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Philadelphia transit authority gives up on CRRC trains, ends contract before single car is delivered
By adamg on Fri, 04/12/2024 - 10:02pm
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that SEPTA, Philadelphia's equivalent of the MBTA, has cancelled a $185-million contract for new commuter-rail cars with the Chinese company building new Orange Line and Red Line trains, after already spending $50 million on the deal and not having actually gotten a single car four years after they were supposed to have started rolling in.
The Philadelphia cars were supposed to have been built at the same Springfield plant that is slowly building those new T cars.
Just last month, the T board voted to give CRRC an extra $148 million to make sure all the remaining Orange and Red Line cars are finally delivered by 2027 - and to waive millions more in late penalties. That would be roughly four years after we were supposed to have all the new cars.
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Comments
That sounds like a smart decision.
I assume that Boston is already deeper into this grift than Philadelphia got, so they benefited from watching us fail. What's done is done; MA needs to move forward however we can.
It should surprise no one that getting our public transit under control is going to be expensive. Try to remember that the blame is distributed across decades.
The overall problems of the T, overall, span decades of neglect.
The overall problems of the MBTA, both financial and maintenance, also span decades of neglect.
The lowest bidder did the worst job?
Gee, you don't say. It's even more egregious when you see another city, in the same (expletive) state as the factory having problems, and responding "Yeah, let's hire them."
I'm all for pinching pennies, but for a $34 million difference, I think you go with the Canadians. Drop in the bucket on an infrastructure project.
It’s actually wild
I managed a marketing campaign for MassDOT through an agency years ago, and we had some promo items made as part of it. They straight up told me I had to get a certain number of quotes and they had to go with the lowest bidder, full stop. Apparently it applies to subway car manufacturers as well.
They always mandate going with the lowest bidder
It never occurs to anyone that sometimes going with the lowest bidder is going to cost you more in the long run. But most legislators are short-sighted morons more interested in their own career prospects than in serving their constituents.
the T
Keep in mind that the law is "The lowest RESPONSIBLE Bidder.
I think we can interpret
I think we can interpret "responsible bidder" to mean "bidder whose brother-in-law knows someone".
Just to elaborate on that,
Just to elaborate on that, most legislators aren't stupid and know this is a bad rule, but fear the interest groups that support rules like this. They think they're more likely to get voted out of office for running afoul of a self-described "taxpayer watchdog" group and getting accused of being a Taxachusetts Political Hack in a Herald op-ed than for not providing their constituents with good governance, and they're probably right, which means that ultimately the problem is the voters.
As I said...
...they care more about their career prospects than the public interest. They don't belong in office. I think mandatory term limits would weed out a lot of these people.
Mandatory term limits in legislature is bad.
With the exception of the executive branch, mandatory term limits are pretty much always a bad idea, and worse than having no limits. It forces the legislature to deprofessionalize and become weaker to the other branches. It lowers experience, and it makes corporate capture of legislative seats far easier. It makes policy worse and more likely to be overturned by court or to be written/implemented badly. Overall it hurts democracy and policy greatly and this has been proven time and time again in democracies around the world.
Term limits corrupts democracy even faster than no term limits. It's not a fix to anything at all. It's just satisfying to people who want to see a faster revolving door of worse and worse politicians each more captured than the last.
Term limits also de-incentivize capable candidates….
…. with a genuine desire to perform public service but a need for regular employment from running for office.
They aren’t a solution to anything.
We already have mandatory term limits
Elections are held statutorily. Whether or not the electorate actually exercises to end a rep's tenure is up to them.
Bigger story on this one
The requirement to open a factory in MA and build the cars here is what was such a horrible idea that drove up the cost and greatly reduced the number of bidders.
Going with the lowest QUALIFIED bidder is not a bad policy and is common. (My company has the same policy.) But when the state tries to combine economic stimulus with purchasing, neither work out well.
Legislators work for their constituents
In a basically democratic system, legislators work for their constituents. The constituents make it clear at the ballot box that what they want is cheapest possible spend, irrespective of quality or long term value. Legislators honor those wishes. The system is working as intended. The result sucks. Education is the solution.
Now what happened here
That’s not what happened here though. CRRC didn't win the bid in 2014. Their predecessor company, CSR, was literally disqualified. unfortunately CSR bought out the more qualified and well respected winner, CNR, to form CRRC. Who could have predicted that?
Came here to say this
The fact that CRRC was not the winning bidder, and wasn't even allowed to bid is generally forgotten or ignored in these discussions. We need to point that out every single time.
It doesn't help that cars have to be custom-built
In a rational world, subway cars would all be the same. There would be a standard, proven design, and one company would emerge as the preferred source. The cars would be cranked out like sausages, at a standard price, and delivery would never be a problem.
In the real world, the Blue Line, Orange Line, and Red Line all have to have differently designed cars. The Blue Line tunnel was originally designed for streetcars, and Blue Line trains to this day take power from am overhead wire along part of the line. The Orange Line was originally an elevated railway; only the Red Line was originally built as underground heavy rail.
In other words, it has always been a clusterf$ck.
But what were they thinking when they hired CRRC? Idiots.
Too late to fix it now.
And I notice you don't even mention the Green Line :-)
They didn't hire CRRC
The predecessor of CRRC bought the company awarded the contract. That same predecessor was deemed unqualified to bid, so the MBTA did its best to not have a contract with CRRC, but things happen.
Wake me up when current and
Wake me up when current and former politicians start going to jail over this. When the trains fall apart and go off the rails. No one will be held accountable.
Eminent domain takeover of the manufacturing site?
Since it appears that the company which built and controls the site is no longer competent to fulfill the contracts they agreed to would it be the right step to declare eminent domain of the plant, pay the company some "reasonable amount," execute a contract with a more competent company that can come in quickly as the new manager?
Reasonable amount can include adjustments for the failure of CRRC to fulfill their part of the original contract.
This assumes...
This assumes that there are competent people just hanging around ready to be put into place. CRRC is doing a job that very few other businesses in America even does anymore after outsourcing. This is a still a complex factory, and each factory is built to a company's methods and specs, they aren't all just the same and a team can't just be plopped into the seat and hope they can figure it out and do a better job from the word go at this point.
Bombardier was best suited to this, and if I were them, I would do nothing to bend over backwards to fix this absolutely foreseeable and frankly treacherous blunder of Massachusetts's own making. The MBTA went with Bombardier for *decades*. And for us to turn around and betray that good relationship by hiring what predictably turned out to be a total train-wreck of a company from China... yeah if I were Bombardier, I would let the T learn their lesson on this one.
Taking over the factory eventually seems like a good idea. But unfortunately for the government, there's no way that hiring a brand new team and taking over the factory would save money or deliver cars earlier - it would only cost even more and delay even more.
Obviously
The Commonwealth f'ed up big time And not the first time. Should have just gone with Bombardier. At least they're well made
Same in LA
Los Angeles also ordered CRRC cars and has received only a handful so far. Fortunately, LA already moved on to sign a contract with a different manufacturer.