Auckland transport have released a new video showing some of our new electric trains on the production line in Spain.
The last board report gave us the following details on the progress of the project.
Design
The design activity is now focussed on review of test programmes and specifications for testing of the vehicles in New Zealand. These tests require extensive coordination from four key parties, Auckland Transport, Veolia, KiwiRail and CAF. The detailed scope of these tests is being finalised and plans for access to the rail network, for testing, are being discussed with KiwiRail and NZTA.
Type testing of the equipment in Spain is continuing without any significant issues.
Production
Vehicles for the first two EMUs are now all on the assembly line and a production flow has been established. The first vehicle for EMU No 1 will move off the production line into the test bay on 8 May, with the second and third vehicles following two weeks later.
Production of the bodyshells and bogies for subsequent EMUs is progressing in accordance with the programme well.
On 30 April the first vehicle was placed on its production bogies for the first time. CAF advised this went very smoothly and identified two minor interface problems which are being corrected. This was a significant milestone for the project, with all major equipment interfaces on the EMUs now tested. The following photographs show the vehicle body being lowered onto the bogies.
Programme
CAF is currently two weeks behind programme. Discussions have been held to find a way to recover this delay. CAF are adjusting the sequence of some of the tests to use the time more efficiently and have found a shipping route which will remove several days from the transit time. It is expected that these changes will bring the project back onto programme for the first train, assuming that no significant problems are discovered during the final stages of assembly and testing. The successful bogie installation has increased confidence that the original programme will be achieved.Three month look ahead
The first EMU will be tested in Spain during May and June. It expected to be shipped at the end of June. Arrival in New Zealand is expected at the end of August.The Driver Training Simulator is in transit. It will arrive in June and be installed in the EMU Maintenance and Stabling Facility at Wiri. It will be operational and ready for driver training to begin in mid July
Here is the last update we had of the progress.
Processing...
Going to be nice looking trains.
AT aren’t exactly speedy at informing us about how ‘our’ trains are progressing: according to this timetable the first unit is already being tested in Spain and is due to be shipped out in about 3 weeks! Not exactly ‘commercial in confidence stuff’ but this approach does demonstrate AT’s culture of secrecy and privilege and how reluctant it is when it comes to communicating with its stakeholders.
Actually, they have been pretty good with the trains, I think. Lots of involvment of stakeholder groups (such as mobility-impaired etc…) and a reasonably good coms via the mock-ups and other aspects. I can’t see how this approach is secretive.
The rest of the CAF factory doesn’t look overly busy in either the video or still shots does it?
Generally you’re not going to be allowed in to film if the floor is crowded with people or they are moving stuff about with overhead cranes etc. More of a practical thing.
Not that, more that they’re not got the adjacent bays building other trains – you would think they would either be full of the EMUs for AT, or EMUs for other customers?
Maybe the train building business is in more of a recession than we think?
Very nice. What a difference it will be!
Two weeks behind schedule is nothing, compared to the rest of the delays we’ve experienced. It’s practically ahead of time! My only worry is that it would somehow compound other things.
I wonder if they will bring their casual dress code with them.
CAF are two weeks behind and AT are concerned about that? Track electrification is way behind schedule and when the first electric units arrive they’ll be tested four months before they go in to service. I would just let CAF get on with their testing programme rather than try to hurry them through it to get back to the original date.
Of course they are concerned with it – you manage your own project, and you do it well. That includes chasing delays. Electrification may be needed for the whole thing to actually work, but the trains are a different manufacturer, a different project team, different AT managers…
How they’re updating the 70’s trains on San Francisco’s BART:
http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/06/05/lets_get_to_know_barts_fleet_of_the_future_project.php
The timeline helps to put things into perspective with our order.
Bart put initial proposals out to the market in 2009, we didn’t even know electrification was happening until Jan 2010.
By September 2011 we had decided on a supplier however in SF this didn’t happen until May 2012
Over the course of 2012 we saw designs and mock ups, construction of the first train started this year and will arrive in September, roughly two years after the contract was signed. In SF the first train isn’t due to arrive until 2015, 3 years after the contract was signed.
Our first trains are due in service in April 2014, in SF it isn’t expected until 2017.
In short the design and initial construction time frame for our EMUs is much much shorter.
The BART trains have aged very well considering they area product of the ’70s.
What we would have too, had Muldoon not killed Robbie’s Rail. Cool seventies styled electric trains. How much better Auckland would be…
Check out these hipsters riding Robbie’s ARA EMUs!
In fairness, Robbie’s Rapid Rail just wasn’t economically feasible however you cut it. The problem was cut and cover, and the sheer cost of relocating services.
In fairness the London Underground and the NY Subway are not financially viable…. but that is not the same as to say they are not economically beneficial.
And rail and walking facilities on the harbour bridge weren’t economically feasible either and look where we are now.
