Green Line Type 10 Procurement

So what happened to the Type 9 Green Line trains? I haven't a single one since a sighting in late Spring early Summer?

7 cars are in active revenue service right now, and as I type this 3910 is testing outbound on the D at Newton Centre per the train tracker.

3911 was the latest new delivery last week. I don't know if they've appeared anywhere other than the D yet. They've been testing on the C all month, but no confirmation of any passenger runs there yet.
 
7 cars are in active revenue service right now, and as I type this 3910 is testing outbound on the D at Newton Centre per the train tracker.

3911 was the latest new delivery last week. I don't know if they've appeared anywhere other than the D yet. They've been testing on the C all month, but no confirmation of any passenger runs there yet.

Saw 3911 testing recently as well. As far as I've seen, they've only been in revenue on the D branch. And I haven't even seen them testing on the E or B in months. It's possible they don't want their shiny new trains getting damaged street running with lots of intersections... Also as far as I've seen, still not running type 9s on weekends, at least not in revenue service. With the OL down on weekends it would be a great time to run some on the E branch but oh well.
 
"The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) invites qualified Transit Vehicle Manufacturers (TVMs) to submit Proposals for the provision of 165 a new fleet of “Type 10” light rail vehicles for MBTA’s Green Line, in accordance with Technical Specifications No. VE-19-049 and the RFP Contract Documents.

Qualified Transit Vehicle Manufacturers (TVMs) interested in submitting a Proposal in response to this RFP must email GL10RFP@mbta.com to request copies of the RFP 367F-19 and Technical Specifications VE-19-049.

Complete Proposals are due by 5:00 PM ET on April 15, 2020."


It took almost exactly 2 years to develop the specifications for the Type 10. This is lightning speed compared to the Red/Orange Line specification development (2008-2013).
 
netransit:
Type 10s
The MBTA has requested bids for 165 Type 10s with options for up to 61 additional cars. Proposals are due 04/15/2020. The proposed design calls for a 7-section, 112-ft long car with a 100% low-floor passenger area or a five-section car that may contain high-floor sections at the ends. Both designs permit an isolated operators cabin which may be high-floor. Type 10s will only operate in trains with other Type 10s, but will have anti-climbers and folding couplers compatible with Type 7s, 8s, and 9s for emergency towing or pushing. The contract includes an option for the builder to be responsible for scrapping all Type 7s and Type 8s. The initial procurement will replace two-car trains of Type 7s and Type 8s with single-car Type 10s. Later options will provide enough Type 10s to operate two-car trains initially on the D and E lines and later on the B and C lines. Delivery of four pilot vehicles would be 43 months after a contract is awarded. Delivery of production vehicles would begin 4.5 years after a contract is awarded and be completed 9 years after contract is awarded.
 

Attendees included representatives from Siemens, Mitsubishi, Hyundai Rotem, Bombardier. Also present were current MBTA rail car contractors: CAF, the Spanish company currently building 24 new Green Line trolleys for the T, and CRRC MA
 
Where is Kinkisharyo when you need them.

Also:

But the CAF cars won’t be on the Green Line for long. When the next generation of longer cars comes in, the T plans to move the cars built by CAF to the Mattapan trolley line, where streetcars built in the 1940s link Mattapan and Milton to the Red Line station at Ashmont.

There was significant friction at the community meetings on this proposal. Looks like the Highspeed line gets screwed again.
 
Where is Kinkisharyo when you need them.

Also:



There was significant friction at the community meetings on this proposal. Looks like the Highspeed line gets screwed again.

I don't think this is new info - it's just a recapitulation of the preference offered before.

What would count as not screwing it? These are higher-quality vehicles than the PCCs and will still seem newish in 8 or 9 years. Obviously I'd prefer to see HRT conversion, but I don't think many neighbors would see that as a better solution.
 

Other than Kinki-Sharyo being quizzically absent, that's pretty much the who's-who of LRV industry heavyweights + the Southeast Asian upstarts trying to crack the market.

If GLT is intent on generifying Central Subway makes for the mass market, this is exactly the crowd you want to be attracting to a procurement confab. That's a good sign that the LRV industry is reciprocating the interest in return.
 
"Spending spree" as if they're throwing money left and right at marginal projects instead of finally making some overdue basic investments into the existing system.
Not the first time (at least the third) I've come here to vent about the Globe copy desk's insistence on editorializing for the sake of apparently clicks, it being above my pay grade to understand why a subscription-only website is trolling for clicks. Glad I'm not the only one seeing it.
 
