The number of rail vehicles acquired in a particular time period by
different operators may depend on the vehicle cost but also on the size of
the network, the length of trains, and whether there is a need at that time
for additional capacity or replacement of existing fleet which typically
have 30-40 year lifetimes.
Alex Cowie
On Wednesday, August 17, 2022 at 10:31:19 PM UTC+9:30 TP wrote:
> Well it was the Whitlam government that signed the Lima Declaration that
> started the ball rolling on sending manufacturing overseas and importing
> the products. I agree that we should be encouraging local manufacturing,
> but the costs aren't always competitive and when it's a government
> procurement, the extra cost is borne by the taxpayer and comes with an
> opportunity cost of additional stock or other improvements to the public
> transport system foregone.
>
> According to Alstom, the basic cost of the G class trams is $10 million
> per car. The $18 million figure would, I think, relate to including those
> extras like the depot etc. Similar doublings of cost compared with ordering
> from overseas often occur with passenger trains built in Australia, like
> the 390 train cars to be built for Queensland Rail at Maryborough under the
> Queensland Train Manufacturing Program. (During the last decade, Queensland
> has also acquired 450 NGR suburban cars built in India, which would have
> enabled QR to build up the numbers quickly.) Perth and Adelaide have
> sourced electric trains from Maryborough or Melbourne, though Perth's C
> series order or 246 cars is being built in Perth. When local manufacture
> becomes a requirement in tenders, few will tender without a guarantee of
> continuing repeat orders, otherwise all of the plant and equipment has to
> be amortised over one job and the price of the product goes through the
> roof. Then you end up with a situation like with Alstom at Dandenong, where
> there is a monopoly local manufacturer, undermining the whole basis of
> competitive tendering, and that manufacturer can charge what they like. All
> of this gets charged to the public transport budget.
>
> I think you can see the effects of a local manufacturing requirement in
> the fleet-renewal/expansion outcomes in recent years. (Some of the overseas
> orders include finishing and outfitting in Australia, some don't.) Over the
> last decade (ignoring orders still in process), as far as I can determine,
> 425 suburban rail carriages and 100 tramcars have been built for Melbourne,
> of which 308 carriages were built in China. I want to include Vlocitys too
> because I believe they're regarded as interurban commuter trains, but I
> can't find a breakdown for the last decade. At a calculated guess, there
> are about 200 of these cars built over this time.. So that's about 600 or
> so commuter rail carriages and 100 trams over the past decade.
>
> In NSW, without the constraint of a local manufacture requirement, over
> the last decade there have been acquired by the present government 934
> suburban, metro and interurban rail carriages (from China, India and
> Korea), 91 tramcars (from Spain) and 19 large to medium ferries (from
> Australia, China and Indonesia). Some of these orders are still in
> progress with more to follow. During this decade, another 636 suburban cars
> were acquired from China, but I've separated them because they were an
> order set in motion by the previous Labor government. If we include them as
> actual products of the last ten years, that's 1,570 commuter rail
> carriages, 91 tramcars and 19 ferries. (Compare with the actual outcome
> record of the previous 15 years of Labor government of 220 train carriages,
> 5 medium ferries, no tramcars and no metro cars!)
>
> So NSW's record of local manufacture of these major vehicles/vessels has
> been pretty appalling over the last decade, but look at how much has been
> acquired and how far the money went compared to Victoria - more than twice
> as many rail carriages, almost the same number of trams, plus ferries on
> top. And I'm sure Victoria's figure would have been much lower had they not
> acquired the HCMTs from China but built them here. It's also not only the
> cost, but the local manufacturing capacity too. Since we lost Comeng, the
> capacity no longer exists for this scale of procurement within quite short
> timeframes.
>
> I've left buses out because, even though chassis and drive components are
> invariably imported, at least we can body buses locally. I also haven't
> mentioned the small fleets of trams in Gold Coast, Canberra and Adelaide,
> all of which have been imported from Germany or Spain. Trams are simply not
> viable to manufacture in Australia at a sensible cost, because of the low
> volume and lack of continuity. So we get a situation where production has
> to be drawn out in order to keep the plant running and the workforce and
> suppliers usefully employed. A tram can normally be built in a fortnight or
> less. How long does it take to build a tram at Dandenong for that fabulous
> price? It's a dilemma for sure. Import them, get heaps for the money and
> get them quickly, or manufacture them locally, get far less for the money
> and wait far longer for them. What's the answer?
>
> Tony P
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, 17 August 2022 at 12:14:50 UTC+10a...@... wrote:
>
>> The other negative aspect of importing everything manufactured while
>> exporting raw materials with no added value is the adverse environmental
>> effects of dragging stuff around on these enormous ships that burn the
>> worst, high sulphur, high CO2 emitting fuel that is available, kill more
>> whales and other sea mammals than Japanese “scientific research” ever has,
>> and dump containers full of whatever toxic filth they are carrying into the
>> ocean during storms.
