and BLET) were present and both gave speeches in support of Amtrak.
VRE Board minutes here: http://www.vre.org/about/Ops_board_item ... inutes.pdf

Never-the-less, if I had $98 Million deal on the line, I would have had some representation there....

The VRE board decision was approved by the relevant regional transportation commissions yesterday.

There has been an implicit assumption in this thread that it came down to either Keolis or Amtrak. This is not true, since Amtrak was not the runner-up:

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009 ... 009/505983
Two panels approve VRE deal with French company
Keolis bested two other bidders in VRE's competitive process, which rated companies on a 100-point scale considering nine factors. Bombardier Mass Transit Corp. placed second, and Amtrak, VRE's operator and maintenance provider since 1992, placed third.

taoyue wrote:The VRE board decision was approved by the relevant regional transportation commissions yesterday.

There has been an implicit assumption in this thread that it came down to either Keolis or Amtrak. This is not true, since Amtrak was not the runner-up:

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009 ... 009/505983
Two panels approve VRE deal with French company
Keolis bested two other bidders in VRE's competitive process, which rated companies on a 100-point scale considering nine factors. Bombardier Mass Transit Corp. placed second, and Amtrak, VRE's operator and maintenance provider since 1992, placed third.

Mod Note: The poster expresses frustration with something or someone, using run-on sentences and curious punctuation. Please remember to write things out using conventional sentences, punctuation, and spell check.

Yes teacher! I'll not get so wound up over my friends going away in the future! LOL!

P.S. I did run iespell against the post and it came up clean....

BTW why would you delete the post instead of allowing me to fix it after you PMed me???????

i say give them a go before shooting them down . It is entirley possible they will do a far better job than amtrak did .
also , if its part owned by SNCF , they will be used to working with unions , to say the least .

LIRR272 wrote:The problem is when VRE General Manager Dale Zehner goes to Amtrak and asks ‘why did my locomotive break down? You just repaired it the other day,’ and get an answer like ‘oh well, it just happens,” said Roeber.

Come on--do you really think Amtrak's management said that!!!!

First off, if they knew anything about the equipment they would know if the eqipment came in for flat spots and the wheels were replaced or cut and was released and shopped again for a compressor failure, your not going to know about the compressor failure when the original problem was flat spots.

I bet if they were to look at the maintenace history of the equipment, it would tell a different story. You can see how long the unit was shopped, for what reason, and how many days in service (or the number of days out of service or between shops).

Lets just say VRE may not have liked the answers they were given.

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Gonna butt in here and give some more info.

Keolis is officially the new operator. That's been decided. Amtrak operating crew are offered the chance to switch to Keolis and keep their pay, seniority, retirement and benefits (not to mention a "9-5" job, evenings, holidays and weekends off). There is supposed to be at least 6 months of change-over with the new operator, so the Keolis folks will hopefully be taken under Amtrak workers' collective wing for training and such. Keolis operates in Europe as well as Canada. All Amtrak crew would have to have been retrained anyways come next year because of the new locomotives on the way to VRE. The start of Keolis' contract should coincide with the delivery of the first new units.

None of the Amtrak/VRE conductors I've spoken with are interested in going over to Keolis, but I've heard differently about some of the engineers (because of job security mostly). A little birdie told me that VRE has been trying to get away from Amtrak for quite awhile...but you can't break a contract.

In short, Amtrak got beat out of a contract bid. They were sole-source for almost 2 decades and I personally believe that Amtrak didn't think VRE would go with another operator. So the bid wasn't very money-friendly, they had an enormous start-up cost, and they apparently didn't even fight the decision in the time allotted. The crew unions had more objections than Amtrak did.

Good decision or bad, things are changing overall for VRE. New operator, new locomotives, new cars, new tracks, new stations, new jurisdiction (Spotsylvania signed on).

Consider what happened at Metrolink. A majority of employees had transferred over from Amtrak to Connex. And now the Metrolink contract is being sole-sourced back to Amtrak. Given this precedent, you can see why people working VRE are reluctant to transfer.

It's pretty clear that VRE had some beefs against Amtrak. Whether or not Amtrak management knew that ...

What happens to the crews that dont want to change to keolis ??? do they stay with Amtrak ,and lower senority crews get the push ???

Given that, apparently, VRE wrote it into the contractual requirements that whoever won the new bid (Keolis in this case) had to take on the existing employees at their current seniorities, when the time comes to renew the contract couldn't VRE just do the same thing, and if Amtrak won, they'd have to put the employees back where they were? Maybe Metrolink did not include that requirement for some reason in the latest contract with Amtrak, but had in the contract Connex won? Something seems a little strange here.

Keolis can promise all they want, but in absence of a signed contract with unions, it would still be a crap shoot for any employee, joining such a outfit.
as for promising seniority ?? employees still loose their national seniority on Amtrak roster, and having seniority on a 40 man VRE roster means nothing.

I'm still trying to figure out were the maintenance will be done? The second question which I still don't get is: Why did the state of Va. go with Amtrak to increase service to Lynchburg and Richmond instead of allowing the VRE to provide service to those cities and ones in between?

Along those same lines, the contract between Amtrak and Va. is for five years. Looks like the state is hoping the new contract between the VRE and the new operator will be well established by that time and then they can do away with Amtrak at that point. Just doesn't seem right to me, but business is business.

Any thoughts on this?

LIRR272 wrote:I'm still trying to figure out were the maintenance will be done? The second question which I still don't get is: Why did the state of Va. go with Amtrak to increase service to Lynchburg and Richmond instead of allowing the VRE to provide service to those cities and ones in between?

VRE is a commuter service when the Lynchburg and Richmond services are long distance services that they want run with Long distance equipment and also want to give people from the North an one seat ride to get more people to visit VA.

LIRR272 wrote:I'm still trying to figure out were the maintenance will be done? Looks like the state is hoping the new contract between the VRE and the new operator will be well established by that time and then they can do away with Amtrak at that point. Just doesn't seem right to me, but business is business.
Any thoughts on this?

VRE isn't ran by the State, they are two different entities, just like LIRR and MTA are NOT aligned with the State of New York.

As for maintenance, VRE is building maintenance facilities capable of doing all the work they need at their Crossroads facility.
http://www.vre.org/about/cip/crossroads ... nance.html
Crossroads Maintenance Facility
Scope: To construct maintenance facilities at the VRE Crossroads yard. This project is to design and construct a Service and Inspection (S&I) building, a rail car carwash, and new storage track. The S&I building will house a 100 ft long concrete inspection pit, overhead crane, shop, worker welfare facilities and office space. A new storage track will be constructed leading to and from the S&I building.
Scheduled Completion: September 2008
Project Budget: $8.3 Million

I'll add I'm not sure they met the September 2008 goal, never-the-less it should be ready in plenty of time!

wow a 100 foot pit, that fits two cars only, not great, if you have to inspect disk brakes on entire fleet. plus do the engines.