Not the first time (at least the third) I've come here to vent about the Globe copy desk's insistence on editorializing for the sake of apparently clicks, it being above my pay grade to understand why a subscription-only website is trolling for clicks. Glad I'm not the only one seeing it.
Ernie -- whatever the Globe didn't already know about editorializing in the "News" articles it got a refresher course from when it was owned by the New York Times*1

So of course the Globe has to make the point that the Mattapan Trolley Line -- used by a small number of commuters *2 -- is once again being treated badly -- by getting the current Green Line equipment

They should be thankful that they aren't getting treated to what happened to the A-branch of the Green Line -- buses

*1
Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger Sr. NYT Legendary Publisher -- once said: you can have the editorials -- just give me the headlines and front page stories

*2
4600 per 2014 "Blue Book"
recent WGBH story claimed 6600 daily riders
 
I don't think this is new info - it's just a recapitulation of the preference offered before.

What would count as not screwing it? These are higher-quality vehicles than the PCCs and will still seem newish in 8 or 9 years. Obviously I'd prefer to see HRT conversion, but I don't think many neighbors would see that as a better solution.

Rolling it into the Type-10 order. Do the same as the Red/Orange, same everything different dimensions. Then all LRVs in the system will be the same components/etc. Hell, the Highspeed Line could basically be the pre-test bed to iron out system issues before starting on the central subway units. Instead, we replace the PCC unicorn fleet with another (soon to be) hand me down Unicorn fleet. The Highspeed line is, afaik, the only line to never have gotten new rolling stock, and it seems like the MBTA is going to the Type-9s to try to justify/save face for having procured them for maybe a decade of service to then throw them away for the Type-10 order. Just seems that Dorchester/Mattapan deserve something a bit better after how many decades? As for HRT - the MBTA has claimed it isn't physically possible, and the community looked about to string the one person up who asked why it wasn't studied at the meetings. New modern LVRs would be not screwing it up, among other improvements.
 
Will the Green Line Type 10 trains have the same power requirements as the Type 8 and 9 trains, or will their rollout trigger the need for upgrades to the power infrastructure along each branch?
 
Will the Green Line Type 10 trains have the same power requirements as the Type 8 and 9 trains, or will their rollout trigger the need for upgrades to the power infrastructure along each branch?
Power upgrades required. Although to less degree than they needed to upgrade for the Type 8's.

Propulsion is pretty efficient these days as everything new has regenerative braking putting power back into the grid, which helps at evening out the system at peak load. But HVAC is still a bitch, especially electric heat which by physics is pretty much technologically unimprovable. Longer cars w/ more doors = higher climate control demands. That pretty much accounts for the sum difference in electric requirements new cars vs. old.
 
I think that would require so much platform lengthening that you might as well convert to HRT.

It's not platform lengthening as they'd obviously be running as singlets there. It's that squealing demon, Ashmont Loop. While it's within curve tolerance of all existing GL loops including the Park St. one everybody's fretting about for the new car order, it exerts its share of punishment on the vehicle trucks every trip because of its tightness. With its noise problems already being notorious, even after the the rail greaser hack was installed to knock down the worst and most ear-damaging decibel readings it was chucking up around the neighborhood. Running the stretched cars may be technically feasible because the curve tolerances are a shade above bottom, but by necessity of having to loop on every single trip there's an escalating maint tax in-play on both the vehicles and loop track structures with that wear being non-optional to all ops. At least with Park Loop once the new inbound fence-side thru crossover is installed B trains will be returning permanently to GC Loop and Park Loop will be back to its former status of being used only as a late-schedules bailout deployed on strictly as-needed basis. It'll exert negligible wear profile on the new fleet by virtue of being used only chance handful of times per day. No such luck with Ashmont Loop being non-optional all-day/every-day for 100.00% of service.


Also: really...we're already bitching that the Type 9's are old??? Amenities-wise there is absolutely nothing second-class about those vehicles. They just aren't 100% low-floor and thus not laid out for the same kind of optimal crowd-swallowing that GLT's New World Order ops regime requires for Green to re-balance itself amid the give-and-take of all the lineside upgrades. All of that's moot anyway on the High Speed Line since there are no downtown transfer station crowds to swallow, no platform dwells pushing the bounds of schedule margin-for-error, and no branch timing issues forcing major shift in lineside upgrades. There's no platform dwell on the M--nor any foreseeable future crowding sources--big enough to get anywhere close to overtopping the flow limits of the low-floor section of the existing cars to a point where dwells exceed the OTP threshold. The existing cars each having two sets of low-floor doors where the PCC's have none (and where they have only 1 center door total instead of 2) already succeeds at cutting platform dwells out there to the barest possible minimum. With no potential source of surge crowding big enough to overtop those gains, 100% low-floor vs. 50% low-floor is a net-zero ops or schedule gain. Especially when PoP is going to allow fare collection at the low-boarding doors to bypass the steps on the front. With maximal ADA accommodations still provided for outright wheelchair patrons at the high-floor front doors by the permanent mini-high ramps installed at every station except Valley Rd. (exempt for its unmodifiable non-compliant hillside egress).

