Comments on: Boise Trains Not Tracking Well In Boston

By: JDB

JDB — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 04:39:37 +0000

KEOLIS is a French company 70% owned by SNCF – the French national rail system. It is not part of Veolia (Transdev). In 2014 KEOLIS won the Boston rail operating contract from Veolia. Seems rail riders in Boston are getting really Teed about their rail service.

PTM (Professional Transit Management), a unit of Transdev operates the Boise bus system but not the Nampa – Caldwell buses. Current Boise bus ridership is at 1980 levels (Source: VRT) despite service increases and a doubling of the population. The current PTM operating contract ends later this year.

Vossloh is actually a German rail services provider and locomotive builder. They have operations in Spain and may have been working with the Spanish national railways back in 2008 on a high speed locomotive.

The Motive Power units in Boston were designed to be state of the art, high speed rail(by U.S. standards)locomotives. Only 40 were built. All went to Boston. Cost per locomotive – about $ 5.5 million each. Kind of reminds me of the 1994 MK5000C fiasco.

By: Concerned Neighbor

Concerned Neighbor — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 12:28:12 +0000

So there have been 3 repairs. For an engine that size and complexity those are minor. “Months” is a greater concern. However, are things running smoothly now? If so then great, but if there are ongoing issues then no.

The USA imports $750 BILLION more than it exports every year, mainly due to currency manipulation. Buy America is just the start of what we need for balance.

By: Kent Goldthorpe

Kent Goldthorpe — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 12:17:09 +0000

Two words made famous by John Glen; “Low Bidder”. To heck with the French and Spanish, buying local ifs important but so is pride of workmanship, part of good old American know how.

By: Brian Vermilion

Brian Vermilion — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 02:13:07 +0000

What is the name of the French company?

EDITOR NOTE–French firm is KEOLIS. There is also a French firm based in Ohio contracting to run the buses in Boise, can you provide that ?

UPDATE: They call themselves Transdev now. There are so many layers of bureaucracy running the bus operation. The city wants nothing to do with it so they farmed it out years ago. Valleyride is the authority, PTM is the management company, there is also Go-Ride that is yet another branch of it. There is also a “Harvest ride” or something to that effect. It’s all a shell game with funding.