A reactive bunch aren’t you! My point (too subtle I guess) was that technology has advanced considerably since the 80s so a similar project – let’s say a city rail link – may well be viable today (both financially and economically) with tunnelling, fibre, HDPE cabling, PE pipes etc. I worked on Robbie’s project and can assure you that the numbers didn’t stack up. Gary Taylor gave it his best shot too, and failed.
It’s not my recollection that Muldoon canned the project although you may be right about that Patrick, and I was no fan of Muldoon. His 66% tax rate + excise taxes + sales taxes made Clark’s 39% + excise taxes + GST look like a bargain, not to mention mortgage interest rates in the high teens.
It’s an odd thing that each new generation thinks their predecessors had it easy, or that a given project would have been cheaper back then in real terms, which is seldom the case in reality.
Jonno,
I think that every generation can see with the benefits of 20/20 hindsight, what the previous generations should have invested in, not what they invested in, or why they made the decisions to invest they way they did.
Muldoon had lots of choices, he could have greenlit the Rapid Rail project if he (and his Cabinet) agreed to.
They pushed ahead with all sorts of dumb things instead, when investments elsewhere in the economy would have been far better. The signs where all there at the time, they just chose to ignore them.
Just as the current Transport Minister seems keen to push ahead with RoNS and pooh poohing the CRL, despite all the signs saying these two are likely the dumbest short sighted decisions they and the Government will make for many a year to come.
I must say though that at least Muldoon invested in some productive assets with ‘think big’ such as the nz steel expansion and the oil refinery, which have benefitted the economy for a number of decades. While we all know that transport has been described as ‘sand in the wheels of capitalism’ I just struggle to see how the Rons will have that much benefit.
Just because something has been funded (fuel tax), doesn’t mean it should be automatically be built.
The point is that the Right of Ways only get more expensive and more difficult to acquire over time. The great pig-headed stupidity that I whole heartedly level at those in charge during the entire postwar era was the failure to set aside ROWs for future use. And there are important points to understand about this:
1. they we actively and excitedly planning for rapid growth, there was none of today’s ambivalence about this- all brave new world.
2. there were many who urged futureproofing for transit, but it was spitefully and deliberately denied by the triumphant road lobby, who were determined to snuff out any alternative.
3. the argument then, as now, is that buses will do and all they need are roads. We know this is not and cannot be the case unless those buses have their own ROWs
That’s why we have the glory that is the Pakuranga Highway for example.
And regards the 70s rail scheme [which was a bus-rail model similar to what we are finally doing] it was Muldoon who killed it in co-ordinated action with C+R local Nats exploiting the fractured nature of Auckland’s governance. I have sat in the library and read the newspaper articles from the period, which is where I found that image above. All the land acquired for this system was sold off and lost for good. Future eating.
Also Jonno it is meaningless to say that you know something ‘didn’t stack up economically’, do you mean couldn’t pay for itself? No doubt, but that is a financial measure not an economic one. You will need to be more forthcoming about your definition of ‘economically’ for that sentence to mean a thing.
We will never know if a good little system couldn’t have been running in Auckland over the last 35 years, but my bet is that while I doubt it would have boomed in the last quarter of last century it certainly could have succeeded sufficiently to have been built on considerably over the last decade as the population rose and attitudes to Transit changed. It would have changed the shape of Auckland for the better, even if modestly.
It is distressing to be facing the same arguments from the same type of people for why we cant do it. Most irritating of all is when they point to traffic congestion as the reason for there being no money invest in a congestion free network. A more stubbornly dimwitted argument is hard to imagine.
Completely agree Patrick.
Not reserving ROWs is probably the dumbest thing a society can do, especially as they can be used as parks in the meantime (SH20 being the obvious example.).
Hopefully we learn from those misakes.
On the potential 70’s rail; electrification would have allowed better frequencies, and much quieter smoother service on the system, making it more pleasant to use and as such more popular. Britomart would have happened earlier, Onehunga would have reopened sooner, Britomart would have been in operation for much longer, heck, the CRL may have been built by now. Any investment in rail at all in the last 40 years would have done that, but probably the most significant change would be that it would be harder for Gerry Brownlee to suggest that ‘Aucklanders love cars’
Look at the room available around the seats (even in the AT EMU’s) and you realise immediately why people prefer trains to buses. I had a bus trip in and out of town the other night. Now I’m only 172cm and even I find them short on leg room (not to mention shoulder room). Trains for mass moving of people over long distances (1/2 hour or more), buses for local transfers. Damn the price. It’s just the right thing to do.
Bryce – have you tried Ritchies’ new double-decker on the Northern Express? AT has worked with the operator to ensure the leg room is equivalent to a train. Very nice … and the top deck provides a much better view than a train, unless you like looking at Auckland’s weed and graffiti covered fences.
No I haven’t. Maybe they’ll look at double deckers for the NW run once we have the west Auckland part of the RPTP in place? In the meantime……
If I wasn’t intending to drink
….. I would have taken my car.
latest update June 2013 in total 21 carriages have been manufactured, 12 of which are fully painted and awaiting testing.