It's strictly a personal aesthetic gripe that the 9's aren't 1:1 the same layout as the 10's on Green. Absolutely nothing real-world is contributing to the inferiority complex if they get that stock. The remaining inferiority complex on the corridor quite literally is the fact that the state won't even dignify it with a token paper-study option looksee for the HRT conversion, the literal only thing that could be a meaningful service improvement over LRV's + a mild headway boost from having enough LRV's to slightly buff out service levels. And 6-minute HRT headways are a gigantic improvement, so the whole "La-la-la! I can't hear you!" over a frigging paper study should very much be considered a slap in the face at the neighborhood. For whatever reason that chagrin is getting transferred into contempt for the Type 9's being so-called 'sloppy seconds'. Understandable psychology if you've just had your home turf insulted like that, but a total misdirection from the real issue because ↑as above↑ there is net-zero difference Type 9 vs. Type 10 at livery accommodations for what the M in its current shuttle form is capable of throwing at the fleet in terms of foreseeable passenger loads. Better to ask self why that feels so insulting when it's not actually...because then all gripes are going to correctly point at the cheapshotting the state gave the corridor over refusal of the HRT paper study.


If the M corridor had an advocacy group halfway as organized as Somerville STEP to disseminate those issues on-demand in bite size form to the public, all that 'psychological' stuff over getting short shift from the state would be more easily understood and less easily misdirected like this. But unfortunately while the Mattapan transit advocacy is consistently loud it's also consistently been lacking in enough focus to articulate itself efficiently. They're mad, for sure, but it's frustration that the state is imposing a value-judgment handicap on their heads over what's worth studying. Which is really the withholding of the HRT paper option that rankles so much...but it's coming out as a 1:1 GLT comparison (i.e. not nearly relevant enough example) because their reference points aren't fleshed out well enough to articulate it more on-point. They need some messaging help here to put 2 and 2 together on what it really means value proposition-wise to not be treated any longer like second-class citizens. They wouldn't be focusing on this trolley type argument diversion if they knew how to bottom-line their real sentiments more clearly.
 
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I think that would require so much platform lengthening that you might as well convert to HRT.

Again, like the Orange and Red Line order, they could do smaller dimensions for the Highspeed line - and thus it would at least still have full component compatibility with the main fleet.
 
The Highspeed line is, afaik, the only line to never have gotten new rolling stock, and it seems like the MBTA is going to the Type-9s to try to justify/save face for having procured them for maybe a decade of service to then throw them away for the Type-10 order. Just seems that Dorchester/Mattapan deserve something a bit better after how many decades?

I don't think that trying to make this an equity argument holds any water, and I think it would be incredibly wasteful.

Dorchester/Mattapan deserve LRV cars which can meet their service needs reliably, effectively, and in a reasonable state of comfort/appearance. They don't have that now and they should.

The Type-9's will be a young car with many years of reliable service remaining in their lifespan. The High-Speed Line does not need more capacity than they offer, and almost certainly will never.
 
I don't think that trying to make this an equity argument holds any water, and I think it would be incredibly wasteful.

Dorchester/Mattapan deserve LRV cars which can meet their service needs reliably, effectively, and in a reasonable state of comfort/appearance. They don't have that now and they should.

The Type-9's will be a young car with many years of reliable service remaining in their lifespan. The High-Speed Line does not need more capacity than they offer, and almost certainly will never.

I am more pointing out the arguments made at the various community meetings - but, it is interesting that the GLX through Camrbidge/Somerville/etc gets the Type-9s, then all of the rest of the Green Line gets the Type-10s less than a decade later, while the Highspeed Line gets the PCCs, and then maybe in a decade+ the Type 9s after the Type 10 rollout. I can see where advocates from Dorchester and Mattapan wouldn't be happy with the plan, and the MBTA's reasoning was pretty flimsy and nonsensical. And, yes, it is only "incredibly wasteful" that the MBTA made the Type-9 order to have the GLX languish and then change direction and go full bore into the Type-10s.
 

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