WB62
Senior Member
Are you sure? Looking at a consist sheet from earlier this week GO seems to have 150-200 spare unused coaches right now.
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
smallspy
Senior Member
There are no corrosion issues with the old Acela sets. The issues stem from maintenance - being over 20 years old - and the fact that no one wanted to build new coaches to extend them.
They are also getting a far better financing deal with the Avelia sets, which was the final nail in the coffin.
There are about 175 unused coaches, sure.
What are you going to use to pull them? There are almost no spare locos at this point - thus the tender for another 20. Cab cars are also a problem, but the rebuilt ones coming back from ONR should mitigate that.
Dan
roger1818
Senior Member
This claim is a bit of a joke. Their arguments for the Amfleet being unsafe are:
- “No rail passenger service in North American railroad history has operated passenger train cars so old, so fast," and
- "While meeting current federal standards, is [sic] not as safe as the newest genreation [sic] of passenger cars."
Then the truth comes out when the company that is making these claims (AmeriStarRail) "wants to manage the Northeast Corridor for Amtrak and operate with all higher-speed Acela trains."
While there might be some truth to the claim, I would feel more comfortable with an independent analysis from an organization not looking to make money from this conclusion.
The thing is, Amtrak is planning to replace all of their Amfleet cars with Siemens trainsets. It is just going to take some time.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
But what is the feasibility of combining two Acela trains together and having them hauled by an electric locomotive? Those cars would need a rebuild to continue in service for another 5 years.
generalcanada
Senior Member
Toronto, Canada and Global Breaking News – CP24
Most recent News News business news stories and video from CP24
www.cp24.com
Is this about that proposal from alstom?
innsertnamehere
Superstar
These motions are designed to put pressure on the Feds to select a proponent who has a High Speed element to their bid.
roger1818
Senior Member
I dont think this will change anything really but at least its being mentioned.Toronto, Canada and Global Breaking News – CP24
Most recent News News business news stories and video from CP24
Is this about that proposal from alstom?
From the article: "The difference between high-frequency and high-speed trains is primarily speed:"
Two other primary differences are ticket price and number of stops. Optimally you would have both HSR and regional trains with the high speed trains running express between T-O-M and the slower, more affordable, regional trains would make more stops.
cplchanb
Senior Member
does anyone know when the next sets of the chargers will be arriving? when will they be put on the montreal toronto route? hoping for train 669 to be one by June!
kEiThZ
Superstar
I don't know if it was posted already but the RFQ is up on the HFR website.
generalcanada
Senior Member
has this been seen before?
cplchanb
Senior Member
i dont get why they need to have this many steps. Just issue the RFP, let whoever wants to bid bid and pick from that lot.
why do they need to do a pre qualifiers and then formal bid on the exact same requirements?
this just adds at least 3/4 of a year to the selection process. surely public works isnt that dumb that it it cant tell straight out whos a serious bid or not? .... then again
im not that confident in their competency....
kEiThZ
Superstar
They are paying $20M to each qualified proponent to prepare their RFP. This is normal in massive multi-billion dollar projects where bids cost millions to prepare. To avoid having to pay out to a bunch of companies with no idea what they are doing or no chance of winning, it's best to force qualification where companies have to get together and create whole consortiums.
cplchanb
Senior Member
Is it standard practice to pay bidders such a princely amount? Why should we pay them to bid when the exclusivity of getting a billion dollar contract should be incentive enough? Right now big companies can do whatever they want. regardless if they get the bid they score this massive cash participation prize. If they're that big they ought to be working hard on their own dime to create a successful bid that won't just balloon the budget nor mysteriously gain 5 years of delays as soon as its signed.
When i prepare my fee proposals for prospective jobs I sure don't expect to be paid by the biddee to do it....
crs1026
Superstar
It is standard practice, and it is money very well spent. It raises the likelihood that there will be multiple (credible) bidders - which in turn encourages price discipline.
The effort to review and analyse all the information going into a bid on a project of this magnitude is huge. One doesn't just consider the length of a line and generate a quote based on some simple algorithm. If there are multiple bidders, the risk of doing all the work but losing the bid is a pretty big disincentive. Some may simply be unable to afford the bid preparation.
Whatever your business, you are in fact getting your clients to pay for the cost of your quote preparation, you just account for it differently.... ie it's folded into your overhead calculation somehow.
- Paul
kEiThZ
Superstar
For a deal that could end up being tens of billions of dollars? Yes it is. The defence industry follows similar practices for multi-billion dollar deals.
Because that's not enough incentive, especially if bidders suspect there's home team favoritism going on. This compensates for the risk of racking up loss after loss due to protectionism. Should be noted that compensation for bid preparation is usually not profitable. It's designed to simply cover most costs that all bidders are expected to incur. Somebody wants to go off and do extra work to improve their odds, that's on them.
Does your proposal take 100 person-years of highly skilled employment to prepare for submission?