Bramdeisroberts wrote:F Line, what about the operational efficiencies of modern DMU technology today and how much does that change things. I know it's apples to oranges in terms of loading gauge and carbody weight, but there are all sorts of cool and fairly functional solutions in Europe that have lead to their DMU's having a near-monopoly on low-volume long-distance rail travel, just look at what SNCF or British rail have done."Near-monopoly"? I'm gonna need a citation on that. British Network Rail is the largest user of them in Europe, and they constitute <25% of its total vehicle fleet. About 80% of their DMU's are used in services with 90 MPH or greater speeds, with some used for 125 MPH long-distance. They use them that way because multiple units could for the longest time accelerate to a higher top speed than a single diesel locomotive (and there still won't be a 125 MPH North American diesel for another year until the first EMD F125 rolls out the factory for testing), and can accelerate a lot faster to that high a maximum speed. For the same reason the Acela is built as integrated trainset to hit 150 MPH and not as a superspeed conventional push-pull. It's a specialized application. One that isn't there for high-speed DMU's in North America because the only track that exists on the continent built for as much as 125 MPH is electrified. There's only a handful of isolated diesel-only route miles that do better than 90 at all, and Amtrak's the only user at those speeds. Diesel push-pull mastered 90 MPH long ago, and no commuter rail in the country hits track speed for long enough between stops for >90 MPH to be any schedule difference-maker worth the cost. Which is why our EMU's--which are quite a lot more numerous--aren't ever built for >90 when quite very many worldwide do and Pennsy's old Metroliners did over 45 years ago.
This past spring I was over in the UK and in the course of my travels, ended up traveling from Liverpool all the way up to Inverness by DMU's alone. Privatization has created a fascinating mishmash of rolling stock on the BR lines, but their carriers are quite similar to the T in that they're operating on limited budgets and often have to make do with older or less-than-optimal rolling stock, especially compared to the better-funded national rail systems in France, Spain, or Germany (which I guess are more like the MNCR/LIRR/NJT in terms of their "cost is no option" approach to providing service). From Liverpool to Edinburgh I rode on a First TransPennine, a Leeds-centered private line by way of Manchester, and we did the trip in Siemens class 185 DMU's, which are fairly modern and state-of-the-art as far as English DMU's go. These things were set up as A-B-A married triplets with one engine per car, and they only used all 3 diesel engines while accelerating or climbing hills, and selectively idled or deactivated individual engines according to load, which meant that they were frequently running on one or two engines per 3-car set.
The other major DMU use are rural branchlines. Which was the most common application of the Budd RDC outside the Northeast, like CP's and CN's fleets. Some of the slow-speed classes of them with SCNF and in Ireland were replacements for old railbus lines, not loco-hauled at all. Rural areas here...they tend not to have commuter rail or a wide variety of connections to them. It works in countries culturally acclimated to taking the train to work from the sticks or exurbs to a small-sized city, or bouncing between small cities. The last attempt at that in the U.S. was Syracuse Ontrack, which ran from 1994-2007. It got canceled because it had a break-even goal of 500 riders per day and after 13 years it had only managed 75 riders per day. Acclimate Americans to commuting that way--by multiple transfers or to a small city's downtown--and it's an option. But where are you going to find that in the MBTA district? All lines run to the downtown of the largest metropolis this side of New York. The equivalent here is Worcester (even larger than Syracuse) getting a commuter rail network of its own between there and Lowell, Gardner, Palmer, etc. with connections at Worcester Union to the MBTA. Yeah, maybe someday...but it'll be a solid 25-30 years before you can do one better than OnTrack couldn't.
