New Red and Orange Line Cars

davem said:
Sending them the RFP and doubling down to hammer out a contract that they don't want are two different things. "We want you to make these trains and aren't even talking to anyone else yet, so lets figure this out" =/= "see if you can be cheaper than all these other companies when you don't want to do this in the first place".

Not to be Debbie Downer here, but when is the last time buying something that's substantially cheaper than every comparable product worked out well for anyone? As my father always says, "if it seems too good to be true, it is." Or even better from a u-hub commenter: "The cheapest is seldom the least expensive".



I really, really hope I'm proven wrong, but history is pretty hard to go against. The Rotems are a disaster, and everyone knew they would be. Counter that with the BL order and the new HSPs, both also challenging orders with lots of new tech and designs. The difference? Siemens and MPI know their shit, know how to work in the states, and know what will and won't fly. Rotem was fine and made a quality product on their home turf, but didn't translate at ALL stateside. How is this going to be any different? Why the T wants to be the guinea pig for every foreign company wanting to breach the market is unbeknownst to me.
Click to expand...

Few things. . .

-- CNR has over a dozen HRT clients in Southeast Asia, 2 in South America, and 2 in the Middle East. And they were the sole-source producer for all Beijing Subway rolling stock for its first 35 years of existence until the government opened the bid process to work in some other makers about 10 years ago. Beijing is the second-largest system by mileage in the world and was wholesale-designed by a bunch of imported East German engineers who modeled it after the U-bahn...which technologically very little different from Red/Orange and NYC Subway (it even has one Reddish-dimension car division and one Orangeish-dimension car division).

So this is old hat for them. I'd have been a lot more apprehensive if this were light rail because they've only got a few of those clients on new systems and nothing as difficult as the Green Line. And definitely scared if they were trying to do any FRA-compliant commuter rail/DMU equipment, because Chinese rolling stock isn't waiver-able here. But they've produced well over a thousand heavy rail vehicles over the last 4 decades.



-- Producing HRT equipment for the U.S. market is not nearly as difficult as producing railroad cars for the U.S. market. Each system has a degree of non-dramatic variance in dimensions, voltage (Beijing is 750V DC third rail, MBTA is 600V DC), and signaling tech. But emphasis on the non-dramatic because so much of the technological standards were set top-down on the rest of the world by NYC Subway.



-- CNR has not done very much fabrication of homegrown Chinese propulsion/signaling components. They have a deeply-embedded component sourcing contract with Bombardier. And buy a lot from Siemens too. Under the hood those Beijing vehicles use systems people in the Northeast ride reliably on every single day. Since components like that are the most important things a buyer will express preference for, their ability to win the bid probably hinged on being able to get the same-old Bombardier stuff cheaper because they use Bombardier, etc. in more bulk than some of these other bidders. Perversely, that makes them cheaper than Bombardier itself, which has to deal with the extra overhead of Canadian workers instead of Chinese workers. Labor and assembly is primarily where the savings are coming from.



-- As with anything, the T's own specs are the degree of difficulty. If they try to match component selections that are outside what the manufacturer normally uses--despite HRT being pretty vanilla--it creates more overhead in design/testing to get it all to mesh. It's not because the components themselves are untested; it's the particular pu-pu platter of them. It makes the manufacturer have to huff and puff and chew up more internal resources to fit to spec. That's where Siemens said "to hell with this" on future HRT bids. They make stupendously high profit margins selling vanilla light rail vehicles, locomotives, Euro EMU's/DMU's that are exactly the same everywhere except for the window-dressing stuff like interior and door configuration. They're all about selling families of vehicles with options like a car dealership, and don't have interest in doing fit-to-spec component meshing that ends up being lower-margin.

So in that sense, even with a hard-to-screw-up order like HRT it is justifiable to be nervous about the T doodling too much on components. Their reasons may be justifiable on the surface ("our techs are experienced on this but not that", etc. etc.), but deviation from the vanilla sort of creates a vicious cycle over time where they become more dependent on deviations. The HSP-46 locomotives are instructive of this problem. Everything under the hood is something that's been used many times over. Other than a bad batch of bearings on the traction motors (normal when they catch it and replace at unit #8 of 40, very abnormal when Rotem was still finding chintzy crap under warranty four months after all 75 units had been delivered)...it's been pretty mundane and the vehicles look like they're going to be winners. But the T specs called for an all-new component mishmash. It was a mishmash that MPI hoped to turn into a brand new generic lineup it could sell to other buyers as its 'performance model', and re-sell the guts mishmash as an upgrade kit for remanufactured old locomotives.

