New Red and Orange Line Cars

Yah know, not for nothing, but...... It's been almost a year since the Orange Line was shut down for so-called track work, & here it is close to a year later, & they are still doing freaking track work on the Orange Line!!! When the hell will this line ever go back to being fixed for good?!! This is just plain ridiculous!! :mad:
 
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Just found out that the Orange Line now has up to 90 new railcars!! Enough that it doesn't need to use the old Hawkers any more!! The Red Line has only about 20 or so. Boy! CRRC is really behind the 8-ball with this!!! :eek:
 
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Jahvon09 said:
Just found out that the Orange Line now has up to 90 new railcars!! Enough that it doesn't need the old Hawkers any more!! The Red Line has only about 20 or so. Boy! CRRC is really behind the 8-ball with this!!! :eek:
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I thought the Red Line has only 10 or 12 cars, so they can only run 1 new trainset (maybe 2? but i don't think it was likely).
 
Delvin4519 said:
I thought the Red Line has only 10 or 12 cars, so they can only run 1 new trainset (maybe 2? but i don't think it was likely).
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That, plus whatever amount is being made right now. But still, probably a very small amount. The Orange line seems so far ahead probably because the old Hawkers never had a midlife rebuild & they quickly became fire hazards, thus they were seriously leaking on rainy days & rotting out to the core!!! Some of the seats were ridiculously wet!!! :eek:
 
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I got a notification that OL service was delayed yesterday to a disabled train that needed to be taken out of service. Anyone have an idea of what happened? When I checked New Trains yesterday, 9 were running. There are 11 running as of this morning.
 
Lrfox said:
I got a notification that OL service was delayed yesterday to a disabled train that needed to be taken out of service. Anyone have an idea of what happened? When I checked New Trains yesterday, 9 were running. There are 11 running as of this morning.
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Could something like bodily fluid cleanup account for that?

Apropos of nothing, do we know why the Blue Line appears in the New Trains tracker? There will never be anything to track...
 
Equilibria said:
Could something like bodily fluid cleanup account for that?

Apropos of nothing, do we know why the Blue Line appears in the New Trains tracker? There will never be anything to track...
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Maybe? I thought the T put in a concerted effort to be more transparent and specific about about stating reasons for delays/disruptions to service. So when I see a "disabled train" message, I always assume it's mechanical. I've seen "delays due to a passenger who has become ill" (paraphrasing - but something close to that) before, so I'd assume the body fluid cleanup would get something closer to that. But I could be wrong.
 
Lrfox said:
Maybe? I thought the T put in a concerted effort to be more transparent and specific about about stating reasons for delays/disruptions to service. So when I see a "disabled train" message, I always assume it's mechanical. I've seen "delays due to a passenger who has become ill" (paraphrasing - but something close to that) before, so I'd assume the body fluid cleanup would get something closer to that. But I could be wrong.
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Well, I think they got enough of the new cars whereas if a new train goes out of service, they don't have to resort to bringing back any of the old Hawkers again!! I think that they are gone for good!!!! :)
 
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Equilibria said:
Could something like bodily fluid cleanup account for that?

Apropos of nothing, do we know why the Blue Line appears in the New Trains tracker? There will never be anything to track...
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Usually if that kind of thing happens they'll just disable the doors on the affected car rather than pull the whole train.
 
Equilibria said:
Could something like bodily fluid cleanup account for that?

Apropos of nothing, do we know why the Blue Line appears in the New Trains tracker? There will never be anything to track...
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I imagine since they have the old car / new car toggle, it was zero cost to show the blue line car locations, too
 
NETransit says there have been no new deliveries since June, and the last pair of cars in testing just went into service. So we'll probably be stuck at 92 cars for awhile.
 
At what point does the T finally cut their losses on this and just cancel the Red Line order and rebid? I'd think they could expedite the process and RFP given all of the work already done.
 
bakgwailo said:
At what point does the T finally cut their losses on this and just cancel the Red Line order and rebid? I'd think they could expedite the process and RFP given all of the work already done.
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I don't think that rebidding this in 2023 dollars and going to the end of the production queue with another manufacturer will get us cars any faster. Look at the GL type 10 order from last year - that's basically off the shelf but we're getting them 5 years later in 2027. Add another year to redo the bid, you're looking at a minimum of 6 years to get new trains, and the T will have already paid a minimum of 50% for the new cars. Industrial procurements, especially government ones, simply do not work on timescales measured in months. I mean, given that I believe every carshell has already been built, every long lead material and system procured... Everything is likely in place for CRRC to still be the fastest route for us to get new trains - I would bet that basically everything needed is already sitting in Springfield, it just needs to be put together. Really it's sort of a giant model set - it's a giant kit of parts. My guess is that CRRC Springfield being a new facility simply has 1) an inexperienced workforce, 2) not enough workforce, and 3) management which has been unable to drive progress.
 
I think LA Metro has recieved its first test pair of CRRC MA cars. Hopefully, this is a sign that they can keep delivering - otherwise - two of the top subway systems in this country are going to be struggling mightly for the next 5-10 years.
 
Stlin said:
I don't think that rebidding this in 2023 dollars and going to the end of the production queue with another manufacturer will get us cars any faster. Look at the GL type 10 order from last year - that's basically off the shelf but we're getting them 5 years later in 2027. Add another year to redo the bid, you're looking at a minimum of 6 years to get new trains, and the T will have already paid a minimum of 50% for the new cars. Industrial procurements, especially government ones, simply do not work on timescales measured in months. I mean, given that I believe every carshell has already been built, every long lead material and system procured... Everything is likely in place for CRRC to still be the fastest route for us to get new trains - I would bet that basically everything needed is already sitting in Springfield, it just needs to be put together. Really it's sort of a giant model set - it's a giant kit of parts. My guess is that CRRC Springfield being a new facility simply has 1) an inexperienced workforce, 2) not enough workforce, and 3) management which has been unable to drive progress.
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All of the Orange Line shells are done and delivered - I don't think anyone knows the status of the Red Line shells - which goes to the point that I agree the Orange Line we should just try to get them done given we have all the shells and are about halfway there. The Red order seems pretty DOA and I doubt will be done in 5 years anyway. Could be worth it to add an extra year or two, cut our losses on it, and streamline rebid it w/o the made-in-MA requirements (and grab some federal funding while we are at it). Plus the state of the plant and the disaster of QA and control that has been reported, these seem like they are going to be a potentially large liability down the road, and I am sure warranty claims will be a nightmare to deal with CRRC on. I don't see the order getting better anytime soon, especially given the current economics in China, and all the other disincentives already documented in this thread.

So, yeah, I have done government/State contracting I get how long the process is, but, it doesn't realistically look like we are going to get the Red Line order anytime soon either way. Sticking with CRRC has a ton of liabilities and issues for the Red order.
 
bakgwailo said:
All of the Orange Line shells are done and delivered - I don't think anyone knows the status of the Red Line shells - which goes to the point that I agree the Orange Line we should just try to get them done given we have all the shells and are about halfway there. The Red order seems pretty DOA and I doubt will be done in 5 years anyway. Could be worth it to add an extra year or two, cut our losses on it, and streamline rebid it w/o the made-in-MA requirements (and grab some federal funding while we are at it). Plus the state of the plant and the disaster of QA and control that has been reported, these seem like they are going to be a potentially large liability down the road, and I am sure warranty claims will be a nightmare to deal with CRRC on. I don't see the order getting better anytime soon, especially given the current economics in China, and all the other disincentives already documented in this thread.

So, yeah, I have done government/State contracting I get how long the process is, but, it doesn't realistically look like we are going to get the Red Line order anytime soon either way. Sticking with CRRC has a ton of liabilities and issues for the Red order.
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One element missing in your analysis -- parts commonality. One of the key features of the Orange/Red combination order is that we were finally getting a reasonable amount of subsystem commonality on Boston rolling stock. Pull the Red CRRC order, and we lose that.

Granted, that commonality could be a liability. But the constant perpetuation of unicorn rolling stock across all the transit lines in Boston is a perpetual, never ending, cluster of a liability. We end up overpaying, over and over again, for every unit of rolling stock.
 
JeffDowntown said:
One element missing in your analysis -- parts commonality. One of the key features of the Orange/Red combination order is that we were finally getting a reasonable amount of subsystem commonality on Boston rolling stock. Pull the Red CRRC order, and we lose that.

Granted, that commonality could be a liability. But the constant perpetuation of unicorn rolling stock across all the transit lines in Boston is a perpetual, never ending, cluster of a liability. We end up overpaying, over and over again, for every unit of rolling stock.
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Yeah, definetely a big selling point when Baker moved to increase the order to get a homogeneous fleet across the Red and Orange (excluding physical size). That said, even if we did rebid the Red, we would still have fully full commonality on each line themselves (assuming the Type-10 order eventually goes through) which is still a pretty big step forward for the hodgepodge on rolling stock currently on the Red and Green.
 
bakgwailo said:
All of the Orange Line shells are done and delivered - I don't think anyone knows the status of the Red Line shells - which goes to the point that I agree the Orange Line we should just try to get them done given we have all the shells and are about halfway there. The Red order seems pretty DOA and I doubt will be done in 5 years anyway. Could be worth it to add an extra year or two, cut our losses on it, and streamline rebid it w/o the made-in-MA requirements (and grab some federal funding while we are at it).
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Who even has spare capacity? Even if you could somehow pack, say, either another operator's components (say, whatever's in New York's latest deliveries) in a Red Line-spec shell, can anyone even do that any faster than a whole new design? It took something like five years from being ordered to the first of the new Orange Line cars entering service. (And while that's a while, it's not unique to Boston or CRRC, see Bombardier's misadventures with the New York subway.)

Knowing the T, they'd likely be unable (whether for financial reasons or just incompetence) to get minimal-change New York-spec or whatever 'production' cars they could...they'd just get more unicorns. So, odds are good we'd be right back here five years from now screaming at Rotem or Kawasaki or Alstom about the continued lack of Red Line cars. Seriously, the impulse to wash our hands of CRRC is absolutely understandable, but does anyone really trust that this time they won't completely screw it up?
 
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