Remember how FRA-compliant DMU’s would magically avoid regulatory delays for SMART?
When directors of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit agency meet Wednesday they’ll face the possibility of up to a two-year delay in the launch of commuter service — not because of rising costs but from the gauntlet of government review agencies.
“I doubt we will be operational by 2014,” Farhad Mansourian, SMART’s executive director, said Monday referring top the long-planned start date. “We will work our tail off to try to meet every requirement, but there are things beyond our control.”
The whole point of going with FRA-compliant rolling stock was to avoid FRA red-tape, and to get the FTA “Buy-America” dollars. They still have red tape, and they aren’t getting the FTA grant funding either. So why stick with the overweight, overpriced rolling stock?
Idiots.
You forgot the link. And are you saying they should have asked for a waiver? How else could they have avoided buying FRA-compliant equipment?
Also (again): I’m doing an interview with someone from the FRA this week (via email) for Streetsblog. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to suggest I ask them, get in touch via email (smithsj@gmail.com). I’m sending out the first round of questions on Sunday, so try and let me know by then if you’ve got anything (although there will be a second round, so if you think of anything afterwards, I might still be able to ask).
One of my questions will definitely be whether they’re planning on overhauling the regulations themselves, or they just plan on handing out a lot of waivers and playing it by ear.
Stephen,
Yes, they should have asked for a waiver.
Here is a link to the report where they “studied” the issue. This report, and the nonsense conclusions, were covered elsewhere in this blog.
Despite the much worse performance and higher operating cost, the report inexplicably recommended FRA-compliant DMU, mainly to avoid regulatory problems.
Hardly inexplicable. The same highly ethical LTK rent-seekers who did this vehicle technology “study” subsequently got the contract to write the specifications for the FRA shit-heaps. There will be plenty of “acceptance testing” and “verification” and several go-arounds of ECOs to come, with huge slabs of agency and consultant “oversight” to go around.
It’s a perfect closed loop of log rolling and fraud, The only people who lose are the public.
What kind of sticks does the FRA have to enforce non-compliance of their made up rules? That is, if SMART was to start running their little DMU, would the FRA police arrest the conductors?
While I’m certainly the last person to praise FRA regulations, the 2-year delay is unrelated to the choice of trains.
The article says:
“SMART officials said a delay of one to two years is probable because of the necessary regional, state and federal permits for construction in wetlands and creeks.”
Maybe this wetland delay and an FRA waiver delay could have happened concurrently. But I’m not that optimistic — the FRA waiver could have taken much longer, or not come through at all.
The solution: eliminate the requirement for the waiver.