Wabtec bought GE's locomotive division, which made the prime mover and a bunch of other components for the HSP's, so they're a logical choice to work on those unicorns when nobody else (including original builder MPI, who do a healthy amount of business on overhauls) would touch them with a 10-foot pole.
Err, please correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe that MPI has been the locomotive division of Wabtec even when they built the HSPs the first time. They have since merged with / bought GE Transportation, but GE Transportation and MPI are both Wabtec companies; MPI's move to its Erie plant from Boise was born out of the merger as a consolidation into what was a GE facility.
Final bids due Fall 2026. Interesting list of bidders. Notably all through bidders are in some way owned by the French government. Keolis is majority owned by SNCF who is owned by the govt, RATP is fully owned by the French govt, Transdev is 1/3 owned by the govt. Alstom, TransitAmerica, and Transport UK are all fully private.
www.mbta.com
There's another issue with suburban riders using it for anything other than commuting. I was talking to a recently retired friend over the weekend, who lives in the northwest quadrant of the 90/495 junction. She said that she likes the idea of taking the train to Boston for various activities, but it takes her 30 minutes to drive to a station. Add that to the 60 minute train ride, and driving is a much better use of her time (off peak driving takes an hour). I don't think better schedules or lower fares solve that problem. They are definitely great ideas for those of us who live closer to the core, though!
I'd certainly use it more for off peak trips if the fare were discounted. I have the option of walking to a zone 1 station, or taking a bus to the subway. I find the Zone 1 fare quite galling, and usually opt instead for the more reasonably priced, but less time efficient option of bus/subway. A lot more Zone 1 and Zone 2 people would ride midday if the tickets were more equitably priced.
While I like the idea, it could bring weekend service to Stoughton, the problem is it'd eliminate the Stoughton Branch's pretty unbeatable time to South Station. It's only 40min to South Station and 30 to Ruggles. The only way driving is matching that is in the dead of night. Tacking on the Fairmount to that throws an additional 30min on the journey, making it take as much time as coming from Providence and losing its reason for so many commuters to take it. You could time it for Providence Line transfers at Canton Junction but then you'd lose both the doubled-up Canton/128 headways into Boston via the NEC and the Providence Line is already at passenger capacity during peak.
My apologies, I didn’t realize til I read your reply that I omitted the word “not” in my post when I said “To be clear, I’m [not] saying I think it would be a good idea.”
mass.streetsblog.org
They don't legally have a choice but to rehab. The T accepted federal funding to originally purchase the HSP's, and there were stipulations attached to that funding that the fleet had to fulfill its rated 25-year lifespan. Well...they're apparently so flawed and unreliable that they need an overhaul at half that age to even have a puncher's chance of making it to 25. Completely and utterly non-optional, and raising a stink about it misses the point.MBTA Board Greenlights Quarter-Billion Dollar Contract for Diesel Trains - Streetsblog Massachusetts
William Wolfgang, the T's director of vehicle engineering, says that new battery-powered engine technology isn't sufficiently developed to be able to replace the T's aging fleet of diesel locomotives.
Speaking of decarbonization and fleet procurement, are there any realistic arguments that can still be made in support of pursuing electrification via overhead catenary and EMUs? I’m wondering how easy/hard it would be to upgrade Fairmount from BEMU to EMU service in a future where you manage to convince the T that it’s worth adding an EMU class to their fleet. For example, could EMUs be maintained at the facility they’re building for the BEMUs? I assume they could redeploy the BEMU fleet to another line, but would it be possible to relocate the battery charging stations, or would they have to be junked?
The Fairmount BEMU trial is really kooky in that it's wholesale-outsourced to Keolis, who will own and manage the fleet and the maintenance shed they're building for it in-total. It goes by T specs, but they won't be the T's vehicles. I'm not even sure that Fairmount fleet could be made "portable" to other lines the way it's worded...which is why there's still crickets about electrifying Providence/Stoughton service despite that being a duh-obvious segue. We might actually be backing ourselves into a corner with this type of procurement method despite it being upsold so heavily by T brass as "easier", because the follow-on process for adding other lines would be so potentially cumbersome in its legal machinery to implement.
I'm not convinced that he's opposed to catenary. I can't find the article right now, but Eng said in an interview (maybe 18 months ago), that the Fairmont BEB was a test, and not necessarily the final solution for decarbonization. That and some other comments led me to think he was playing a long game that would let the politics shift over time. I almost got the idea that he saw BEB as a negative proof of concept. If it proves ineffective or unworkable in some fashion, then the case for wire is stronger.
Wouldnt it make more sense to just strongly advocate for ocs and tell people the reasons why its so much better since hes the expert and his opinion carrier a lot of weight compared to playing these weird games of picking something to let it fail so we can just get the correct thing later on after wasting everyones time and tons of money? Eng could give interviews to the globe and other local channels explaining how we can save money and just do the right thing off the bat, but I havent seen much of this at all. If anything Ive seen articles talking about the shitty battery trains popping up here and there. Nobody has really made a case for ocs to the public.
It's because the Executive Director of Commuter Rail Mike Muller is a full-throated battery stan, and he's the usual agency mouthpiece for CR decarbonization when somebody needs to be interviewed. Eng has delegated a lot of the talking points to Muller, who's never going to come around on the "get it done already" front because he believes too hard in battery magic and the icky-poo'ness of stringing up wires. Eng can stay neutral in direct comments all he wants, but by delegating that authority to a true zealot he's pretty much put his stamp on the process all the same.