These comparisons aren't relevant. The U.S. doesn't have anything situationally equivalent. And that's the key word..."situational". There isn't a time now or in our lifetimes where the situations you listed above are going to be applicable to the MBTA. The European users of DMU's still treat them as situational rolling stock and not as universal "any-trains". The difference between here and there is that they retained a lot of layers of service nationwide/continent-wide that we don't have here. U.S. commuter and regional rail got boiled down to such a bare square-one that it's had to rebuild its skeleton on mostly general-purpose commuter service. And we know that it's limited. But the solution to lack of service variety is not attacking the lack of rolling stock variety. That's backwards. Go find some services where situational rolling stock makes the service work better than generalized rolling stock. The T did exactly that on the paper version of its Indigo plan. They proposed a new class of service. They did not, from what I could discern anywhere in reading, issue any indictments at the performance of their vehicles on existing services. You seem to be doing a fair amount of the latter. Try doing more of the former.
I guess my point is that these sorts of modern DMU systems obviously make economic sense, as the for-profit vendors more often than not have sprung for the operational flexibility of DMU's, even when running long distances under wires and despite the ample supply of heritage diesel power (most of which is EMD anyways) and old BR coaches/driving vans with their much simpler maintenance needs. If vendors such as First or Virgin are willing to hang their quarterly statements on the added cost of running modern Flash-Gordon DMU sets like Virgin's Voyagers or TransPennine's Siemens Desiros under wires or in lieu of loco's and coaches, with long stretches of service at speeds that the T could only dream of, then there's obviously something to this new technology, even of nobody stateside has so far been willing to stick their neck out and order some truly state-of-the-art DMU hardware.And you say it here..."make economic sense". Because the applications are situational. You're assuming the T has not researched what makes economic sense. They have. It's all in their Indigo implementation plan. DMU's have optimal farebox recovery over general-purpose vehicles for lines that:
-- terminate at or inside Route 128 at a 10-15 mile radius.
-- have close stop spacing
-- are oriented to trips between pairs of intermediate stops as significant component of the ridership and not just one-seat rides to the terminal (indirectly related to the close stop spacing)
-- run at consistent clock-facing intervals that do not require referencing a paper schedule
-- run at frequencies not worse than 15-20 minutes, in the ballpark of rapid transit and frequent bus routes, and equal to or better than less-frequent bus routes (Fairmount corridor is criscrossed crossed by a lot of not-very-frequent bus routes, and they mostly run east-west and require a transfer to get close to downtown...this is 'the' big draw)
-- run at frequencies that are not dramatically cut on the off-peak
-- run at start- and end-of-service times comparable to the rest of the system
-- have fare equitability with other modes serving a comparable service area (Zone fares synced at stops, transfer options that don't require double-dipping on fares)
-- have seating and door configuration geared more to stop-to-stop passenger movements (rapid transit-like seating arrangement, additional platform doors, no stairs) where the layout of a commuter rail coach (3 x 2 seating, bi-level, vestibule-only doors, oriented more to passengers staying seated to/from terminal) becomes inhibiting to high foot traffic and high turnover stop-by-stop
OK...it's been spelled out. That's the bang-for-buck service. Apply this service plan on the designated Indigo corridors and DMU's work better than the alternative hands-down. They attract enough farebox recovery to pay for the purchase, the interior configuration optimizes passenger flow for the demand, and the propulsion technology under the hood runs often enough to perform significantly better than any other diesel vehicle tech. Don't do this service plan or run them in places they aren't optimized for, and you don't get the benefits that justify taking on the costs of maintaining two different fleets. Run them in more ill-fitting situations, the benefits neutralize and eventually start to become liabilities. Not hard.
I'm not sure what you're looking for here. That's it...that's the payoff. ↑Here↑. On the MBTA. On several MBTA lines. On potentially more lines than they put on that map when you consider that they truncated the Eastern Route leg in Lynn instead of Salem (or Peabody), aren't attempting anything with Reading or Waltham, and have even backpedalled a little since the original announcement on when they'll push to Riverside.
