BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
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Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#2> BART gets to withhold the last 5 percent payment for the $2.5 billion fleet until both sets of cars hit their maintenance targets
Is it just me or does 5% not seem like nearly a large enough percent? If I only had to hit 20% of my expected performance in exchange for 95% of my pay... I would have a lot more hobbies.
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#3> BART gets to withhold the last 5 percent payment for the $2.5 billion fleet until both sets of cars hit their maintenance targets Is it just me or does 5% not seem like nearly a large enough percent? If I only had to hit 20% of my expected performance in exchange for 95% of my pay... I would have a lot more hobbies.
You have to remember that of the $2.5 billion, almost all of that was spent on materials and labour building the new trains. 5% of the total cost as a performance guarantee will be a very significant, or perhaps even total part of the profit the supplier expects to make on these trains.
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#4The Swiss national train company has their own share of issues with trains built by Bombardier. After years of delays, what was finally delivered is horribly unreliable and passengers also don't like the shaking feeling when they do run.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBB_RABe_502
Two examples doesn't make a trend, but seeing how similar the issues are, maybe there is some systemic issue plaguing them.
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#5Manchester's Metrolink uses Bombardier M5000's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_M5000 ) that seem to have worked OK.
But I do wonder - is there anyone other than Bombardier who makes tram/underground vehicles these days?
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#6Manchester's Metrolink uses Bombardier M5000's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_M5000 ) that seem to have worked OK. But I do wonder - is there anyone other than Bombardier who makes tram/underground vehicles these days?
Swiss Stadler makes really nice ones, and certainly China has to have own production.
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#7[deleted]
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#8The Swiss national train company has their own share of issues with trains built by Bombardier. After years of delays, what was finally delivered is horribly unreliable and passengers also don't like the shaking feeling when they do run. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBB_RABe_502 Two examples doesn't make a trend, but seeing how similar the issues are, maybe there is some systemic issue plaguing them.
On my commute I have been twice the witness of a broken door refusing to close on all new trains built by Bombardier not even 6 months old
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#9Change Control for trains is fun, because there's lots of safety testing it can take a lot of time for a change which is either purely cosmetic or fixes something that has a well-understood workaround to actually make it to production.
Several years ago the main type of train I use, Class 444 Desiro got a firmware upgrade to teach it Selective Door Operation. Meaning now it knows this platform is 8 carriages long, this is a ten carriage train, so disable the doors in the rear two carriages and make an announcement automatically. Nice. But the firmware upgrade messed up the clock. So for example maybe it's about lunch time, the train displays 12:05 but is it actually 12:05? Nah, might be 13:20 or 11:50. After several months they fixed the clock, but now it is only shown intermittently. So when it says 12:05 that's definitely 12:05 but it might not remember to show the time for five minutes which is little help.
They took months to ship firmware with a fixed clock.
The SDO change also resulted in the computer becoming convinced in certain places that, as it annunciates, ""There is a fault with the door system, this is being attended to. Please do not operate any emergency equipment". There isn't a fault. But since "Ignore spurious door message" is a workaround there is no hurry to qualify a new firmware release that fixes it.
Re: BART slows rollout of new trains as it contends with more repairs than expected
#10I thought BaRT had technology from either Siemens or Daimler but that was wrong. Their rolling stock has been provided by a variety of manufacturers[1]. One thing that makes things expensive for BaRT is the choice of non-standard gauge they are bound by. That’s not going to change.
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit_rolli...