Quote:
Originally Posted by aquablue
Isn't that newish? Why are they replacing them then?
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The current Acelas are likely to remain in service through at least the end of this decade. Amtrak is just starting what will be a long process of placing an order for Acela IIs which will be entirely new trainsets. There are still a lot of regulatory issues for the FRA to settle on Tier III specs which could allow Amtrak to buy something close to an off-the-shelf HSR EMU trainset rather than the near customized design of the current Acelas.
The original plan, or at least one version of the plan for the Acelas was to order 26 trainsets with 8 passenger cars each (6 business class, 1 cafe, 1 first class car). After cuts, Amtrak ended up with 20 Acela trainsets with 6 cars each, which was a huge drop in capacity. The Acelas are now frequently sold out and maxed out on capacity too often for peak weekday travel.
Amtrak was planning as of earlier this year to buy 40 new Acela coach cars and add 2 coach cars with a total of 130 seats to each trainset. But after asking Bombardier for a quote for a limited production run of 40 unique cars, the company reportedly came back with a high price and declined to open their books to an audit to justify the quote. Amtrak decided the best approach was to instead order new HSR trainsets, which should be lighter in weight, cost less to operate, and be able to run at higher speeds if the Next Gen NEC tracks are ever built.