You seem to be wishing for a scenario in which DMU's are the every-vehicle. Where it'll displace the commuter rail fleet. Why? Other countries slot them in specific situations and use loco-hauled or EMU's for the bread-and-butter spread of services. You're squinting too hard at the vehicle itself missing the service that's on the LED destination sign here. It's not about how many services you can cram and repurpose under one vehicle because--new things!!!!--like B&M thought it could. It's about what optimizes the service. In this case the interior layout and door configuration probably making a bigger overall difference to the service than the propulsion under the hood. There is no existing MBTA commuter rail service that exploits a DMU to enough advantage to justify the overhead of a different fleet, much less justifies it with DMU's of the specific interior configuration they'll be ordering here. Not even Fairmount's existing schedule economically washes with a new vehicle type. ↑These↑ listed Indigo characteristics are for NEW service thresholds never operated here before.
Again...the vehicle is not the revolution. It's a tool specific to a task. Indigo is implementing an entirely new task.
I understand where you're coming from, but it just seems like an awful idea to base the economic justification for or against DMU's on the operational costs of RDC's, a Truman-era design. Back in the early 50's when the RDC was state of the art (alongside 2-engined E-units, piston-engined airliners, steamships, etc. etc. etc.), a blisteringly fast family car like a Hudson Hornet or Chrysler letter car made ~150-250 SAE net hp and could go from 0-60 in 9 seconds if you were lucky while maybe getting 15 mpg in the process. Today, a Ford Focus makes as much if not more power, can rip off a 7-second 0-60 time that makes those cars look like they're standing still, would tear through them like tissue paper in a collision, and all while returning 2-3 times the mpg. Is it too much to expect modern DMU's to return similar improvements in efficiency relative to the stone-age RDC's?See above. You're squinting too hard at the vehicle, not the service, and pining for some sort of "disruptive technology" to purge the slate of diesel push-pull like steam got purged. DMU vs. push-pull is not a battle between the future and the past. They're both 65 years old! The RDC--the signature DMU of all-time--came out in 1949 the same year the EMD F7 and GP7, two of the best-selling diesel locos of all-time, came out. That was the disruption! They all slayed steam. And they've evolved in tandem ever since. Nobody uses F units for commuter rail service now. They're as non-viable and obsolete for everyday service as the Budds. The difference is they evolved in tandem with DMU's always trending more to specialization and locos to general purpose. The evaporation of passenger rail in the U.S. didn't leave much left to other than general-purpose, and general-purpose service that had to be painstakingly rebuilt before specialized service could be so much as figment of the imagination. So DMUs' evolution happened overseas. All rail technology is making strides, and push-pulls are way more efficient than they were before. The T gets 4600 HP out of an HSP-46 for less fuel than the 3000 HP, 35-year-old Screamers they're replacing. Regenerative braking. More tractive effort out of a dead stop. Tier 3 emissions compliance. That's not standing still. Bi-level cars increasing per-car capacity and improving the staffing efficiency. That's not standing still.
Or to put it this way, would Virgin Trains, First, or Veolia base their cost projections and feasibility studies for running their Turbostars, Desiros, and Voyagers off of the operational costs of old Metro-Cammell railcars from when Winston Churchill was still prime minister? In a way, it's a shame that the RDC was so popular that it put all of the competition out of business, only to have the SP2000 be such a disaster, as it robbed our railroads of the opportunity to see just how economically viable a modern US-compliant DMU could be.
If you want disruptive tech, you're looking in the wrong place. That already happened. If you just want to see more DMU's and are tired of seeing push-pulls , then identify some 'disruptive service' that's different than the general-purpose uniformity that exists in U.S. commuter rail.
Hint: the MBTA did, by ID'ing what characteristics an "Indigo" service looks like and then picking the corridors that fit. If you like the vehicle type that much put your energy into prodding the T about the hows and whens they're going to execute on that NEW service plan that DOES fit the specialty. Rather than trying to think up fantastical scenarios where they can use different vehicles of your particular aesthetic preference on older services to no improvement. This isn't a competition. A train is a train is a train. 98% of the population doesn't give one whit's notice to what vehicle headlight comes up the tracks at them on the platform as long as it's there when they need it to be, goes where they need it, goes as often as they need it, has fare equitability and flexibility, and is intuitive to navigate. "Commuter rail" vs. "Indigo Line" is a difference that's all about the service. And the service is what brings people on the platform. Don't sweat the vehicle...it's all about the service.
