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

  • Discussion relating to commuter rail, light rail, and subway operations of the MBTA.
Discussion relating to commuter rail, light rail, and subway operations of the MBTA.

Moderators: sery2831, CRail

 #1614458  by Adams_Umass_Boston
 
They are not talking about walking away from the deal.

Apparently there is a clause in the contract that allows the state to fine them $500 a day in penalties. It sounds like this was not being implemented and now there is pressure to do so.
https://www.universalhub.com/2023/could ... ubway-cars

Not sure $500 a day is that much pressure, but here we are.
 #1614479  by octr202
 
wicked wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 7:54 pm 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.
Re: Dimensions - If you start designing for one class of car, designed to fit the smallest line, you end up sacrificing a lot of capacity on the Orange and Red for the sake of having a standard car. Not to mention, the Blue Line has a lower platform height, so you'd still need to do some heavy infrastructure modification in order to introduce smaller, less efficient cars to those lines. (And that's before you address the fact that if you ran 48' Blue Line cars on the other lines, you'd need a lot more cars to provide that capacity.)

Re: "Managing the contract" - Makes me wonder if Gonneville is trying to hint that there's only so far they can push CRRC. I'd like to see them pay through the nose, too, but let's face it. They've got little future in the US (due to international politics) so little incentive to make this disaster right. I'm starting to wonder how soon they'll just throw in the towel and back out of this whole mess.
 #1614492  by HenryAlan
 
rethcir wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 7:42 pm I believe tunnel enlargement is part of the “Green Line Transformation” initiative.
It's a very small piece of the project, modifying a couple of tight spots like the Boylston curve. The sort of modification required to get the Orange Line compatible with Red Line cars would be astronomically more complicated and expensive.
Adams_Umass_Boston wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 10:30 pm Not sure $500 a day is that much pressure, but here we are.
It is $500 per day past contractual delivery date, per car. This would be about $40,000 per day if we assessed it right now for every undelivered car.
 #1614496  by MACTRAXX
 
Everyone - I have been following this saga concerning CRRC and the new Orange and Red Line car fleet for some time - I am in agreement that the MBTA is in a bind especially with the aging Orange Line fleet in particular - at least the Red Line has three car types in service with only the remaining 1969 "Silverbirds" older in this case as most MBTA Forum members know...

What has always made Boston's Rapid Transit lines interesting to many including me is that each one of the four was designed and built separately and requires their own distinct car and vehicle fleet...As Octr points out well a single MBTA Rapid Transit car design to equip more than one line would not be a practical plan...

Taking note to the $500/day penalty that the MBTA is charging CRRC that would only amount to $182,500 over the course of one year/365 days...For a more substantial monetary sum - a thought would be the cost of one Orange or Red Line car each month - which would begin to add up and could be an incentive to get the contracts at least moving towards completion...Would there be a way for another carbuilder to step in and complete this contract for the remaining cars using the CRRC designs and facilities if need be?

With the note of $500/day PER CAR posted by HA - how many cars of both Orange and Red Line fleets are in the backlog and have not been delivered to the MBTA? I was not previously aware of exactly what the penalties to CRRC were - that original $500/day figure seemed rather low to me...

This is a tough situation that hopefully can be resolved at some point...MACTRAXX
 #1614573  by R36 Combine Coach
 
MBTA F40PH-2C 1050 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 5:27 pm they get what they deserve. The lowest bidder never is the best.....shocking.
In most states, low bidder wins by default unless issues of ethics or noncompliance.

But in the days of Budd, ACF and Pullman, a low bid would still mean a quality product. Budd low balled
NYCT's R32 contract in 1963 in an attempt in win such a large order, undercutting favorite St. Louis Car.
 #1614629  by diburning
 
R36 Combine Coach wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 8:44 pm
MBTA F40PH-2C 1050 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 5:27 pm they get what they deserve. The lowest bidder never is the best.....shocking.
In most states, low bidder wins by default unless issues of ethics or noncompliance.

But in the days of Budd, ACF and Pullman, a low bid would still mean a quality product. Budd low balled
NYCT's R32 contract in 1963 in an attempt in win such a large order, undercutting favorite St. Louis Car.
The MBTA's procurement terms have included the term "lowest qualifying bid" for a while now. The modifier of "qualifying" allows the MBTA to pick and choose which bidder to go with by disqualifying the lowest bidder over anything they choose.
 #1614644  by Diverging Route
 
A possible path towards resolution: Find another manufacturer to take over the contract and run the facility, with the expectation that they can use it after the MBTA orders are fulfilled. The new contractor can subcontract with CRRC for the outstanding shells yet to be manufactured/delivered from China. This allows CRRC to fulfill its obligations for the shells and be paid for the effort. But the new contractor is then responsible for management, quality, integration, and all other aspects of the existing contract. Once the MBTA orders are fulfilled, CRRC is out of the picture.
 #1614683  by jwhite07
 
Having occasion to be in Springfield over the past weekend, I noted that the view of the CRRC facility from Route 20 is regularly occluded by railcars spotted for the trash transfer facility adjacent to CRRC. Convenient, should the deal go awry?

