Posted Jul 10, 2015, 3:03 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 11,591
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Yes, but by running a 4 car train you then have 4 old cars that can suffer a breakage. One train goes in rush hour down and the system is chaos. I'm sure they looked into it and have made the right decision. They have very detailed numbers on how many hours each car goes between breakdowns. A few more months isn't going to make much difference.
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Yeah. Also that refurbishing only buys you so many years for the cost. By thinking about purchasing 'car availability years' instead of purchasing vs refurbishing, the optimal solution becomes easier.
Quote:
Slower transit system tied to aging LRT cars; Replacement urged by 2020, at cost of $312M
Markusoff, Jason. Calgary Herald [Calgary, Alta] 04 Sep 2013: A.3.
The worsening breakdown rate of Calgary's three-decade-old LRT cars is not only adding to transit riders' routine agony, but it could also take a big bite out of Calgarians' ambitions to expand the CTrain system further.
Transportation general manager Mac Logan told a council committee Tuesday that all of the 78 remaining Siemens U2 cars - which have been running since the CTrain system launched in 1981 - should be retired by the end of the decade.
That's at about $4 million a car, or $312 million, total in replacement costs. With money only committed to retiring 20 of those early-1980s clunkers, the city's attempt to replace the rest of the old Siemens U2 cars will have to compete with bids to spend dollars on new or extended transit lines.
Calgary Transit had expected about 12 to 15 LRT car mechanical failures to running trains every month, fleet manager Russell Davies said Tuesday in an interview. Instead, it's getting 20 to 22, he said.
In the first half of the year, train delays greater than three minutes long were 38 per cent more common than they were in 2012. These statistics are coming despite Calgary Transit's renewed efforts in the last couple years to improve performance of the system's oldest vehicles.
There's no common or chronic problem that mechanics can pinpoint and repair, Davies said. The aging, heavily used trains are showing wear and tear at every joint. And the diversity of problems makes the fixes even tougher.
"It's a 50-year-old design on a 30-year-old train. It's getting tough to find parts," he said.
As soon as this week, the city will announce the manufacturer of the next batch of 50 new-generation trains. But only 20 of those will go toward replacing the oldest of the U2 cars, and the rest will be used to expand the fleet for four-car train service beginning in 2015.
That means halfway through this decade, 58 of the oldest cars will remain in service, normally all at once during the morning and afternoon rush periods. The U2s are 2 1/2times more likely to break down than the newer Siemens SD trains, which constitute a majority of the fleet.
It means some costly decisions will hang over future councils. Mayor Naheed Nenshi had pushed Calgary Transit to squeeze more life out of the old ones, but he'll ease up on that push after seeing new numbers in a committee report.
"I've always thought with a little baling wire and duct tape, we should be able to keep them going at a significantly lower cost than buying new cars," Nenshi said. "What we're really seeing right now is that they're starting to reach the end of the life cycle."
He said that while the increasing failure of Calgary's CTrain vehicles poses a budget problem, it's a nastier issue for commuters. "If they can't rely on the train getting them there because it's going to break down, that's a big issue and we're going to have to address that," the mayor said.
Other bidders beside Siemens are vying for the city's new 50-car LRT contract, which includes an option for council to purchase more. While the other bidders are a city secret for now, several other manufacturers - including Canada's Bombardier - are capable of tailoring an LRT car to Calgary's system.
The city's contract will also task the manufacturer to find a use for the retiring U2 cars, Davies said.
While some will be scrapped for parts for Calgary's remaining old vehicles, others may find new homes - "some Third World countries that have been trying to start offwith low-cost, startup systems," Davies said.
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