I don’t dispute that the Acelas are past their prime, and expensive as hell to maintain. Not to question you though, but what I knew about Amtrak's entanglement with the Acela sets doesn't quote jive with yours; that said, I could be missing a few things here.
And Amtrak
wishes that godawful lease ended as quickly as 2022. No...those tentacles dig much deeper than that and include all kinds of booby-traps for retention on time after last run. Exactly the same lease terms as the HHP-8 locos, which made their last run in 2014 and are still rotting away in Bear on active lease 6 years later. Phillip Morris sued AMTK last year on grounds that they were not maintained properly in their last couple years of service, and thus the 'sunset' provisions on the lease never began. And that by the sunset provisions never beginning, they're owed damages from Amtrak cannibalizing parts from the Hippos to plug the Acelas (instead of buying fresh components from the HSR trainsets' S&S deal) and are seeking back-dated default damages going back 3 years.
Exactly the same rope-a-dope is about to break out on the Acelas the second they're removed. So Amtrak is NOT going to keep them as supplementals...NOT going to reassign them to the Keystones per RR.net's most tiresome foamer fantasy...NOT splitting them up and making regular coaches out of the hard-coupled carriages (probably not even structurally possible)...and NOT leasing them out to commuter rail operators much less finding one suicidal enough to go near such a radioactive set of lease entanglements. All they are concerned about is stuffing them in the deepest, darkest corner of Bear and affixing a 24/7 webcam to them to prove to the courts that they didn't touch one fucking lugnut on the thing when it's time for somebody to agitate the next lawsuit. They'll be as rusted-out as the woefallen
Turboliner rebuilds by the time the settlements are inked and Bombardier shows up to haul them off the property to be turned into razorblades.
By all indications in Amtrak Financials, and contemporary publications, these leases are over starting
June 2020. I assume the BNY, BofA and PM leases are similarly structured, with allowances for actual date of delivery, but I believe quite a bit of the Aveila Liberty rush is because these leases are ending.
Source (1) Now, the only capital equipment that Amtrak leases are those HHP8s you mention, the 19 Acela sets, and a gaggle of superliner Is. (probably because they learned their lesson,) but notably the biggest obligations drop off by no longer exist by the end of 2023.
Source (2) I don't dispute that the turboliners and HHP8 are disasters though.
There's no "scrap value" to be had here. The grifters control the lease, and with the S&S gravy train over as of last run there's no further service value to wring out of them. So the only value they seek is what they can net out of legal harassment tactics. It may or may not have worked already with the HHP-8 litigation. It definitely worked to get some lawyers paid after New York State got fleeced on the Turboliner rebuilds. Fact is...even if they did have further service life left in them (debateable), the tactical game of sending the lawyers onto the battlefield means they won't have moved an inch before so many years that they are no longer worth scrap value. The last 2 intact Turboliners are still sitting at Cedar Hill in New Haven with no scrap offers whatsoever a full year after Amtrak was finally allowed to move them off the property. "Best" case given the cast of characters involved is that Amtrak plays it careful enough that the first wave of nuisance suits get dismissed and the trainsets 'only' accumulate 5 years of decay from sitting perfectly still in an unprotected yard before they're hauled off into oblivion. And that you'll be able to visit the lone AMTK-owned set nicely kept-up as a static museum donation.
There is no S&S agreement on the Acelas anymore. That was terminated in 2006, as part of the 2004 lawsuit, and Amtrak became wholly responsible for maintenance, unless Amtrak has since signed a new maintenance deal I'm unaware of.
Source (3) I'll definitely concede that the sets were expected to only have a useful life of 25 years, so they'll be pretty tapped out, but that was assuming NEC intercity service. Lots of first line equipment, transit and otherwise, get second leases of life in less demanding applications.
Now I don’t dispute that the acela sets are expensive things to maintain, and probably beyond the T’s means. But purely as a thought exercise, I ran the numbers. Acela currently costs, by Amtrak’s accounting of $358M to operate and maintain. But Amtrak Accounting is… flawed, in many ways, with that figure including $29.7M in MoW, 58.6m in Sales and marketing; expenses unrelated to the operation of the sets themselves. Stripping these figures out gives an true O&M cost of closer to $110M, operating 20 sets over 3,313,867 miles. I’m going to use MoE only at $72.6M, so as to compare on an equal basis with the Keolis Contract.
Source (4)
Wickford Junction is 63 miles from Boston. At current speeds, the MBTA requires 1h44mm to run a trip. Assuming extant speeds and dwells, with a 15m turnaround, that would require a minimum of 8 sets to run :30 service, 16 for :15. Assuming :30 service, each trainset would need to make just about 9 round trips daily; with 8 sets, that’d yield a total mileage nearly identical to Acela annual mileage at 3,311,300 miles. Annual equipment maintenance on the current diesel locos and coaches per the keolis contract MCS for this level of service would cost the T $9.2M in maint.
Source (5). An overall increase in annual maintenance expenses of $62M frankly isn't all that bad when you're talking about the MBTA and its $2+billion dollar budget; it spends more on overtime.