I'd like to see a breakdown of that "hundreds of millions of dollars" and which companies provided the quotes, plus who owns the companies and who are their husbands/wives/uncles/nephews/nieces/etc.
I looked into this last year, a significant part of the cost is in new hardware, both on the vehicles, but also sensors spread through the system. They all need commercial grade RF systems that allow for 2 way signaling communication and integration into the vehicles control systems.
> Grade 0: High Temperature Operating Life (HTOL): +175C for 408 hours. High Temperature Storage Life (HTSL): +175C for 1,000 hours. Temperature Cycling: -65C tp +175C for 500 cycles
And generally speaking transit agencies aspire to buy higher-reliability, longer-lasting equipment than your average consumer car.
I’ve noticed that my car’s touchscreen operates at a very high temperature at all times - almost hot enough to burn skin, which seems like a weird choice for something designed to be touched by skin.
That probably means that whatever is running behind the touchscreen is the thing that’s hot, and the touchscreen is doing a poor job insulating that heat. But is also illustrative of why the automotive standards are the way they are.
It’s probably not overt corruption. It’s probably because in this kind of large system, there is a strong demand for validation and assurance at all levels, which is usually achieved by hiring experts* to write reviews, recommendations, and reports that hold up in court.
* They must be experts, otherwise how could they get away with charging so much, right?
The cost is distribute across all the PowerPoint, Word, and Excel spreadsheets created to give the illusion that people are doing actual work. Go read a couple of the SFMTA PDF's linked to by a commenter. They are totally enlightening justifications like - reduced congestion blah - better monitoring blah. No meat whatsoever. No analysis backing anything up - just pretty pictures.
I rode Muni for 10 years almost every working day. Do you want to know what reduced congestion the most. Buying new muni cars because the old muni cars door mechanism had been repaired so much they did not open or close %50 of the time and people had to use other doors to get on and off a train on a daily basis.
