#14 Orange Line Cars 1400-1551 (From Red/Orange Procurement discussion)

And everybody here in New York thinks our MTA is so frigged up. Ha!............

Did Siemens bid on the contract? Seems like it would have been a shoe in as the BL and OL cars are almost identical and they could have just made the bodies bigger for the RL

Maybe we should think long and hard, again, about how the three heavy rail lines each operate at differing height and width specifications. Maybe we should, you know, address that on some level. Perhaps a future rail car order could be a somewhat coordinated purchase. No interoperability, but at least there might be some cost savings re: size and scale of purchase.

No, it won't be easy.

CSRR573 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:28 pm Did Siemens bid on the contract? Seems like it would have been a shoe in as the BL and OL cars are almost identical and they could have just made the bodies bigger for the RL

Going back to the 80s, since Hawker Siddeley had built both the Blue and Orange Line cars on the same PATH PA3
design, when UTDC (which merged with Hawker SIddeley's Thunder Bay works) did the 01700s, why couldn't they
been the same design?

If this whole thing was a communist plot, it was damn devious. But it’s leaving quite a bit of money on the table if you’re CRCC. I hope it really was just simple management incompetence due to travel restrictions.

I wonder if the T could go to Siemens and get them to build out a batch of OL cars from the BL car specs. They just don’t have the pantograph, right? Then some super sized RL ones?

I suppose there’s way too many hoops for the T to jump thru to arrive at a simple solution like that. Maybe our legislators need to address some of the red tape.

Believe that a previous post stated Siemens did not bid on the Orange/Red Lines cars.
The T wanted the 01700s to be a newer version of the 01500/01600s with similar equipment and shells.

wicked wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:31 pm Maybe we should think long and hard, again, about how the three heavy rail lines each operate at differing height and width specifications. Maybe we should, you know, address that on some level. Perhaps a future rail car order could be a somewhat coordinated purchase. No interoperability, but at least there might be some cost savings re: size and scale of purchase.

No, it won't be easy.

This is the actual reason why the red and orange line cars were ordered at the same time.

NY subway system is much larger and has only two form factors! If we recall, the Blue Line tunnel was designed for 1904 trolleys, then converted to subway cars. Main Line (Orange) cars had to initially fit through the Central Subway. (I assume current Orange Line cars would not fit). Red Line cars were basically designed to be big, and all T tunnel work since ~1960s is supposed to fit around Red Line cars iirc, although there is the famous scene of the first Bluebird car to go through the new Harvard Station took out the security cameras.

diburning wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 5:01 am

wicked wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:31 pm Maybe we should think long and hard, again, about how the three heavy rail lines each operate at differing height and width specifications. Maybe we should, you know, address that on some level. Perhaps a future rail car order could be a somewhat coordinated purchase. No interoperability, but at least there might be some cost savings re: size and scale of purchase.

No, it won't be easy.

This is the actual reason why the red and orange line cars were ordered at the same time.

Yes, and with standard specs there could be even more cost savings in the future. They're still building shells for two types of cars, not one, no matter how many parts are shared between the two.

Would reprofiling platform height/width be something that would go through tons of red tape and an ADA review? I'm the idiot transit fan. I'm sure someone smart here knows more.

CSRR573 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:28 pm Did Siemens bid on the contract? Seems like it would have been a shoe in as the BL and OL cars are almost identical and they could have just made the bodies bigger for the RL

They did not bid, so it was never an option to buy from Siemens.

wicked wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:31 pm Maybe we should think long and hard, again, about how the three heavy rail lines each operate at differing height and width specifications. Maybe we should, you know, address that on some level. Perhaps a future rail car order could be a somewhat coordinated purchase. No interoperability, but at least there might be some cost savings re: size and scale of purchase.

No, it won't be easy.

That is how the current Red/Orange procurement was handled. The cars are largely similar, just different dimensions.

wicked wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 3:13 pm Would reprofiling platform height/width be something that would go through tons of red tape and an ADA review? I'm the idiot transit fan. I'm sure someone smart here knows more.

Tunnel dimensions are also a factor so the cost to do this would be astronomical.

It's still cheaper to customize the cars than to demolish and rebuild the Blue, Orange Line, and Central Subway (Green Line) tunnels.

Would be nice if one of the lines exactly matched line dimensions in other cities like NY or Chi.

I believe tunnel enlargement is part of the “Green Line Transformation” initiative.

Why can't the dimensions of the cars be based on the smallest dimensions? I assume that's the Blue Line.

Yes, platform heights and widths would need to be adjusted, but that would be orders of magnitude lower than outright rebuilding tunnels.

Also, this: https://www.wcvb.com/article/mbta-expec ... n/42674031

Gonneville said the MBTA team has been "aggressively managing" CRRC but suggested leaders and Board of Directors "need to take a step back and take a fresh look at this contract a fresh look at this contract and really begin evaluating different strategies" to get new trains delivered as soon as possible.

Gonneville isn't sugarcoating things, but backing off is the last thing that needs to happen. Apparently the T hasn't managed things aggressively enough.