For its new eBART extension, BART has ordered Stadler DMU railcars:
SAN Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has awarded a contract worth $US 58m to Stadler to supply eight two-car DMUs for use on the 16km East Contra Costa Bart extension project, which is currently under construction. Dubbed eBart, the new line will utilise standard-gauge rather than 1676mm-gauge infrastructure used by conventional Bart lines and is due to enter service in 2015. Bart officials say the $US 462m project is around 60% cheaper than conventional electric Bart services.
The Stadler cars will not be FRA-compliant, nor will they be purchased under Buy-America rules. Stadler will produce the vehicles from its plant in Switzerland.
It is worth comparing the BART DMU order with the one done by SMART. SMART, as you may recall, selected heavy FRA-compliant DMU’s over the more popular non-compliant varieties. SMART even paid for a “study” to show this would give the public a less expensive railcar. Well, now we can conclude that SMART study was bogus: the BART DMU’s are comparable in price to the SMART DMU (when accounting for inflation and LTK consultant fees).
Stadler was the only vendor that bid on the BART project. Other foreign vendors were no doubt discouraged from participating in a US project, given the convoluted regulations. As a result, BART still paid a lot more than it should have. But at least BART will get a model that has been fully debugged and burns less fuel.
Certainly a good choice; Stadler has already 40 or so GTW 2/6 in operation in the US, and in total more than 500 units (diesel, electric, various gauges, several generations) were built within the last 20 years.
Comparing the price with the ones of the Denton cars, they are a little bit higher than Denton in 2009 (11 vehicles for $74 M, plus options for 25 more vehicles). Facturing in the inflation plus the bigger order (options do count to some extent), that’s about what a diesel GTW 2/6 for the US costs at these quantities.
Comparing that with similar orders for Italian customers of GTW 2/6, the surcharge for “US” is around $1.2 m per vehicle (which includes technical adaptations, approval, shipping and handling, customs duties etc. etc.).
It would be interesting to know how much an US-build GTW 2/6 would cost. My guess is that several hundred vehicles have to be built to get down to the Swiss-built price (which means that ignoring “buy America” may be an option).
Next to the sleek and sexy looking Stadler DMU, the LTK chosen SMART DMU is an unbelievably ugly looking dog of a DMU. Reminds me of a jacked up AMC Pacer with random boxes bolted on and underneath! Really sad because Sonoma and Marin needlessly settled on both high platforms and ugly, underperforming unproven DMUs.
Were the high platforms in Marin necessitated by FRA compliance? Thats a huge waste of money and cause of inconvenience as well (that San Francisco is also stuck with).
FRA had nothing to do with needlessly and stupidly locking SMART into high platforms, but CPUC GO-26D requires stations with high platforms to have gauntlet (or passing) tracks for freights to pass … as shown in this video shot at the Petaluma SMART station platform under construction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDO2RpDX9hI
Note that even platforms that would be level with the Stadler DMU’s floor are considered “high platforms” by GO-26D, which requires that platforms be lower than 8 inches above top of rail, if they’re closer than 7.5 feet from the track centerline. So either way, they would have had to build gauntlet tracks or used the clunky Caltrain-style mini-low platforms plus birdgeplates for boarding wheelchairs and everyone else would have had to step up into the train.
Stadler was the only bidder because they’re the only foreign company that knows how to navigate FRA regs to implement their DMUs basically off the shelf, starting 10 years ago with the River Line. Comparing performance differences between the two DMUs is night and day — most noticeably, the sluggish 0.2 m/s^2 acceleration for SMART compared with 0.9 m/s^2 for the GTW. But I’m still waiting for the day when larger European MUs will start to arrive, Caltrain at least is considering the Stadler KISS or an equivalent.
I think the 0.9 m/s^2 is for the electric version of the GTW 2/6, but still…
And if Caltrain would go for the 4 car KISS with 8 driven axles (such as the MUTZ of bls), they would get something around 1.4 m/s^2 (which is better than many subways have).
Ah yeah, and if the GTW 2/6 become a bit too small, it would be easy to turn them in GTW 2/8 (by adding an additional carbody between the power cube and one of the driving trailers), or if that still is not enough, what about a GTW 4/12, which is essentially 2 2/6 with only one cab each, coupled back to back. Such transformations would take the vehicle to the workshop for maybe a month…
SMART was kind of stuck with FRA compliance because SMART had prior commitments to retain freight service on its line. I suppose they could have tried for something like the RiverLine in New Jersey.
0.2 m/s^2 acceleration is a joke, isn’t it? This reminds me of the D1 DMU – built between 1960 and 1980 for the Soviet Railways, now used on branch lines in rural Ukraine and Moldova where this is the only serious mode of transport. This works as long as people don’t have large-scale access to cars.
Acceleration always means up to a certain speed (or calculated from that, the time it needs to reach that speed). I did look around a bit, and found that the SMART vehicles are not thaaaat bad. There is a specification document on the SMART website, which indicates accelerations (in a very quick scan, I have not been able to find the power rating of that vehicle; which could make sense; it is the manufacturer’s job to determine the needed power).
For the diesel GTW 2/6, I found some comparable data for the vehicles for ODEG (2 x 283 kW motors, “long” version (meaning 5 low floor compartments per driving trailer)).
For reaching 50 km/h / 30 mph, the GTW 2/6 has an average acceleration of 0.75 m/s^2, taking it about 18 seconds to reach that speed. The specs for the SMART DMU state 31 seconds to reach that speed, translating to an acceleration of 0.45 m/s^2.
