Will miss the Kinkis when they are retired, but that makes sense that even with the rebuild it would be another decade+ before a new order large enough would replace them. I was thinking about them on the high speed line the other day (as I waited for 20 minutes again out bound) that they would be nice and might allow a bigger fleet/better rush hour headways/less crowding than the PCCs, but, I would also be pretty bummed to see the PCCs get completely phased out. Maybe the Type-7s during peak hours, with the PCCs thrown in on weekends/off hours would be cool.
There aren't enough people at the T trained on servicing PCC's, so they'll have to go unless they're rebuilt again with modern components under the same shell. In which case they wouldn't really be PCC's anymore. But they're in great condition for their age and rebuildable one more time with aftermarket parts supply if it comes to that, so every single one of them will live on at heritage operations where they have the in-house bandwidth for their gearheads to tend to this stuff. San Fran would definitely pony up $$$ to add them to the F Market fleet, since they're expanding the reach of the historic cars. Different priorities. If the T is on a long-term plan for big fleet increases on Green to feed linear expansion and capacity expansion via 3-car trains, the shops need to be laser-like focused on maintaining maximal scale of their most-modern fleets.
Not like they have a choice with how much shit is hitting the fan this month over severe understaffing...and severe understaffing of the very
hiring managers who have to plug the severely understaffed front line. No room for nostalgia when they've got such a long, long climb out of that hole.
The other intriguing PCC option sitting under the radar is keeping them instate by sending them to Lowell. There's been all sorts of conceptual plans for expanding the for-show Canal trolley into more of a real-deal Kenosha Streetcar-type system around all the new development there, with loop built at the commuter rail station to make it a true rapid transit operation. In-state fleet of 10 PCC's would be absolutely perfect to transfer there if The Mill City went all-in on taking the Canal district bigtime.
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While the Type 7's are pretty much as immortal as the PCC's if taken care of, the limiting factor for any long-term future is that they will be the last cars left anywhere on the T that still use DC traction motors. Bredas, Red 01800's, Blue 0700's, the new Orange + Red cars, the Cambridge trackless trolleys, and the Silver Line dual-modes all use AC motors, which are simpler to maintain. Everything built from mid-1990's on is AC, so DC motors are fully obsolete technology. Even on mainline rail...AC propulsion on everything less than 20 years old. So while secondhand parts for the DC cars are so abundant that a 70-year-old PCC can live forever...it's going to be a P.I.T.A. for the shops to have to service the more labor-intensive old components and retain staff that can do it when it's just a small minority of the fleet. That's where the Type 7's are staring at mechanical obsolescence after this rebuild cycle.
Now, they can easily set aside the much younger and smaller 3700 series fleet for Mattapan, conversions into extra work cars, and a couple stored remainders to raid for parts. They're still fresh enough that low-impact duty will keep them very light on maint needs for another Mattapan generation. Especially since they won't need to trainline as 2-car trains out there; the trainlining sync-up puts more wear on the components than running solo. 50th birthday under a T logo is not at all far-fetched for a subset of Kinki remainders.
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As for the replacement sequence...well, that's still a long ways away. And a lot has already changed in the 10 months since that fleet plan presentation was given. Namely, the herpes outbreak of new Breda derailments (Oct. FCMB presentation):
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings/G. Green Line Derailments -TO POST.pdf. ADA, trainlining, whatever...if in 2022 the Bredas can't stay on the rails and out of the Riverside dead line, they'll do what they have to do to survive. Even if that means going to battle with the non-ADA army they have. Both the most recent commuter rail and bus orders had the order-of-retirement resequenced mid- and late-delivery because the snapshot of best-to-worst condition vehicles in the active fleet changed plans. The new normal for 21st c. transit procurements is minimum 5 years from RFP to delivery. Much longer when it's an extremely large order, as this monster procurement will be. Elasticity of incumbent fleet's uptime becomes hard to predict 5 years in advance, the stuff of wild guesses and hopeful optimism when it's in excess of 8 years. Especially when it involves replacements of vehicles with already dodgy reliability years before the clock even starts ticking on that 5-year paperwork-to-delivery gestation period for the replacements. We're painfully finding out with commuter rail right now how much fleet plan predictions can whiff when attrition rates don't play out in nicely linear fashion...and instead fall off a sudden cliff.
If it comes down to a worst-case of having to get rid of a shot Bredas fleet first and take a temporary hit on ADA with 7-7 consists, they'll do what they have to do to survive. Nobody's going to sue or fine them on accessibility grounds for that when the alternative--temporary service cuts--is a much worse loss of accessibility than having to grit it out month-to-month for a couple years. They have means of gerrymandering around that to minimize the sting. They can start throwing their dwindling Bredas in 7-8-7 triplet sandwiches and run 9-9 deuces or whatever until supply of Bredas is sufficiently exhausted. Then they can triage an artful combo of real-time tracking + very careful dispatching + special stop announcements to tell riders that the 9-9 consist 3 minutes behind this 7-7 train will be wheelchair-accessible and please pardon the inconvenience. Riders will understand that it's very short-term if the communication is good. And probably be more thrilled that the Bredas are gone than truly inconvenienced.
So on the range of options from "Good. We're all set to retire 1 Kinki for every Breda" to "Bad. The Bredas aren't roadworthy enough to last till the end of the order; we have to front-load", they'll have their full spectrum of scenarios stepped out well before this ungodly large funding commitment ever hits the CIP.
