Picking consistent standards in order to make use of economies of scale is an important part of good planning. In our construction costs report, we attribute a high cost premium on systems and finishes in New York to lack of standardization of station designs and parts, to the point that the three stations of Second Avenue Subway used two different escalator vendors. This point has appealed to a number of area activists, who reach to not just what we report cross-nationally but also American history. John Pegram, who comments here as BQRail and writes an excellent blog on Substack, gave the example of the PCC streetcars of interwar America a week ago, and I promised I’d follow up on this; the news of the cancellation of congestion pricing delayed this post somehow but it’s still important to discuss. The issue here is that good public transportation procurement requires not just consistent standards, but also good ones, which give international vendors a familiar environment and keep in touch with technological advances.
The starting point for me is that the rolling stock on American subways and commuter rail is fairly standardized. New York City Transit procured standard designs in the 1990s, dubbed the R110A and R110B, and for decades kept buying trains based on these designs. In the 1990s and 2000s, it worked, in the sense that the trains were of comparable quality and cost to rolling stock in other large cities (although they were on the heavy side). But over time, technology diverged, and by the 2010s, a cost premium started to appear. By now, NYCT subway car contracts have a noticeable premium over the European norm, even if this premium is far smaller than the infrastructure cost premium.
Commuter and intercity rail cars have a similar issue with what the standard is. American commuter rail cars follow a few standard designs – the EMU design (in either the LIRR/Metro-North version or the SEPTA one), and the unpowered car hauled by a diesel locomotive one. DMU designs are not at all standard, and do have cost premiums as a result, especially since these are also small orders. That said, nearly all American commuter rail ridership is on EMUs or locomotive-hauled trains (usually diesel, occasionally electric), and those, too, have their problems.
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