New Red and Orange Line Cars

[Nyeuthi]

SEPTA cancels $185 million Chinese contract for double-decker Regional Rail cars

SEPTA says the company's rail cars were plagued by problems, and the project was years behind schedule.

www.inquirer.com

SEPTA pulls the nuclear option on CRRC, outright cancels its order for 45 bi-level commuter rail coaches after the pilot units assembled at Springfield were plagued with so many problems that no deliveries actually took place. Procurement was running 4 years behind schedule.

YIKES.. I'm perplexed by the mediocre performance of the CRRC manufacturing ops in Springfield. Can someone shed a light as to the root cause of the continued dismal performance in this plant when their Chinese manufacturing ops seem to hum along like a finely tuned (Insert your favorite musical instrument here). I know the Covid pandemic had a massive impact, but I would have thought that things would have improved in the succeeding years.

 

[stefal]

YIKES.. I'm perplexed by the mediocre performance of the CRRC manufacturing ops in Springfield. Can someone shed a light as to the root cause of the continued dismal performance in this plant when their Chinese manufacturing ops seem to hum along like a finely tuned (Insert your favorite musical instrument here). I know the Covid pandemic had a massive impact, but I would have thought that things would have improved in the succeeding years.

Tough to hire and train a population (Springfield area) that doesn't have a recent history/talent for manufacturing. Our state legislature mandated they're assembled here without considering the consequences (or they did, and didn't care).

They were also disqualified from bidding by the MBTA on the basis of quality, but as alluded above, they bought the winning firm, so theres no reason to believe they'll do well in quality control.

They also have little to no incentive to perform well in the US, especially now, and haven't really tried since they got here.

 

[Teban54]

Tough to hire and train a population (Springfield area) that doesn't have a recent history/talent for manufacturing.

This might be a bit stereotypical, but I'll also add that a Chinese company may be more used to dealing with Chinese construction workers who are generally more willing to work over time (or at least gotten used to it), more tolerant of strict controls and more hardworking in general, due to the much worse workers' rights in the country. Coping with Springfield workers may even be a cultural shock to the company's management, one that's worsened by all the internal issues with three original losing company.

 

[Koopzilla24]

What I gather from reports, meetings, and interviews over the past few years is that initially the federal government's political strife with the Chinese government resulted in large cost increases to ship parts here from China. This came 3 years after the factory was already being built. COVID followed which exacerbated supply issues. In the meantime there was a bit of a disconnect between mainland Chinese management and CRRC MA management here over how exactly to direct and train American staff, a sort of hands-off approach. To @Teban54 's point above, the American work standard of weekends off and 8 hour shifts wasn't very conducive to CRRC's promised target output and since renegotiation they've begun having second shifts and weekend production. There's also now better training and they've brought in higher-ups from the Chinese manufacturing side as well as the MBTA to regularly observe and inspect quality and progress which wasn't being done before. Since early last year delivery has been mostly steady and there aren't any quality issues anymore so I'm optimistic that once we can get this order complete we'll have a much more reliable transit system on the rolling stock side. With the new signaling complete by then we should also have much improved headways

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Tough to hire and train a population (Springfield area) that doesn't have a recent history/talent for manufacturing. Our state legislature mandated they're assembled here without considering the consequences (or they did, and didn't care).

They were also disqualified from bidding by the MBTA on the basis of quality, but as alluded above, they bought the winning firm, so theres no reason to believe they'll do well in quality control.

They also have little to no incentive to perform well in the US, especially now, and haven't really tried since they got here.

L.A. Metro in January passed on all its options for their CRRC HR4000 HRT cars instead, opting instead to accept a brand-new HR5000 bid from Hyundai-Rotem. The L.A. pilot units were assembled in Springfield as well, though they were supposed to shift to CRRC's Chicago factory midway through the order when the Chicago plant had slack capacity opening up. Only 6 out of 64 cars have been delivered so far...not as late as the T or SEPTA orders, but a solid couple years behind schedule with same "COVID and supply chain and unforeseen circumstances and blah blah blah" song-and-dance. CTA in Chicago also seems to have passed on their 746 options for the somewhat earlier-procured CRRC 7000 series cars, shifting attention instead to the fresh-design 9000 series that hasn't been put out to bid yet instead of ordering more 7000's. That means the Chicago assembly plant (which wasn't affected by quite the level of quality control issues as Springfield) is probably toast after the L.A. base order is done, because the CTA order is winding down and nobody else is giving them looks after these debacles.

CRRC may well be done with the U.S. market after the T order limps its way to completion. Their rep is thoroughly tarnished, and 3 out of 4 U.S. clients have now backed away in one form or another from further dealings with them. It's only us who are in too deep to be able to get out.

 

[Koopzilla24]

CRRC may well be done with the U.S. market after the T order limps its way to completion. Their rep is thoroughly tarnished, and 3 out of 4 U.S. clients have now backed away in one form or another from further dealings with them. It's only us who are in too deep to be able to get out.

Incredibly long shot and an insane transit pitch but if CRRC packs up and heads out it'd be quite the opportunity to jump on creating a domestic rail rolling stock manufacturer using their facilities. We have the engineering and business talent and capacity in this state. A state owned or state shareholding (like French train and automobile manufacturers) union labor railcar manufacturer called the Massachusetts Car Company, MCC, or something would be great for the Springfield region and US rail transportation

 

[JeffDowntown]

YIKES.. I'm perplexed by the mediocre performance of the CRRC manufacturing ops in Springfield. Can someone shed a light as to the root cause of the continued dismal performance in this plant when their Chinese manufacturing ops seem to hum along like a finely tuned (Insert your favorite musical instrument here). I know the Covid pandemic had a massive impact, but I would have thought that things would have improved in the succeeding years.

