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Muni approves contract for Siemens light rail vehicles
I wonder if Boston’s MBTA is gonna order some. These sister cities have a pattern of getting the same type of LRV’s dating back to the Boeing-Vertol models.
CAF builds the cars in Spain, ships them to upstate N.Y. for assembly (what’s he difference between building and assembling?) and then transports the cars over the whole (most?) of the continent and wonders about the Siemens’ price being 20% lower when Siemens is constructing just over 100 miles from the Muni?
CAF apparently builds the parts in Spain and puts the parts together in NY. If Federal funding is involved, 51% of the value of the finished product has to come from the US, so they must be buying at least some parts here.
Francis, I’ll bet the shipping cost figure in the price setting providing the builder foots the shipping bill.
Bruce: At this point Boston is going with low-floor models while Muni must purchase high-floor vehicles because of the high platforms of the Muni Metro.
@ John Simpson, on my last San Francisco visit, Muni still had a mix of high-and-low-platform stops in its system. The Breda cars accommodated both. Unless platform configurations have changed, the new Siemens units will do that as well, no doubt.
“…built at the company’s Sacramento facility…” I guess I missed the part about assembling them in New York and shipping them to Kalifornia.
Actually the Siemens plant in Sacramento builds the car bodies in plant, however the trucks, motors and other components come from elsewhere. When I was at the facility several years ago, the plant wanted to more component manufacturing in plant. I don’t know if that came to pass but the Siemens Sacramento facility appears to be a class act.