From the table, it looks as if the 0.22 m/s^2 acceleration applies to speeding up to 50 mph. In my quick search, I have not found data for the GTW for this acceleration, but a simple guesstimate is that in any case, it would still be near to 0.5 m/s^2 (definitely with the 2 motor power cube); this variant also is said to have a maximum acceleration (probably from 0 to 10 km/h or so) of a bit more than 1 m/s^2.
It is acceptable that the SMART vehicles do not accelerate that much, because with the rather big distances between stops, acceleration becomes a little bit less critical. But nevertheless, IMHO, the SMART vehicles may be seriously underpowered (allowing them 4 minutes to reach 80 mph…)
oops… the diesel motors used in the GTW are rated at 382 kW each.
1. Every conceptual drawing and model I’ve seen of the SMART DMUs shows top fairings to cover the “klunky” boxes, as well as additional lower nose fairings. These fairings have, for whatever reasons, not yet been installed on the prototype unit in the photos. Will the SMART units still be considered ugly once the fairings are in place?
2. BART managed to pay pretty much the same price per train set as SMART for units which are supposedly “off the shelf” and neither FRA nor Buy American compliant (both of which were SMART requirements, like it or not). According to the linked “Six Million Dollar Train” article, the BART train sets should have been half the price of the SMART sets. What happened to the alleged savings?
3. Why is it that SMART is dumb for choosing high platforms, whereas Caltrain is dumb for not using them? While I’ve never seen it in writing, eBART also appears to be using at least 24″ platforms, as a result, will their units look klunkier than the Austin Capitol Metro units?
1. I have only seen drawings that depict fairings on the roof. The klunky boxes bolted under the floor seem to be left exposed. But who knows, since this is a unique train.
2. BART paid a premium because there was only one bidder. The US needs to have a truly open market in order for prices to come down. However, BART will save in the long run from lower fuel and maintenance costs.
3. Caltrain is dumb for not picking a platform height compatible with HSR.
> The klunky boxes bolted under the floor seem to be left exposed.
I guess that should have been the deal-breaker right there. Personally, though, I don’t make my transit choices based on whether there are klunky boxes underneath (or even on top) of the cars.
> However, BART will save in the long run from lower fuel and maintenance costs.
Do you have any real documentation for those assumptions? Or, are you just assuming that because eBART sets are not FRA compliant, they are therefore lighter and more efficient? How much lower are the fuel and maintenance costs? What would it have costed SMART to forgo FRA compliance? What were the tradeoffs?
> Caltrain is dumb for not picking a platform height compatible with HSR.
Note that “Reality Check” commented above that SMART “needlessly” settled on “high platforms”.
As for Caltrain, I’m not aware that they have made any decision on platform height at all. Caltrain has a lot of constraints, in particular, low tunnels, platforms that can support a maximum of 6 cars, trains that are already packed during commute hours with ridership continuing to increase, limited capacity for more trains (particularly once HSR starts running), and no dedicated funding. I’m not sure how they can deal with the added constraint of switching to a platform height completely incompatible with all of their existing equipment. Do you actually have a realistic answer?
The “klunky boxes” under the floor may better not be hidden too much, because that’s the engine, generator, cooler etc, therefore units which should get enough air. By looking at typical japanese DMUs, these “klunky boxes” are normally not hidden behind skirts.
If you look what’s on the roof, you will see air conditioners, and either power electronic boxes or other coolers. Here, it is possible that there may be some fairings, but only rather narrow. In the picture I believe to see a hint just behind the cab, where the logical line would become a bit higher.
Now, comparing that to the GTW 2/6, all of the power generation/traction components are consolidated in the power cube (OK, the official term Stadler uses is power container, but in (Swiss) German, it is called the “Kraftwürfel” (some puns are not coincidental). That more or less takes care of the “klunky boxes” under the floor. And all which is then left on the roof of the driving trailers are the air conditioners. Because of the way the carbody is built, the fairings at the top are already integrated in the carbody.
@MR: The Stadler train ARE lighter (not because they re not FRA compliant, but because they are). The already mentioned ODEG vehicles weigh empty about 70 metric tons, whereas in the specs for the SMART vehicles, a maximum weight of 160000 lb is specified. However, these approximatively 73 metric tons apply for one car, which means that the married pair is almost twice as heavy as the GTW 2/6. (my reasoning for that weight is that in order to get FRA compliance, you will need a considerable amount of stainless steel, and 36 metric tons for a single DMU unit sounds way too low. OTOH, the carbodies of the driving trailers of the GTW 2/6 is made of extruded aluminium profiles (the power cube is made of steel, because here we need as much weight as possible).
Fuel consumption, my guesstimate is that the GTW 2/6 consumes maybe 30% or so less than the SMART car (although I have still not seen the power rating of the SMART car). About maintenance, having a history of about 500 units in service, we can assume that a lot of optimization went already in the design. Knowing the history of Stadler (as well as a few of the engineers there in person), they put considerable emphasis on a modular design, which means that modules can be exchanged and maintained/repaired outside of the vehicle. This also reduces the time the vehicle spends in the workshop (although I don’t think eBART ordered a spare power cube…).
Yes MR, SMART needlessly locked itself into high platforms while Caltrain is dumb to make no effort or plans to ensure a common platform height with HSR and transition to level boarding.
Is there something unclear or confusing to you about this, or what was your point?
Well we all know Marin county has always done things weird…. All that money over there and they don’t know how to spend it efficiently…
[…] bidders than is normal – Bombardier dropped out of the process last year, and in general, some US contracts have just one bid, with correspondingly elevated prices. But regardless of the reason, Amtrak’s order comes at […]
Hi, do you have any information on Stadler GTW (diesel) fuel consumption?