The reality is nobody's shown much interest in it. Some of the anal-retentive things the T specced about the cab layout are pretty unorthodox, and the extreme standardization amongst commuter rail diesel locomotives in North America makes new unappealing. Click through the list of CR systems on the continent and what do you see for diesel locos: shitloads of ageless old F40PH's and GP40 variants like the T's that have been rebuilt ad infinitum, F59PH's (the 1980's and 90's successor to the F40), MPXpress (MP36's like ours, and the slightly beefier MP40), and a few GE Genesis (the ubiquitous Amtrak diesels). With the few deviations from the norm generally being seen as unwise investments (NJ Transit's PL42's and Metro North's BL20's are underwhelming oddballs, LIRR's DM30's are the biggest lemons of the last 20 years). The supposed advantages of the HSP-46's--brawnier horsepower and compliance with the EPA's future Tier 4 emissions regs--have already been hit by the generics. MPI now offers MPXpresses with even brawnier 5400 HP engines and Tier 4 emissions, and drop-in upgrade kits for older MPXpresses to bring them up to latest/greatest. The 5 years of lead time for R&D'ing a new make let the generics catch up in tiny increments. Trying to get the leap on a moving target didn't put them as far ahead upon delivery as they thought they'd have been way back in 2008-09 when the bidding took place.

It is now looking very likely that the T will be the only purchaser of these things. Subsequent commuter rail orders have all been for more MPXpress generics, and new generic-to-be lineups like the EMD F125 and Siemens Charger families. It's also been such a pain in the butt for MPI to engineer the HSP-46 that the rumors are the company is considering pulling back from the new loco business entirely and re-focusing on rebuilds and upgrades. Making it all mesh on R&D has chewed up so much of their margins that they're not going to make much money on these. Even though by all indications it's on track to become a successful order. Their latest efforts have just involved gutting old GP40 carbodies (they bought the full scrap fleet of those ex-MARC rentals the T briefly used) and stuffing a full generic-spec MPXpress inside it with a nose job to graft on a generic MPX cab. It looks like it got beat with an ugly stick, but that's literally a vanilla MP36 clad like a hermit crab in old armor. From inside the cab the engineer can't even tell the difference. It is entirely possible that the only T business MPI is going to do in the future is making a scrap bid on our disposal units so it can play taxidermist on those too to turn into somebody else's next generic MPXpress purchase. In 2020 when the T has to replace the remaining ~35 old locomotives, MPI may not even place a bid and the HSP-46's--good vehicle or not--get consigned to an evolutionary dead end.

This is a worrisome trend. MPI and Siemens both took as direct lessons from an MBTA order that the margins aren't worth it on build-to-spec where onus is on them to go outside of their comfort zone meshing components, when generic families are less a P.I.T.A. to build and fetch way higher margins. Similar situation with Neoplan building T-overcustomized buses ended up bankrupting the damn company (even though those ended up being very good purchases). The free market is speaking here. Now, there's some apples-oranges. Neoplan happened when low-floor buses were newer tech, and the Silver Line is by its own stupid nature a unicorn. HRT does require some (reasonable) degree of build-to-spec that total off-shelf LRT systems don't. And Green Line is a tougher nut to crack than nearly any LRT system in the world. But I think we can agree that commuter rail offers zero compelling reason whatsoever to buy anything but the most vanillavanillavanilla bulletproof stuff everyone else is using. And that their attempts at RFP'ing to what'll be state-of-the-art 5 years from now has been largely rejected by other agencies who overwhelmingly buy to what's state-of-the-art today.


If it wasn't for the retarded buy USA/MA clause, I wouldn't be as worried. If we were buying cars built in the same factory that has been producing these trains for 50 years and got shipped over, I'd have some confidence. But besides the fact that we AREN'T buying USA/MA really (because the real money is in the R&D and manufacturing, not a handful of temporary workers putting together puzzle pieces), its adding a MASSIVE extra layer for failure and fuckups.

