Increasingly, the Patrick administration has offered a three-letter magic solution to a variety of transportation challenges in Greater Boston: DMU. Short for diesel multiple units, DMUs are essentially little trains, which can use the same tracks and stations as big commuter rail locomotives, but would be quieter, cleaner, cheaper, and more suitable for frequent service on routes with stations close together. The recently announced plan for a new “West Station” in Allston is the latest project that relies on such trains. State officials foresee frequent DMU service connecting every corner of Greater Boston, and even set aside a portion of a $252 million section of the capital investment plan last year to pay for them.
The pesky problem, though, is that no US transit agency of the MBTA’s size uses DMUs, the only company that makes them to American standards has a shaky history, and it’s unclear how Massachusetts will get the trains that plans in South Boston, Dorchester, and now Allston are counting on. That’s not a reason to slow down planning, and the Allston project should certainly go forward, since conventional trains will still be able to stop there too. But the next governor and MassDOT secretary will need to devote more attention to the nitty-gritty task of actually finding the DMUs needed to make full use of the new station and fulfill the promises made to improve service on the Fairmount Line in Dorchester.
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DMUs are common in Germany, Australia, Sweden, and other countries with less demanding railway safety laws, but have virtually disappeared in the United States. Federal regulators set such high safety standards because the trains would be sharing tracks that are also used for freight rail shippers. Because the market for passenger trains in the United States remains tiny — about 5 percent of the world total — foreign manufacturers haven’t traditionally viewed designing a US-compliant vehicle as a priority. American companies have tried to pick up the slack, with discouraging results; one domestic manufacturer, Colorado Railcar, went bankrupt in 2008 after an Oregon transit agency was forced to bail them out, even picking up the tab for the CEO’s $37,000-a-month salary. The company that emerged from Colorado Railcar’s bankruptcy is the one a T spokesman supplied this week when asked where the agency might find its DMUs.
T officials are moving ahead, putting out a request for technical information recently from potential manufacturers. Massachusetts is likely to be an early adopter of DMUs among big American transit agencies. Someone needs to go first, and that shouldn’t scare the state off; the new vehicles could allow transformative new uses of existing rail lines. Still, there are risks involved — especially in light of the T’s experience with Hyundai Rotem, which delivered the agency’s new double-level coaches behind schedule and only after much drama. And with every step like the West Station announcement, the greater the burden on the state to lay out how and when these much-touted new vehicles will materialize.
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