Fairmount Line Upgrade

[F-Line to Dudley]

Or perhaps prove through the RFP that BEMUs are a non-starter, and go back to the drawing board with support for an EMU solution. My hope is that the price tag will lead to sticker shock in the General Court, and Eng will come back and say, well, there's this other option with some overhead wires....

The problem with that is that they've got their fake much-worse-than-Caltrain cost talking points about electrification cost to lean back on. The bus and rail decarbonization presentation to the Board a couple months ago tried out a novel angle that the state's grid reliability and availability for feeding substations was so dodgy that it casts a pall on electrifying most of the geographical system, and that's become the choice "Oh, but we're so special!" Not Invented Here killshot to shut down any alternative viewpoints. Though that too can be poked with a lot of holes, especially for Fairmount because of the lack of required substations. They're taking flesh wounds for sure, but they've got the "It's still too hard!" counterattack honed and that will work on people who are only semi-informed.

It's not going to get better as long as Eng is in charge, that's for sure. He's proving to be an anti-electrification/pro-battery/pro-bespoke zealot through and through, and the poison extends to the people he's deputizing in the agency to push these policies. Which sucks because he's so good on other things like state-of-repair and general agency accountability. But they're in so deep with the denial that it's going to take an entire state Administration change to modify the zealotry, and who knows how much money and induced planning trauma we'll have squandered by then.

The only hope is to hammer the schedules angle. If (B)EMU's can lop off a minimum 20% and as much as 25% off schedule length and that is proven on Fairmount, they're going to be highly coveted on all suburban lines where travel times are a highly motivating issue. Especially Providence where the wires already exist. Then when they go "but we can't..." because of the KISS sets' botched capacity analysis, they'll get a ton of bad publicity and be proven to be lying when they initially said the 96 options on the lease could be used on other lines. And the trial-baloon "but maybe the battery locos can improve schedules!" talking point they floated at the last South Coast Rail meeting will be debunked by the physics reality that they accelerate no better than diesels, and they'll catch a lot more flak for their whole battery strategy being rancid. But unfortunately that'll still be retroactive, not proactive cleanup...though it may halt the damage of any options being drained on the battery locos (as I've previously written, that may not be a bad thing because a full generation's order of Siemens Chargers straight diesels instead would be very resellable to other agencies should we actually get our future electrification house in order).

 

[jklo]

Or perhaps prove through the RFP that BEMUs are a non-starter, and go back to the drawing board with support for an EMU solution.

Let me guess... convincing them that it's okay to stick with the diesels until (if) battery tech improves.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Let me guess... convincing them that it's okay to stick with the diesels until (if) battery tech improves.

You cite the frequencies to cut that off.

They spent so much on the BEMU lease that raising the Fairmount Station platform and rebuilding Readville Station as a 2-track island immediately came off the table to pare additional capital costs. Not having a 2-track Readville terminus and not having level boarding everywhere means the max frequencies can only be 20 minutes instead of 15, and 15 is what definitionally qualifies as "Show Up and Wait" Urban Rail service. While that may not seem like a lot of difference, the "Show Up and Wait" threshold stampedes new ridership to the mode by being able to psychologically do away with checking the paper schedule. It really really needs to be 15. 15-minute service was promised over 14 years ago by Deval Patrick's people in the Indigo Line proposal, where it was going to be DMU's. These BEMU's, while providing better 20-minute service, are still not delivering on the service promise made to Dorchester and Hyde Park a decade-and-a-half ago. But they're costing three quarters of a billion dollars with that three quarters of a billion directly precluding the service promise because it forces station construction off the table. They need to provide something better than diesel push-pull to net 15-minute turns, and straight-EMU'ification with wires does that for hundreds of millions less even if going by the metric of the worst cost-controlled U.S. electrification...leaving plenty of money on the table to blow out station construction as merrily as their craptacular in-house construction oversight wants while still coming out way ahead.

I would say that's a pretty compelling and airtight argument. Will they listen to it? Probably not. But they'll look like total fools for not listening, and the shame may modify some behavior downstream. It's still a lot of damage to contain between the two battery procurements and all the unforced capacity and scheduling errors that ensue from them, but you've got to start somewhere to steer them to better best-practice adherence even if we're not going to recoup this wasted money.

 

[BeansTheCat]

TransitMatters has been hammering them very loudly all along on these points. They're very much against the battery distractions from implementing bread-and-butter Regional Rail best practices. Unfortunately the state has gotten very used to ignoring TM's advocacy, so they don't drive the conversation quite as much as they did even a few years ago when the existential nature of Regional Rail was being defined in debate. Baker's people were at least a little adverse to bad publicity and could be moved to back off some bad decisions (or would-be decisions) when they faced consistent heat. Healey and Eng's people are just "posting through it" with their alternate sky-is-pink realities. It's very disillusioning.

With regards to the Fairmount BEMU order, TransitMatters has provided almost no push back. I can't find any reports or media statements against it. While they have advocated for RR best practices (albeit at pretty rosy cost projections), they have not been good about advocating against half-measures by the T. Even when the TransitMatters directory, Caitlin Allen-Connelly, was asked about the new procurement by the Dorchester Reporter, was quoted as saying

“Accepting the original timeline would have locked us into an inequitable 30-year mistake for riders with disabilities...”

Her only knock against it is that the accessibility requirements should have been handled by the initial procurement. These are not the words of someone alarmed by the path the T is choosing.

 

[JumboBuc]

With regards to the Fairmount BEMU order, TransitMatters has provided almost no push back. I can't find any reports or media statements against it.

Check out Chris Friend’s Twitter, which Tim Lawrence (@datadyne007) retweeted.

It hasn’t even been a week yet.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Check out Chris Friend’s Twitter, which Tim Lawrence (@datadyne007) retweeted.

It hasn’t even been a week yet.

Christopher Friend (@friendchristoph.bsky.social)

the #MBTA costs are out for the BEMUs. they’re the most expensive rolling stock ever procured. but not just that—at roughly $25m/car ($525m npv over 21 usable cars), they are 2x more expensive than any other rail cars ever bought (per https://transitcosts.com/rolling-stock-data/)

bsky.app