Seriously though, a careful look showed there were many shrinkwrapped carbody shells and a number of untarped cars of both orange and red variety, but no evident activity or movement day to day. I presume they're running weekdays one shift still?
 #1614689  by charlesriverbranch
 
I have a possibly stupid question: how did we end up with three subway lines that are mutually incompatible? Weren't they all originally built by the Boston Elevated Railway Company? Why would the company, having built one line, not build the next one to the same standards, so as to only have to maintain one model of car? Why would the tunnels not be the same size, or the platforms not be the same height? Why would they want to pay someone to design three different vehicles instead of ordering something off the shelf?

When I visited the Soviet Union in the 1970s, I noticed that all the rolling stock on the various Moscow Metro lines was identical. The Leningrad Metro was running the same cars. And I saw in a magazine a few months later that the Prague Metro was running the same cars; indeed, I think every metro system in the Soviet bloc ran them. They seemed to be dependable enough. I remember seeing clocks in some stations that would count down to zero from two minutes, and at zero, a train would pull into the station.

If the Soviets could do this, why couldn't the Boston Elevated Railway company or its successors, the MTA and the MBTA?
 #1614690  by Red Wing
 
A small part to your answer is the Blue Line Tunnel was originally a trolley tunnel which are smaller than heavy rail. I'd have to assume that Orange line was originally mostly an elevated line so that could do with it's measurements and finally the Red Line was built to the new standards that from what I understand became pretty universal.
 #1614699  by jwhite07
 
As Red Wing mentioned, the various subway tunnels were built at different times and for different purposes. The Green and Blue Line tunnels were both originally built for streetcars, while the Orange Line tunnel was built for elevated cars which were small enough that they could (and did in the case of the Tremont Street Subway) operate in the same tunnels designed for streetcars. Only the Red Line tunnels were originally built for large subway cars.

Later in the history of each, the various lines (with the exception of the Red Line, which always has operated cars of roughly the same dimensions as it started with) later acquired cars as large as the clearance envelope would fit. The Blue Line was converted from streetcar to rapid transit in 1924 but was constrained to operating cars about the same length as the semiconvertibles they replaced (~48 feet length), which themselves were huge in comparison to the 34 feet or so of the streetcars the line has started operating with. The streetcar fleet on the Green Line similarly grew through the semiconvertible age into the PCC era, and with the advent of the common use of articulation in streetcars broke the ~48 foot barrier into today's cars of 72-73' length, and soon to be even longer. The Orange Line had started out with wooden elevated cars about 46 feet length and eventually employed cars of 55 foot length (01100s) and later 65 feet (01200s and 1400s).

As an aside, the original tunnels within the Boston core were built by the Boston Transit Commission, not the BERy (or in the case of the Tremont Street Subway, the West End, Boston and Northern, or any of the other streetcar operators that eventually used them). Those earliest tunnels were and still are the ruling clearance restrictions on each line. BTC did have the foresight to build the Boylston Street Subway to Cambridge Tunnel (Red Line) clearances, and for the most part, subway tunnel construction under the auspices of BERy/MTA/MBTA after BTC ceased to exist in 1918, including the Huntington Avenue Subway, Kenmore Extension, etc., the Blue Line extension from Maverick Square to the east, and more modern day subway extensions, were all built with tunnels similar to Red Line dimensions.

The key to the discussion is that due to the enormous cost, engineering challenges, and vast disruption both below ground and above that such an undertaking would entail, there have been few if any real proposals or attempts to rebuild and expand the original core tunnels, notably the Washington Street Tunnel and the East Boston Tunnel, to larger clearances to allow for a unified fleet across all three rapid transit lines. For all practical purposes, the use of three separate fleets of cars on the rapid transit system in Boston is set in steel, concrete, stone, brick, and Boston Harbor mud.

Now, one could convert the Blue Line back to light rail and equip it with trains of Type 10s (and maybe connect it to the Green Line for the first time ever), and perhaps settle with using Orange Line sized cars on the Red Line, and thus arrive at one rapid transit fleet and one light rail fleet, but any and all of that would also come at an enormous cost and has perhaps more drawbacks as it has benefits.
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