F-line, I agree that the frequent service should be built up and proven with conventional push-pull consists before shelling out for specialized DMUs. Is sufficient equipment available for this at the moment?
TrainManTy wrote:F-line, I agree that the frequent service should be built up and proven with conventional push-pull consists before shelling out for specialized DMUs. Is sufficient equipment available for this at the moment?They've got more equipment onhand than they've ever had in the past, and once the ongoing transitions are over they'll have fewer vehicles in the shop for old-age aches and pains than they've had in a long time. And...more bi-levels means they can trim some consist lengths systemwide where equal seating capacity is achievable in 1 fewer car than before. So, yes, they've got plenty of flex to put together some more Fairmount trainsets. It is mainly an efficiency thing. Don't put together 5-car sets of mixed singles and bi's when swapping a single for a bi in the set lets you reduce the consist to 4 cars, shed 1 conductor, and free up spares for putting together an extra trainset elsewhere without strain. That part of it is in Keolis' court...and Keolis paying attention to ops efficiency more attentively than don't-give-a-damn MBCR did.
Fairmount's got a very small equipment pool. It never ranges too far from home, so it takes fewer trainsets to run higher frequencies than any other line. With no Fairmount train needing more than 4 cars...singles perfectly fine to for coach capacity...and less need for bathrooms than any other train (if any?)...you can easily redistribute the bi-levels on other lines to pry out a couple more 4-car sets of singles at no loss of capacity to the other lines. And they can arguably help their locomotive uptime and system coverage a lot more by skewing the HSP-46 assignments to the long consists and longer-distance routes and pulling in more F40's and Geeps closer to home on short-turn and shorter-consist duty. Another thing Keolis can do purely on the ops side that MBCR refused to do re: maximizing efficiency. Plus...every piece of equipment is now going to be portable southside and northside to balance it. Recall, the F40PH's don't have cab signals and can't run south at all, while some of the single-level cab cars didn't have ACSES and were sharply limited to what lines they could run south. It's a different world in the post-Screamer/post-MBB era where everything can run on any signal system and a majority bi-level fleet gives them an efficiency of scale on car capacity. They've got systemwide flex for mixing and matching equipment in a way that they didn't before.