This is interesting, Metrolink Service Improvement Package will be the first of the Growth Deal schemes to proceed to implementation and its been through the usual refinement process. More updated detail available.
Now I said before that under the initial plan 12 trams were being looked at for ordering which would take it from 104 to 116 orders. However they are now looking at ordering upto 16 trams and keeping under review the costs of ordering the full extended depot capacity of 135 trams.
The M5000 assembly line is a dedicated line purely for the Manchester type due to the customised nature of high floor, the current deadline for further orders is the end of this month, if trams are not ordered until April 2015 then £3.5m of extra costs will be incurred for break of production, these costs would then rise again after April. So TfGM wants the GMCA to approve the order now. If placed the deadline for new orders would then be a further 6 months, there are options remaining to order 37 trams (including this 16) but there is only enough depot capacity for a further 31. TfGM have negotiated a 6% discount on the first LRV tender winning (2008) price for this batch (similar discounts negotiated for previous batches). Value engineering during the length of the production run has also realised further savings of 1.3% compared to the first order.
Other contract changes for this new batch include reliability target of 30,000 miles between service affecting failures after 12 months rather than 26 months, endemic or epidemic faults will now be included in the reliability target rather than being excluded, all parts from Bombardier and Vossloh Kiepe now included in the performance target, vehicles which dont achieve their target annual operating mileage (i.e. stored) will no long nullify the reliability target.
Program breaks down as:
Light Rail Vehicles £34.3m
Two substations 4.2
Turnback at Sale 1.1
LRV wheel lathe 1.0
Design and project management costs 2.9
Package risk allowance 0.9
Total £44.4m
http://www.agma.gov.uk/cms_media/fil...ugust_2014.pdf
