Green Line Type 9 Procurement

Equilibria said:
Meanwhile, San Francisco buys from a more established manufacturer, anticipates better reliability, and will be able to run 4-car trains (I know the platforms in Boston don't allow this).

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/07/1...r-new-fleet-of-muni-metro-trains/#more-312808
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"A city audit painted an even more dire picture, finding that Muni metro’s aging trains break down every 617 miles on average — far more often than any comparable transit system."

WOW.
 
Scalziand said:
Lol, it's not hard to have better reliability than that.
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Yeah, Breda doesn't seem to be the best of manufacturers, at least in that era (Wiki says they did Cleveland and LA's vehicles as well, and the Gold Line opened around the same time as the SF and Boston vehicles were delivered). Anyone know how much the Muni vehicles and the Type 8's have in common mechanically?
 
Their trains were built by none other than Breda, the same company that built our Type 8s... Did (Ansaldo)Breda ever have a successful procurement?

Edit: Great minds think alike. ^

Comparison:

lg_breda_boston_light_rail.gif


lg_breda_san_francisco_light_rail.gif


From: http://greg-vassilakos.com/traindwg/traindwg.htm
 
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Equilibria said:
Yeah, Breda doesn't seem to be the best of manufacturers, at least in that era (Wiki says they did Cleveland and LA's vehicles as well, and the Gold Line opened around the same time as the SF and Boston vehicles were delivered). Anyone know how much the Muni vehicles and the Type 8's have in common mechanically?
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Not much, MUNI Breda fleet are 100% high-floor cars with General Electric control, MBTA are 70% low-floor with Adtranz/Bombardier control.
 
Breda's got an established rep for heavy rail cars. Washington Metro bought nothing but Breda for close to 25 years and has >450 of them in-service. MARTA in Atlanta's got about 100 of them. They did swallow up some past LRV manufacturers: Cleveland's 34-year-old LRV fleet are still-kicking Breda high-floor models built by one of the company's past pre-merger incarnations.

But both the T's Franken8's and the MUNI order were simultaneous and really early on in the present-day AnsaldoBreda conglomerate's push to break into the low-floor LRV market, and they were in way over their head with that first batch of contracts. The Franken8's would've had problems with any manufacturer attempting to build to that design because it was just too inherently problematic and untested. The more conventional, wider low-floor MUNI cars' problems speak a little more directly to Breda's inexperience in the late-90's. Some of their Euro LRV's built around the same period had lots of reliability problems and way-way late deliveries too, and have been prematurely retired in favor of all-new orders instead of getting mid-life rebuilds.

The L.A. Metro Gold Line LRV's are later-model Bredas on a clean-roomed new line that's only 11 years old. Results have been worlds better than the MUNI and MBTA orders on legacy lines. Unfortunately they're still carrying lingering stigma from their late-90's LRV mishaps and an ugly legal fight with Denmark over years-late HSR trains so they're in a big dry spell for new orders. CAF in particular has been cleaning their clocks lately scoring follow-on contracts with existing Breda operators. What just happened here with CAF's Type 9 win has been repeated in D.C. with the next-gen Metro order replacing a bunch of old Bredas with CAF's, and Midland Metro in Birmingham UK junking its entire old Breda LRV fleet with replacement CAF's.
 
MUNI has gap fillers and retractable stairs because they serve high platform underground and low platform (non-ADA) aboveground. With some mini-highs mixed in for kicks. Seems ripe for maintenance problems.
 
Matthew said:
MUNI has gap fillers and retractable stairs because they serve high platform underground and low platform (non-ADA) aboveground. With some mini-highs mixed in for kicks. Seems ripe for maintenance problems.
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They have had problems with the door system, but the GE propulsion system has also been very problematic for them and hard to get parts for. GE stopped building rapid transit/light rail propulsion systems shortly after the MUNI order was completed. The articulation design on the MUNI Breda cars has also had its problems, they went with a yoke design which was much like the Boeing design (at both MUNI and the MBTA, the Breda fleets replaced Boeing fleets), not a good design to begin with, very vulnerable to damage.
 
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