While I'm sure that's part of his concern, and a valid concern, I think his bigger concern is signing say a 5 year contract for a bunch of new cars without a promise from Congress to actually provide the monies needed to buy those cars. And my understanding is that Mr. Boardman isn't just holding off on buying new LD cars, he's holding off on placing any more orders for new cars period where Amtrak is the only one getting the bill.
That means no new LD cars after the Viewliners, no new corridor cars save those being brought by the States, no new HSR cars for Acela or a replacement thereof after the current order already in.
I don't think a blanket restriction on ordering more new LD cars would apply to the 40 Acela coach cars. Those have a rare attribute for Amtrak - the Acela makes a profit above the rails and the new cars can pay for themselves in a few years. A sold out Acela leaves revenue on the table. If Congress does not appropriate capital funds in FY12 budget for the 40 Acela coach cars, it has been indicated that they would get a RRIF loan to pay for them - and probably for extending the Acela service facilities to handle longer trainsets (which presumably would be useful for Acela IIs someday). The rate, as of today, on a 10 year Treasury note is 2.47%, mind bogglingly low. Damn close to free money.
As for ordering more Viewliner 2s, it might make sense regardless, to wait until the first several units of the current order have been delivered to get feedback on build quality and any engineering or manufacturing changes that need to be made. The Viewliner 2s, I think are supposed to be delivered until 2015 and any large order would be added on after the end of the current production run anyway.
The contract for the 120 bi-level corridor cars is not going to be awarded and signed until sometime next year. The RFI, RFP, bid submission & review, committee decisions and vendor selection & negotiation process will take time, and with this many states involved, will be a very carefully followed procedural process. Ramp up of a production facility and delivery of the first bi-levels will likely take another 2+ years with deliveries spread over the next several years after that.
What Amtrak has now, that they did not have 3 years ago, are the start-up of US manufacturing facilities to build single and bi-level cars to Amtrak and new PRIIA standard specifications. This will give Amtrak a lot of options and flexibility they did not have before to place smaller incremental orders when Congress provides some piecemeal funding or take out government backed RRIF loans in place of commercial leases which have lot more strings attached.
I see a lot of people on these Amtrak forums who want Amtrak to submit large orders RIGHT NOW! Well, it is not up to Boardman, the Amtrak board also has to agree to any major contracts and I have no idea where they stand on LD trains as a collective group. I think people are losing sight of the progress made in the past several years for the fleet, even though there is still a very large backlog:
orders placed to address the critical immediate needs:
- 130 Viewliner 2s, 70 ACS-64s. Both of these orders should improve ticket revenue, the Viewliner tran-dorms and sleepers for more sleeper sales; the ACS-64 for more reliable NEC service, lower power consumption & maintenance cost and capacity to add more daily Regionals.
- 15 P-40s, 60 Amfleets and up to 21 Superliners restored to service using stimulus funds.
- By a rather protracted process, funding for states to buy 120 (or more) bi-level corridor cars and some 33 diesels.
- State orders for 4 Talgo trainsets.
- A plan to buy 40 additional coach cars for the Acelas
- A pretty well thought out Fleet Strategy Plan. Better to have a decent plan than no real plan at all.
A critical funding question could well be the replacements for the P-42 diesels. Amtrak can put off starting on the Amfleet II and Superliner 1 replacements a few more years if they have to. But given the failure and accident rate, they may need to place orders for several hundred new diesel locos sooner rather than later. That is a big ticket item purchase.