Railroad Forums 

Discussion related to commuter rail and transit operators in California past and present including Los Angeles Metrolink and Metro Subway and Light Rail, San Diego Coaster, Sprinter and MTS Trolley, Altamont Commuter Express (Stockton), Caltrain and MUNI (San Francisco), Sacramento RTD Light Rail, and others...

Moderator: lensovet

 #1478195  by bulk88
 
Why has LA Metro never bought off the shelf LRVs like Siemens SD/U2/S200/Boeings or PCC-like cars? Does LA Metro just have the $ for customized vehicles and wants to burn it (LACMTA owns the blueprint IP) or is it a unique loading gauge that no other LR system in the USA uses and requires custom LRV bodies?

I want to ask, is LA Metro a NYC IRT subway car with a skirt and a pantograph size wise?
 #1478646  by lensovet
 
the cynic in me wants to say it's because we live in california where everything is more expensive because it can be.

but perhaps smarter people can chime in here with the real reasons.
 #1478662  by electricron
 
bulk88 wrote:Why has LA Metro never bought off the shelf LRVs like Siemens SD/U2/S200/Boeings or PCC-like cars? Does LA Metro just have the $ for customized vehicles and wants to burn it (LACMTA owns the blueprint IP) or is it a unique loading gauge that no other LR system in the USA uses and requires custom LRV bodies?

I want to ask, is LA Metro a NYC IRT subway car with a skirt and a pantograph size wise?
Actually, it's the other way around. Those one-off light rail vehicles were not only cheaper to buy, they should also be cheaper to maintain because they didn't use proprietary parts only made by Siemens, or Bombardier, or ABB.
 #1480066  by BandA
 
lensovet wrote:the cynic in me wants to say it's because we live in california where everything is more expensive because it can be.

but perhaps smarter people can chime in here with the real reasons.
We say the same thing in Massachusetts; Everything MBTA orders has to be custom - trolleys, subway cars, passenger diesel locomotives, even the mostly-standard passenger coaches have to be from an unproven vendor (Hyundai-Rotem). I believe the MBTA bus system has the highest or second highest hourly operating cost in the country, and [OT] highway maintenance is 3X the national average and 4X what our neighbor NH pays.
 #1488776  by R36 Combine Coach
 
At least the Red Line cars are off the shelf, in a sense, being more or less based on the Budd/TransitAmerica cars on Baltimore Metro. [I once thought the Baltimore Metro cars were built by Breda, not Budd/TransitAmerica.]