Who the heck uses CCM? Outside of the NYC area, there's the Disney World monorail, and maybe something in Chicago or Philly or Boston. But the CTA's going AC, Boston's got a bit of AC now, and the BSS fleet is....tiny.
Why does it have to be GE for a new propulsion system anyway? GE's an also-ran in the industry at this point. They're hardly the leading edge, and even their AC stuff is *yawn*. Go with someone who actually ships AC traction equipment as opposed to talking about it - none of the new NYC subway cars use GE. Their business for 'transit' stuff is renewal parts and that's about it. Hit their webisite. They tell you how great they were. Hit Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Hitachi, Alstom, etc - you'll see a list of their latest contracts. Not at GE. Tells you something about the product.
Is it cost effective to retrofit the M-3s? Well, they'll be around 20 years from now (easily). Is it cost effective to deal with all of the headaches that switched resistance DC systems have, for that long? Given that DC for MUs is all but dead, I'd be surprised if a new CCM system really is much cheaper. About all it's got going for it is - you guys know how to maintain DC motors and switches. I'm sure you'll find AC motor maintenance to be an easy thing to pick up, though
The LIRR is notoriously short sighted when doing these things. I doubt anyone expected the old diesel fleet to last until 2000, and the DM fleet was a solution to a problem that was ok 20 years ago, but now isn't worth the effort, given the massive and continuing buildup of the east end. Then there's the Central branch cutbacks of the late 40's, the Whitestone landing line, etc etc etc. When you're buying this stuff, you need to plan 20 years from now, not 20 minutes from now. It's not just the LIRR doing this - look at the Lico/Lipa/Shoreham fiasco, etc etc etc.
