jackintosh11 wrote:Yes, but the Arrows are substantially older.
It's nowhere near as simplistic as age of existing equipment. It's bread-and-butter procurement dynamics for third-generation trailers vs. first-generation self-powered equipment. They're drawing up first-time specs for the MLV EMU, so the gestation period is going to be years longer even if they issued the RFP tomorrow. Design, testing, debugging of a pilot car, and very slow rollout of the initial cars before kinks are pounded out and pace of delivery cranks up. Look how long standard delivery times are nowadays for all manner of 21st-century computer-heavy equipment that has to go through some degree of first-time shakedown tests (e.g. Tier 3/4 locomotives, upgraded-design cab cars, new-design Amtrak baggage/dining cars). You wouldn't get first pilot EMU on the property before 2020, full order fulfillment before 2022. The MLV coach assembly line is still going on the MARC order, has enough common components with multiple ongoing 8-inch boarding BLV coach orders to have MLV assembly rapidly restarted if the production line goes idle, and has multiple other agencies--SEPTA, MNRR/LIRR, AMT--similarly on procurement schedules for MLV-spec cars that'll bid out in the next 5 years. Obviously with Bombardier an odds-on favorite for any of those orders since they're the progenitor of the design and anybody else underbidding them would have extra reverse-engineering overhead and testing for producing an MLV alternative. NJT can get Comet II replacements rolling into service in as little as 2 years. EMU's are fixed at absolutely no sooner than 5 years...longer at the rate they're going on the paperwork and project mgt. internal staffing.
Since their procurement needs are deep and well behind-schedule...not to mention originally scheduled to juggle multiple orders at a time in their official fleet plan
before everything started slipping off-schedule...they won't be single-tasking orders one step at a time. They don't have a choice to begin with; they have to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time to keep state-of-repair woes from completely imploding the whole system. And the wildly different manufacturing schedules differentiated by all the first-gen testing these EMU's have to go through means that a double-barreling RFP's would get the coach order more or less completed before the BBD assembly line turns its attention to the main thrust of the EMU order. So it ends up timing better to place a mass order in quick succession, because any which way the coaches are going to have half the gestation period and be completely done with shakedown tests, full deployment, and Comet II dispersal before the more challenging EMU pilot tests commence and start chewing up yard/staff bandwidth.