Well the Age nowadays is in down in the same bucket of journalistic "competence" as the ABC and the Guardian. It will be interesting to see whether it's picked up in Fairfax's desperate efforts to save themselves from complete collapse - efforts which are heading in the digital direction.

I can't imagine where they got that figure from. Many tram contracts around the world include the maintenance component and, from those that I've seen dissections of, maintenance only accounts for about 10 to 20% of the figure, so the price of the actual E class tram on its own appears to be very high. They seem to have swung a much better deal with Alstom in Canada. Read into this what you will.

Tony P
---InTramsDownUnder@..., <mal.rowe@...> wrote : I found where I got my lower figure from ...

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/dandenong-plant-to-build-50-trams-20100927-15u42.html http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/dandenong-plant-to-build-50-trams-20100927-15u42.html

- which quotes a figure of AUD 6M per tram.

Mal Rowe - who can't see that any of these reports are giving figures on
the same, or a comparable, basis.