06-25-2017, 01:26 PM
(06-25-2017, 11:31 AM)Pheidippides Wrote: Where is this $12m per vehicle cost coming from? The article Canard posted says $528 million for 61 vehicles which is $8.65 million per vehicle and aligns with previous reporting of average vehicle costs of $8.7 vs. 4.2 million per vehicle; and the Alstrom vehicle is bigger which explains part of the difference (the cost is nearly proportional by the vehicle capacity ($29,642 vs. $25,609 per passenger seat).
It’s also worth mentioning that it’s not appropriate to characterize the entire amount spent on Alstom cars as being “blown”, even if we assume that there is no benefit whatsoever to the higher price for Alstom: only the amount more than the Bombardier cars would cost could conceivably be a waste. I’m assuming that we believe the cars are needed in the first place but I don’t think even Metrolinx would contract to buy cars they don’t believe they’ll need.
On a somewhat related note, did anybody notice that John Tory is saying that the choice of modes on Sheppard (LRT vs. subway) is still open, even though a sensible decision to build LRT was taken something like 10 years ago? While in Scarborough, the idiotic decision to build subway is final, even though that project is nowhere near beginning actual construction.