Good to see our DMU estimates are in the same range... 5 to 7 years. Which is nearer term than electrification unless you think electrification can practically happen in the next ten years? I mean realistically. Large capital investment and scheduling years of service disruption for construction. Buying additional buses to carry passengers during all those service disruptions. Selling years of commuter hell to politicians once they realize the price tag and service disruptions which will inflate the price as they try to reduce disruptions or more likely just spread them out making it overall more expensive and more disruptive but more palatable from a re-election perspective.
To be practical we are going to have to see a 10 to 15 year build out of dedicated bus lanes along routes that parallel those lines. Which would be a good thing, but it doesn't get us to electrification in the next 10 or 15 years. I think 20 years is more realistic.
Though I am interested to hear more how they could practically achieve higher frequency service with existing rolling stock and equipment? That would be a preferable nearer term stop gap solution. If it just means hiring some people, better management and some smaller less disruptive infrastructure investments that could be a 2020 to 2025 win.
That's 5-7 years
IF the market warms. Right now Stadler is still non-waiverable for the freights one has to encounter in MBTA terminal district territory, and because those were the only things being pushed around Buy America regs they've managed to do a steady if not altogether gangbusters business off the backs of expansion systems. That is still not a sustainable blueprint for success. The FRA-compliants are--of course--designed from the ground up as domestic product. So when all of the vendors producing said product are foreign you can't simply can't open up a pop-up factory factory to assemble orders or 7- and 18- units like Nippon-Sharyo did for SMART and UP-Express (which is immediately electrifying!!!). Nobody's can make money on orders that small. N-S thought this business was going to be gratis while it built 130 bi-level corridor cars for Amtrak, muscled itself in as the heir-apparent for the Superliner III LD cars, and continued to schlep some Metra gallery car (EMU and push-pull variety) business. Then their Amtrak product, already years late, failed a crucial crash test....and never ever un-failed it. They lost their shirts on the penalties from that canceled contract, and this DMU product of theirs that was supposed to be a loss leader to lock up favors while they pursued world (or at least 8-inch boarding) domination was suddenly a very expensive commitment to still be saddled with. They finished the orders and promptly withdrew the product from the market.
No one else can make a buck doing this on the FRA-compliants when orders are line-by-line, expansion-by-expansion, no more than 1-1/2 dozen at a time. The Stadlers move because no modification = no need to bother engaging any of the Buy America machinery. Great if you can get it; too bad we can't. Nothing projects different in the FRA-compliants space for the forecastable future. The next buyer who's got to make an FRA-compliants purchase is either 1) West Side Express, who have ridden out their original-purchase Colorado Railcar lemons and are now mixing/matching refurrbbed Budd RDC's until UP-E electrifies and puts its fleet for sale, and 2) SMART who'd also be gunning for UP-E's fleet as expansion room (possibly making them the only user in the world of that make by this point). It's all lateral movement driven by the pending fleet replacement of Toronto's diesels. Meanwhile, the
smallest EMU order of the last 30 years was Metra Electric's initial '05 batch of Highliner II's with only 25...and they and NITCD followed that up with a second batch of 175 barely 5 years later. You have orders of 113 MLV's for NJT, another 120+ for SEPTA, and 500+ options...then 94 more Kawasaki M8's on-order from Metro North and 328 M9 cars from LIRR. Not 6 or 8 or 12 cars...hundreds apiece.
The only manufacturer with an extant FRA-compliant DMU determined they could no longer afford to assemble their product here. And right now...they're the only manufacturer with such a product to float. So you are either looking for CRRC or the Chinese to pull a DMU rabbit out of the hat with a product we don't know yet they're even R&D'ing (and why would they when the push-pull, EMU, and subway markets they are trying to crack will keep a factory open for years with far larger orders). Or, we've got to hope that the recent relaxing of FRA standards gets the Euros like Stadler a little more adventurous about adapting their wares for the domestic market. At those unit totals, fat chance...if there's only going to be dreeps and dribbles of domestic interest, then they have to keep living outside of Buy America like they always have. There's the extremely unlikely chance Bombardier will do something for Canada, but they didn't think to do that already when UP-E needed DMU's and now they don't. If not those possibilities...that have no quantifiable probabilities going for them in 2019...then who???
Yeah, the market can get off the fence in 7 years. It can also not just as easily. This isn't an aB-only question. The whole editorial board of Railway Age Magazine asks this every day.