Green Line Type 10 Procurement
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odurandina
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Re: MBTA is Considering a Complete Green Line Replacement.
i've been mystified as to why regular/older GL cars can't work on the Ashmont–Mattapan High Speed....
why not use the type _ cars until they get bashed in/ destroyed?
is it not practical to run em into the ground?
or do they cause far too much trouble as they wear out?
i've been mystified as to why regular/older GL cars can't work on the Ashmont–Mattapan High Speed....
why not use the type _ cars until they get bashed in/ destroyed?
is it not practical to run em into the ground?
or do they cause far too much trouble as they wear out?
Re: MBTA is Considering a Complete Green Line Replacement.
AFIAK, it would require some upgrades to bridges for weight concerns and power upgrades. The loop at Ashmont is also pretty tight (but should make it, I think), and the Mattapan work yard/hut/house would need to be redone to support the longer rolling stock/maintence. Totally doable, and hopefully what happens in the future (run a mix of PCCs and Type-7s as they are 'retired').
AFIAK, it would require some upgrades to bridges for weight concerns and power upgrades. The loop at Ashmont is also pretty tight (but should make it, I think), and the Mattapan work yard/hut/house would need to be redone to support the longer rolling stock/maintence. Totally doable, and hopefully what happens in the future (run a mix of PCCs and Type-7s as they are 'retired').
odurandina
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i always thought ALL GL trolleys basically lived until they were crashed by meteors and such.
I think it skips generations. PCCs forever, then the Boings not so much, the Type-7s seem to be more PCC level, and the Type-8s can't be gone soon enough.
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Re: MBTA is Considering a Complete Green Line Replacement.
Same goes for why the steel part of the Lechmere viaduct has to be replaced (trains get heavier and more power-hungry as they've already gotten about 2x to 4x longer and heavier than the original PCCs (as used @ Mattapan) and this next-gen trainset gets longer still), and why the concrete part needs upgrading structurally and for power delivery.
This.
Same goes for why the steel part of the Lechmere viaduct has to be replaced (trains get heavier and more power-hungry as they've already gotten about 2x to 4x longer and heavier than the original PCCs (as used @ Mattapan) and this next-gen trainset gets longer still), and why the concrete part needs upgrading structurally and for power delivery.
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Well, I thank that I've read that the T is contemplating replacing the Mattapan High-speed Line by extending the Red Line through that spot with the Red Line, taking over, so.
That is by far the most unlikely result that will come out of the replacement study - well, full red line conversion or bustitution are booth equally unlikely. As a daily user, I am just hoping to get the hand me down type-7s as that seems like the best solution.
Yes, I was pretty shocked when I read that the current Lechmere viaduct can only support one train in each direction at a time.
The FMCB approved a contract today with LTK Engineering Services to provide program management services for the Type 10 contract. LTK will, among other things, be drafting the specifications for the vehicles and related infrastructure, overseeing the contractors to ensure that everything moves according to schedule, and perform quality assurance of the resulting work. According to the schedule within the presentation, production deliveries of the cars is set to begin in February of 2025.
F-Line to Dudley
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LTK did the same thing at same stage in the process for NJ Transit's MultiLevel EMU commuter rail procurement. That contract involved specs development for the first-ever NEC-dimensions compatible bi-level EMU's. Was awarded to LTK in mid-2014, they delivered their specs work in to NJT mid-2017, and the formal RFP to manufacturers was issued in Feb. 2018 and is currently open with deadline for bid award coming before end of this calendar year (betting odds: it's Bombardier's procurement to lose since they do so much biz with NJT).
That NJ contract is a good analogue here for scope of work and timetable, because the Type 10's will be the first all- low-floor trolleys compatible with all of the Central Subway's design quirks much like the MLV EMU's are the first bi-level self-propelled cars compatible with all of the NEC's clearance & electrical quirks. So...roughly 3 years for LTK to cleansheet the specs, and then come 2021 if the procurement is (hopefully) full-budgeted it goes out to bid for end-'21 award with first of 200+ trolleys arriving in 2025. And LTK will playing 'bouncer' on the final bid scoring to ensure that the winner can walk the walk on the design, helping prevent a low bid bottom-feeder from gaming the system overpromising on a design they aren't capable of building. The need for executing GL-compatible all- low-floor design correctly means the bidders will have to impress one of their own kind in the form of LTK's vehicle engineers who actually know how the specs sheet translates to real AutoCAD and parts fabrication...not just some procurement flak at the T whose engineering understanding stops at a readout of printed specs.
That's the safeguard from another low-bid Breda or Hyundai-Rotem fiasco. It doesn't guarantee that the final product will be worth it (after all, bidding hasn't even closed on the MLV EMU's so today that vehicle is still no more real than a giant stack of paper), but it is something that can be tracked ahead of time based on how well LTK polices quality control on other procurements of similar size/scope/difficulty that it's managing. At the very least, LTK is extremely well-qualified as a project manager vendor because jobs of this complexity--and peril--are right in their wheelhouse. That is a good sign, insomuch as you can reliably parse any "good" vs. bad signs at such extremely embryonic stage of the process. By drafting LTK to handle all the fine print the T is hewing much closer to established industry practice than it has in the past for managing their risk on a major redesign of one of their vehicle types.
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It's way early to be claiming that, because there's no way of telling this early if scope of the job is biting off more than anyone can chew.