>>
>> But these are all considered inconvenient “externalities” by the
>> perpetrators of this ecocide so the real cost of this global trade is
>> concealed in the name of greed and, as always, the polluters get off free.
>>
>> Tony
>>
>> On 17 Aug 2022, at 11:23, Matthew Geier mat...@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Are we able to compare like for like though?
>>
>> The G class contract price almost certainly includes the new depot and 20
>> years of maintenance. There will be a premium for local manufacturers and
>> yes it's not fair that the PT budget cops that cost, but the headline cost
>> probably includes much more than the cost of the actual vehicle making
>> direct comparisons difficult. And keeping those workers employed building
>> them is probably cheaper than throwing them all on social security
>> (although that comes out of a different pot of money). Although ultimately
>> as a taxpayer, I pay either way.
>>
>> Mal has pointed out in the past that the G class contract includes
>> handing over proprietary code and tools to the onboard computer systems to
>> PTV. How much did Bombardlier jack up the price for that 'option'?
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 17 Aug 2022 at 10:34, TP histor...@...> wrote:
>>
>>> This month's TAUT has an item that throws some rare insight into the
>>> basic cost of a tram. Pilsen is ordering a new fleet of Skoda 40Ts, which
>>> is a 30 metre design almost identical to the Melbourne E class. The price
>>> has apparently risen 23% because of the current economic situation in
>>> Europe - to $AUD 4 million per car. The discrepancy between this and the
>>> $10 million label on a 24 metre G class car sort of puts it into
>>> perspective. I agree about encouraging local manufacturing, but I have a
>>> problem with the extra cost coming out of the public transport budget
>>> because it means you get less than half as many trams for the money at a
>>> time when you desperately need to replace old trams and/or increase the
>>> fleet - or less of some other urgent public transport need.
>>>
>>> https://zdopravy.cz/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Tram_Plzen_3.jpg
>>>
>>> Tony P
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, 10 August 2022 at 20:50:21 UTC+10 Mick Duncan wrote:
>>>
>>>> Good one,Greg
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Mick
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 8/08/2022 4:37 pm, Gregory Robinson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Yarra Trams got rid of route 69 so I guess F class would be out of the
>>>> question.
>>>> Adelaide had their F type.
>>>>
>>>> ------ Original Message ------
>>>> On Monday, 8 Aug, 2022 At 10:25 AM, TPhistor...@...>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> When this thread started we didn't know what class the new trams were
>>>> going to be, so we speculated that it would be F. Subsequently it was
>>>> announced that they would be G class.
>>>>
>>>> Tony P
>>>> (tripped up by the thread title himself)
>>>>
>>>> On Monday, 8 August 2022 at 09:30:14 UTC+10 trams4me wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Was the F class designation for the new trams ever an official "thing"
>>>>> or merely a gunzel affectation?
>>>>>
>>>>> All the official documentation refers to "G" class, thus named as "G"
>>>>> is the seventh letter of the alphabet, the tram is seventh generation and
>>>>> thus their numbers will be 7001 - 71xx.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yuri.
>>>>> --
>>>>> Gallery at https://tinyurl.com/trams4me
>>>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>> Groups "TramsDownUnder" group.
>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>> an email tounsub...@...">tramsdownunder+
>>>>unsub...@....
>>>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/567374f0-7e35-457f-a3f0-44c1a496b7d0n%40googlegroups.com
>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/567374f0-7e35-457f-a3f0-44c1a496b7d0n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
>>>> .
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>> Groups "TramsDownUnder" group.
>>>>
>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>> an email totramsdownunde...@....
>>>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/2f657584.3f4d4.1827c2ca379.Webtop.93%40telstra.com
>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/2f657584.3f4d4.1827c2ca379.Webtop.93%40telstra.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
>>>> .
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups "TramsDownUnder" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>> an email totramsdownunde...@....
>>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/09ef1153-0cb4-4bf5-9fc6-683028051999n%40googlegroups.com
>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/09ef1153-0cb4-4bf5-9fc6-683028051999n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
>>> .
>>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "TramsDownUnder" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email totramsdownunde...@....
>>
>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/CAG-%3DV-Ko-_q6i0an0gutLj26%3DkOuA8rVi-E3s7sX4AF%2BvW6dnw%40mail.gmail.com
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tramsdownunder/CAG-%3DV-Ko-_q6i0an0gutLj26%3DkOuA8rVi-E3s7sX4AF%2BvW6dnw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
>> .
>>
>>
>>