New Red and Orange Line Cars

[alewife]

It's worth noting both that the MBTA and CTA contracts were originally awarded to CRRC's predecessor companies, CNR and CSR, respectively. (CSR also bid on the MBTA order, but was disqualified after the technical evaluation phase.) The MBTA order was also originally smaller—284 cars—before another 120 Red Line cars were added to the order in 2016 replace the 1800s and for expansion.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Although, there is a question there - the LA metro and CTA CRRC orders also predate the introduction of anti-China tariffs, both dating to 2016. CTA's order is comparably sized to the MBTA's, (400 vs 404) and was even more aggressively priced than the MBTA's - (632M, 1.58M/car vs our 871M, 2.12M/car) - but my understanding is that neither of them have amended their contracts to adjust for tariffs, and so far CRRC has managed the same approximate 2-3MP/month rate for CTA out of their IL facility as for the T out of Springfield.

Now granted, both of those agencies are probably less desperate than Boston - the CTA has the youngest average fleet of any transit agency in the US, and might be able and willing to wait until 2030 for completion and the LA metro order was small, but it's still notable that the T had to kick in an extra 148M when the CTA didn't.

Not a lot beyond the shells is actually Chinese-manufacture in any of those orders, so you have to go chasing down all the subcomponent manufacturers to see whose tariffs are actually in effect for how much. For the CTA cars, they had something like 2 dozen component manufacturers with close to 80% of them being U.S.-based. I don't think that percentage is nearly as high for our cars. For example, all of the propulsion systems for the Red/Orange cars are Mitsubishi Electric, so the guts of the cars are way more Japanese than anything else. CRRC is basically a systems integrator for the designs and an assembly works for the deliverables; they aren't vertically integrated with component self-fabrication like a lot of other really big rolling stock manufacturers are. Our Green Line Type 10 order, by contrast, is going to have a much higher percentage of self-fabbed CAF components than the CRRC's.

This is another reason that the "OMG! The railcars are spying on us to the Chinese!" hysteria was so overblown. The electronics and computers weren't theirs to begin with, and were only touched by them upon installation by American workers in Springfield.

 

[Tallguy]

All of their current North American clients have backed away. SEPTA infamously canceled its commuter rail coach order (there's a couple of nearly-complete cars within photography distance sitting in the Springfield plant's yard). And both L.A. Metro and CTA in Chicago passed on very large-quantity option orders of their ongoing orders. The Springfield plant is getting shuttered in 2-1/2 years when the T's order is complete. Nobody here is going to touch them for a generation; they're getting the same multi-decade death penalty that Breda and Nippon Sharyo got after fucking up multiple large/make-or-break orders. And that fate was clinched well before the tariffs got increased. They're totally radioactive.

That leaves a perfectly serviceable brand new railcar assembly plant in the state, and a very big task for the state to try to attract a new tenant. It's not going to be easy, because unless Hyundai-Rotem wants to dip its toes back in the Buy America waters a few years after closing their disastrously incompetent Philly plant there's not a lot of vendors in this now very consolidated industry who truly need another U.S. assembly plant. Most of the big boys are all set on capacity.

Agreed. I was referring to the period between the sanctions and the screwups. If they had fulfilled those contracts, I was suggesting that repeat orders from Chicago, LA and Boston could have been extensive enough to warrant not giving up

 

[okin15]

By the schedule, this month is the first that we should expect to see 3 pairs delivered (1 orange, 2 red) as part of the contract reset. We've finally reached the divergence point between the reset schedule and past performance - it'll be fairly informative as to future outlook and drive the retirement dates of the legacy RL fleet.
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I was unaware that the Red Line was expecting to receive more than 1 pair per month before the OL deliveries were complete. That's pretty exciting, even if they get somewhere between the schedule and the worst case. There are now 3 full CRRC train-sets running consistently on the RL. I expect they are approaching having a fourth set as well in the next month or so. Then I expect a month or more delay before the 5th set arrives. Here is my tracking of how many sets are running: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...OPpJAwg6Cj/pubhtml?gid=2106022433&single=true