The plan to acquire forty additional Acela coaches has been killed. Amtrak, with some apparent "nudging" by their Inspector General, determined that the cost per car in a lot of forty was simply prohibitive:
I suppose the "good" is that Amtrak is not going to spend through the nose simply to right a wrong made during the Warrington regime. Adding the capital cost of this equipment could well have turned the Acela trains into a loser. Quite likely, the revenue yield would be reduced (those hoping for an Acela bargain ride? Sorry 'bout that).
The "bad" of course is that most commercially successful product line Amtrak has ever had will become so difficult to obtain that prospective riders will simply say "let's just fly'.
Lest we forget, that in addition to the new cars, there would also need be expansion of the three Acela "car barns".
Hopefully, the "Acela II's" being talked about for maybe 2030 will have adequate passenger seating capacity.
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
Somewhat interesting why this ended up being "sole source".
Another thought: A reasonable price should be achievable if the supplier would grasp that making say $25,000 per vehicle on 40 vehicles beats making $50,000 per vehicle on zero vehicles.
Back in the mid-70's when inflation was going beserk, steel mills would not quote a price per ton for rail, but only sell rail at "price in effect at time of delivery." WMATA was getting extremely high prices on bids for track construction due to the uncertainty on matierial price costs and inflation in labor rates and all else. Therefore, they decided to buy the major materials through a set of supply only contracts. One of the biggies of these was rail. Conductor rail, turnouts, and a few other things were also bought under seperate contracts. These materials were then provided to the track construction contractor as "Authority Furnished Material"
They first put the rail contract out for competitive bid but got only one or two extremely high price responses. What was being done was the people submitting the bids were simply middlemen making a guess as to what the inflation in price would be between order and delivery.
The decision was then made to order directly from the mill. Remember the only quote we could get would be "price in effect at time of delivery. The rail was then ordered directly from Bethlehem Steel's Steelton mill. Why them? They were closest so they would be lowest in delievered price due to freight costs. Each of these orders required a letter to the Dept. of Transportation explaining why this method was necessary and the best way to obtain the material and did not result in excess payment for the materiial. This request then had to be approved before the order could be made, as it was contrary to normal government procurement policy.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Mr. Kisor's referenced topic certainly establishes that Amtrak is "going for broke" with Acela replacement sets: