Interesting because our four new CAF cars in Sydney appear to cost around $10 million each. No new maintenance facilities, no new depot and no new power supply infrastructure. I won’t even start on less people on the dole and more paying taxes. Whilst it seems to me that this is a tad expensive no doubt I can’t see the big picture. I have always thought the the big picture is chemically induced but put that down to my personal prejudices.

Geoff O.
From: TP
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2020 2:41 PM
To: TramsDownUnder
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Re: [Eurotrams] Hundred New E class Trams for Melbounre Australlia

Sometimes, in PR terms, it pays for an agency to announce the actual tram cost, because what I saw several years back in many international discussions were comparisons of costs of various tram models and the E would feature at the top of the list as the most expensive. Which of course the media would pick up and ....! In fact, it's uncommon to get a cost figure now outside Europe because there are other things included like maintenance contracts and so on. Also, trams are often included in a consortium build and operate contract and the tram price is concealed in the overall figures.

At a calculated guess, I would say that the raw cost of each E, being a bespoke design with four bogies, is probably about $AUD 1 million more than that of a 30 metre off-the-shelf Citadis or CAF. In Europe, the latter would cost in the range $AUD 3-4 million. In Australia something north of that. So for the E, maybe it's around $AUD 5-6 million or so?

Tony P

On Saturday, 28 November 2020 at 12:44:37 UTC+11 Mal Rowe wrote:

On 27/11/2020 19:23, Geoff Olsen wrote:

Just out of interest how much does an E cost delivered and ready for service?

That's about as easy to work out as it is to compare various electricity retailers' options!

If you took the $1.48B for the project and divided it by the 100 trams. they would be $14.8M each!

However, there are a lot of other costs to get a tram in service, including:

a.. Acquiring land for and building depots or depot extensions.
b.. Acquiring land for and building substations.
c.. Additional maintenance facilities.
d.. Service for a period of the tram's life included in the purchase price.
I recall finding some of this info to answer an earlier query on the initial order of 50 E class, but I can't find it on TDU now.

One thing I do recall was that the Preston Workshops upgrade was around $100M.

Mal Rowe - who does not doubt that the E's are more expensive than a production line Citadis, but trusts the locals to choose wisely