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Amtrak Acela Replacement Plan Creates Bombardier Rivalry

Read More: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...la-trains.html

Amtrak’s plan to replace its fleet of Acela trains provides an opportunity for Siemens AG (SIE), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011), Hitachi Ltd. (6501) and others who want to compete with Bombardier Inc. (BBD/B), the supplier of equipment used since the service’s start.

- Replacing the Acela, which can operate at speeds of as much as 150 miles per hour, may be Amtrak’s biggest equipment purchase since it bought the original trains in a contract valued at $1.2 billion when signed in 1996. Amtrak doesn’t have a cost estimate because it’s at “the very beginning of this process,” Steve Kulm, a railroad spokesman, said. Montreal-based Bombardier worked with Alstom, based in Levallois-Perret, France, to build the 20 Acela train sets that consist of locomotives integrated with passenger cars. “We would love to work with Amtrak on their next generation of trains,” Maryanne Roberts, a Bombardier spokeswoman, said in an e-mail yesterday.

- Amtrak’s decision to buy new trains comes as it develops long-range plans to offer service as fast as 220 miles per hour (354 kilometers per hour) in the Northeast, an effort it has said will cost $151 billion. The railroad doubled its share of air-rail travel between New York and Washington, to about 75 percent, between 2000 and 2011 after the Acela was introduced and airport security became more time-consuming after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In announcing the fleet replacement yesterday, Amtrak said it scrapped a plan to buy 40 Acela passenger cars from Bombardier and lengthen each train set by two cars to increase capacity.

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