In all honesty only half of the predecessor operation to CRRC "hummed" smoothly.

CNR, the predecessor that the T initially contracted with, had a solid reputation for transit vehicles.

CSR the company that acquired CNR to form CRRC did not have the same "smooth operations" reputation.

Springfield seems to have inherited CSR operational DNA.

 

[TheRatmeister]

Incredibly long shot and an insane transit pitch but if CRRC packs up and heads out it'd be quite the opportunity to jump on creating a domestic rail rolling stock manufacturer using their facilities. We have the engineering and business talent and capacity in this state. A state owned or state shareholding (like French train and automobile manufacturers) union labor railcar manufacturer called the Massachusetts Car Company, MCC, or something would be great for the Springfield region and US rail transportation

I can't imagine this factory sticks around without a buyer, so it might be (slightly) more likely than you think. I'm not sure if any of the big manufacturers are interested or not.

 

[HenryAlan]

Incredibly long shot and an insane transit pitch but if CRRC packs up and heads out it'd be quite the opportunity to jump on creating a domestic rail rolling stock manufacturer using their facilities. We have the engineering and business talent and capacity in this state. A state owned or state shareholding (like French train and automobile manufacturers) union labor railcar manufacturer called the Massachusetts Car Company, MCC, or something would be great for the Springfield region and US rail transportation

Is this factory designed for full build? My understanding is that it is final assembly only, of parts sourced from elsewhere. For it to become a stand alone Mass Rail Car manufacturing plant, it would need a lot of investment. Alternatively, it could stick to final assembly, but that would really complicate bids, because they would need collaborators for every project.

 

[Koopzilla24]

Is this factory designed for full build? My understanding is that it is final assembly only, of parts sourced from elsewhere. For it to become a stand alone Mass Rail Car manufacturing plant, it would need a lot of investment. Alternatively, it could stick to final assembly, but that would really complicate bids, because they would need collaborators for every project.

The factory receives the railcar shells and performs finally assembly of them. This is standard practice for most rail rolling stock manufacturing facilities. The Alstom plant in Hornell, NY is under construction of their own shell manufacturing facility for $47mil so that they can do away with the shipping cost of shells. Their factory lot size is actually about the same as the CRRC former Westinghouse lot and a shell manufacturing facility could probably fit there.

 

[HenryAlan]

The factory receives the railcar shells and performs finally assembly of them. This is standard practice for most rail rolling stock manufacturing facilities. The Alstom plant in Hornell, NY is under construction of their own shell manufacturing facility for $47mil so that they can do away with the shipping cost of shells. Their factory lot size is actually about the same as the CRRC former Westinghouse lot and a shell manufacturing facility could probably fit there.

Understood, but in other instances, such as the Alstom plant that you cite, the assembly factory is owned by a company that also builds the shells. That's the current situation with the CRRC plant in Springfield, but the proposed idea would decouple the Springfield location from the car body supplier. That's the complicating factor that I think would limit the concept of Massachusetts taking over the factory. Possibly Alstom or some other full featured rail car producer might be interested in the plant, but as a stand alone concern, it won't work.

 

[Teban54]

Another factor: A domestic rail manufacturing plant makes sense if the US sees strong demand for rail vehicles. I'm not convinced that's currently the case given the unfortunate nature of most travel still being dominated by cars and planes, especially if the few major rail operators already have a long history with international manufacturers. (NYC subway exclusively buys cars from Alstom and Kawasaki, for example.)

 

[Koopzilla24]

Another factor: A domestic rail manufacturing plant makes sense if the US sees strong demand for rail vehicles. I'm not convinced that's currently the case given the unfortunate nature of most travel still being dominated by cars and planes, especially if the few major rail operators already have a long history with international manufacturers. (NYC subway exclusively buys cars from Alstom and Kawasaki, for example.)

I'd say given that the MBTA, SEPTA, Brightline, Amtrak, St. Louis Metro, SFMTA, TriRail, WMATA, Cleveland RTA, BART, TriMet, Maryland MTA, LA Metro and others I'm probably forgetting are all having rail transit vehicles orders fulfilled or working on near future procurement without long standing contracts or partnerships with existing manufacturers would indicate there's quite the demand going forward for a large scale domestic American rolling stock manufacturer.

Understood, but in other instances, such as the Alstom plant that you cite, the assembly factory is owned by a company that also builds the shells. That's the current situation with the CRRC plant in Springfield, but the proposed idea would decouple the Springfield location from the car body supplier. That's the complicating factor that I think would limit the concept of Massachusetts taking over the factory. Possibly Alstom or some other full featured rail car producer might be interested in the plant, but as a stand alone concern, it won't work.

That's the long shot aspect of it. It'd be a new manufacturer from scratch needing to establish its own design and setup a supply chain and manufacturing contracts. It'd require a tremendous amount of investment.

Edit: it occurred to me there's also the potential that the new rolling stock manufacturer could contract with an existing one for shell manufacturing until a new plant is built for it. Say Siemens would build the MCC shells and ship them to Springfield for assembly in a partnership like how various manufacturers have (Alstom and Bombardier for example) but a lot less technical collaboration needed on design