Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
MAybe they'd save some cash if they'd gone with standard off the shelf rolling stock instead of reinventing the wheel with one of a kind FRA compliant trains.
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Maybe you should look at locomotive and railcar bids nationally before suggesting SMART is spending too much on DMUs. Since you didn't, here it is....
9 married pairs DMU (18 railcars for SMART) = $57 Million total = $3.2 million per railcar
Source =
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/46853
19 MP36-3C locomotives for VRE = $77 million total = $4 million per locomotive
VRE has just recently ordered a 20th locomotive at the same price.
Source =
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080306678.html
22 Bombardier Bi-Level railcars for Montreal = $44 million total = $2 Million per railcar.
Source =
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Bombar.....-a0107945214
Let's assume each train has a minimum of 2 passenger cars in it's consist.
Locomotive + railcars = $2M + $2M + $4M = $8 Million
DMU married pairs = $3.2M + $3.2M = $6.4 Million
Looks like to me that the DMU route SMART chose is $1.6 Million cheaper per train. Considering they're planning on buying 9 trains, a total of $14.4 Million cheaper.
Add the consideration that eventually SMART may want to increase the trains capacity to three railcars, another $3.2 Million DMU can be added, each DMU train would now cost $9.4 Million. Likewise, adding another railcar to a traditional train, it would now cost $10 Million each. Therefore, there would still be a savings of $0.6 Million per train.
Locomotive + railcars = $2M + $2M + $2M + $4M = $10 Million
DMU triple set = $3.2M + $3.2M+ $3.2M = $9.6 Million
As for operating costs, most would suggest it's around 4 DMUs (two married pairs) where fuel consumption breaks even with a traditional locomotive and 4 passenger cars. At 2 DMUs, the DMUs should be much cheaper to operate.
So, I wouldn't state offhand that SMART has chosen more expensive trains, in fact, I would argue just the opposite..............
As for squeezing the train into a city block, the DMU trains do so far easier as Northbay suggested. Since each railcar or DMU is 85 feet long...
Typical short city block = 300 ft.
3 x 85 ft = 256 ft.
MP36-3C locomotive = 68 ft.
Therefore.....
3 DMU train = 256 ft.
3 railcar + Locomotive = 256 ft + 68 ft = 324 ft.
Wow! A three car traditional train doesn't fit in a city block, so it would block city one or two streets for the length of time the train is at that train station.