The rigors of this design process--all low-floor and stretched length for Boston where the specs will also inform lineside infrastructure upgrades to pound the system into closer "off-shelf" shape--are complex enough this time that there's no way to do it in-house. There has to be a majorly qualified vehicle engineering mgt. firm running point.
LTK simply has ample experience managing jobs with that level of vehicle-side transit engineering rigors. I'd have been worried about qualifications if some Big Dig contractor retread or someone with a history/rap sheet on the Massachusetts political dole ended up getting a square-peg win here, but they dutifully followed industry practice by tapping one of the better-known firms that actually does first-world rapid transit rolling stock as its corporate bread-and-butter.
Sampler of their recent contracts. As you can tell it's mostly paper-engineering, field technical study, vehicle & lineside inspection work, and a side specialty on next-gen fare payment system design. Some clients have advanced to procurement from the recs, some have not or are still chasing vaporware (because these are mainly pre-procurement contracts). But gives a good indication of what jobs a specialty transit contractor of their ilk gets brought in to do.
GeneseeJunction
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Having just gotten back from vacation in Berge & Oslo, Norway, and Amsterdam, Netherlands, I feel so sad about the street trolleys in Boston.
The fact that people spend half their boarding time climbing up into the trolley, because they are not all flat like those in Berge for example, and that we only board at the front, is so inefficient. I'm quite excited to hear that we'll have all flat cars in 2025, and pay at every door in 2020-1.
I do hope the new cars can also have wide, high speed doors, as the current green line cars strike me as having (front) doors no wider than my grandparents' PCCs. I don't have measurements, but the doors of the Berge (Skyss bybanen, run by Keolis) are much nicer. I hope that's in the 2025 bid/design too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ZXUSqyjUo
North Shore
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Just saw this tweet this afternoon. Type 9 testing at Riverside.
https://twitter.com/TheKing0925/status/1072234869441343488
https://twitter.com/TheKing0925/status/1072234869441343488
Jahvon09
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Jahvon09
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I thought that the ones for Boston would have low-level floors end to end.
The Type 10s will. And that procurement will start very shortly after these 9s and the Green Line Extension get up and running. Type 10 will be a full fleet replacement.
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9's and 10's will be able to trainline. The new CAF cars have no backwards-compatible trainlining ability with the Type 7's or 8's, but by cleanrooming the MU electronics the 24-to-54 units on-order (depending on whether the +30 options get tapped) will be forward-compatible with the 200+ car all- low-floor procurement.
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EDIT: And in case you're wondering where the legacy-configuration 9's will come in handy after the 10's are ordered. . .
A two-car train of Type 10's is roughly the length of a FOUR-car train from today's fleet. No branch on the system as of 2018 has platforms 100% compliant with a train of that length. However, the D and E between them have only 5 stations left to settle up with platform lengthenings while the B and C have a whopping 15. So the plan is that 2-car 10/10 supertrains will only be running on the Riverside-Medford and Heath-Union schedules first, as all 5 short stations on the D+E will be easy to settle up by 2022 (Newton Highlands is already in design for ADA and lengthening).
But that means it's going to take a painfully long time to get the supertrains deployed on the B and C. While single Type 10's are a near-match on capacity for a 7/8 pair, it's not going to help the crowding around BU if they can't lash them up. Now, the B has taken triplets as a regular service pattern multiple times in the recent past when that was given extended trials. It's a tight fit on a few of the oldest non-ADA platforms like Blandford, Sutherland, Chiswick, etc., but all doors on a 3-car train from the current fleet will open. Not sure if the C is compliant (no???), but it's never had quite the demand of the D and B for getting those on-again/off-again trials with three-car trains.
This is where the Type 9's become a real lifesaver. A 10/9 pairing would approximate (snugly, but workably) the size of a three-car train from the current fleet. Meaning that's going to have to be the B's salvation until the mass rebuild of platforms marches up the hill and every stalled phase of Comm Ave. reconstruction lurches to completion. Since the Packards-Warren phase of reconstruction is still at a design standstill with very lukewarm city interest at finding a solution to road layout, there's no way the T can fly solo and giddayup its way to full station compliance by 2022. Maybe on the C and on a couple of the substandard stops way up the hill they can make money talk by plotting a renovation blitz, but they're beholden to other slow-moving parties for trying to flip stations in the heaviest-ridership portion of Allston. So those last high-floor, custom-designed unicorn trolleys will probably end up being the B's salvation for however many years it takes to lengthen all platforms...being the only thing you can lash together with a Type 10 and still fit through every present-configuration stop.
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ceo
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Doesn't this lock them into CAF as the vendor for the Type 10s, though? I thought there was no standard for MU systems for light rail.
FitchburgLine
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This is incorrect. The Type 10s are 112.5ft long, the current cars are 74ft long, making them a 2-for-3 replacement of the existing fleet. This was chosen partly because Boylston and Science Park are hard limited to 225ft, so operation of 300ft trains was never going to be feasible. A pair of Type-10s will provide the capacity of a 4 car set of Type-7/8/9s, in the length of three old cars, but that comes from decreased lost space fewer couplers, operator cabs, etc. The whole modernization plan is focused on getting to systemwide 225ft platforms, which is easy on the D and E and hard as hell on the B and C, to enable pairs of new cars to operate.