[dowlingm]

How many different types of rolling stock does the city of Toronto require? So now we have to train mechanics to maintain every different type of train, and train drivers to operate every different type of train. Order different parts/ components for all the different rolling stock. What a nightmare to manage. More people on the government payroll to oversee all of this.

Two points I would make here, as economy of scale flits into and out of a lot of these discussions.

1. When it suits, such economies are overlooked. Canada Line, having different DMUs for Ottawa Line 2 and 4, UPX cars and now Guelph-Cambridge BEMUs. On the flip side, economy of scale was used to sell the TTC 600 car mega order for uptown and downtown LRVs for Transit City to ensure Thunder Bay got all the work and look how that worked out. Even if the uptown work had been separately tendered it would have created a light rail order of a size roughly that of the entire US light rail fleet - and there’s a good chance the assembly plant might have been located somewhere close enough that Torontonians could work at it* or even have the vehicles driven out of an assembly plant convertible to an MSF**

2. Different vehicles are not necessarily that different. LRVs these days are an assembly of components - electrical, motors, seating, lighting - from a global supply chain. I would love to know what overlap there is between Citadis Spirit and Flexity Freedom but I doubt it’s zero. Additionally, there may not be much choice but to use a common supplier in some situations where a country has only one supply of a specific part but that part is the most convenient one to select for national-content-percentage purposes.

* this is not necessarily a guarantee of a good product - see BYD Newmarket and their vehicles’ woes at TTC
** again not a guarantee of a good outcome - see Ottawa