It's why you don't buy a Volkswagen that doesn't have a WVW vin. Made in Wolfsburg = guaranteed quality. Made in Mexico or Brazil... you're rolling the dice.
Click to expand...
This is absolutely true, but "Buy America"/"Buy [this state]" didn't start here and didn't escalate here. The whole means of government procurements in the U.S. is fucked because of that, with Congress and state legislatures sticking their grimy fingers in the process and making district pork king. It's created an entirely unworkable system that is accelerating in its unworkability. But Massachusetts really is just buffeted by the politics of it. I don't think it's realistic to assume they could buck the trend and just make the bid process clean. If the T proposed that, Bob DeLeo would cut the budget out from under them in a week's time until they did an "OBEY!" on district pork. Gov. Patrick, Rich Davey, and Bev Scott aren't stupid. They know the Legislature is in charge. I don't think the bid process can necessarily be faulted because there isn't another way that'll politically be allowed to happen. It's more keeping the T out of its own way on the RFP specs when customization for customization's sake brings little to the table other than reinforcing the vicious cycle.

But the process isn't going to change until the bubble bursts nationwide. It's bad, but I don't think "Buy America" has hit peak unworkability. If/when Congress ever gets unstuck from funding infrastructure improvements (anything-infrastructure) and procurement demand for every fed and state agency so far outstrips their ability to execute the procurements that this becomes a noose around the neck of being able to function at all...something will have to give to loosen up the rules. Until then no one is in a position individually to rise up above it all. And so, at least for transit, procurements will take longer...be more complicated...and have more needless overhead than elsewhere in the world.
 
davem said:
Sending them the RFP and doubling down to hammer out a contract that they don't want are two different things. "We want you to make these trains and aren't even talking to anyone else yet, so lets figure this out" =/= "see if you can be cheaper than all these other companies when you don't want to do this in the first place".
Click to expand...

This is just a guess, but being that the new Red/Orange cars would require a new contract, I'd imagine that state procurement regulations would prohibit the MBTA from reaching out to a single vendor. . As part of their due diligence for John Q. Tax payer, they are required to competitively bid the project. So I bet Siemens looked at the list of bidders and just decided they couldn't compete or didn't have the capacity. If they tried to talk Siemens into bidding after they declined, it would be seen as collusion.

I know it's not the consensus here, but imagine the uproar if they competitively bid the contract, but determine that the contractor they were going to recommend/select was $150-200m higher than CNR. There would be public outcry that MBTA officials are just lining the pockets of there buddies. It's a lose-lose for all involved.
 
bobthebuilder said:
I know it's not the consensus here, but imagine the uproar if they competitively bid the contract, but determine that the contractor they were going to recommend/select was $150-200m higher than CNR. There would be public outcry that MBTA officials are just lining the pockets of there buddies. It's a lose-lose for all involved.
Click to expand...

I'm sure someone at the MBTA cracked open some champagne when they realized they wouldn't be forced to hire Hyundai again
 
I don't imagine an uproar. Could there be some complaint? Yes. But I think the public sentiment of skepticism towards Chinese Manufacturing is strong enough to quell a lot of naysayers. Which leads me to imagine if that had happen, there would be some op-ed saying choosing against CNR was racist.

But ignoring that person, even at 150 mil difference, there's enough sentiment and difficulty arguing against the "do you want to pick the guy who never built anything in the US and reputed for poor, cheap quality?" to quell most chatter. A few more informed may point out that CNR have built plenty of the same stuff for themselves and other countries, but uproars are about what the average person knows. And generally they would not be aware of that, but are quite aware of the reputation.
 
If this does come in on budget, and I think CNR wants to prove themselves here, think of all the other T projects that savings could fund.
 
bobthebuilder said:
This is just a guess, but being that the new Red/Orange cars would require a new contract, I'd imagine that state procurement regulations would prohibit the MBTA from reaching out to a single vendor. . As part of their due diligence for John Q. Tax payer, they are required to competitively bid the project. So I bet Siemens looked at the list of bidders and just decided they couldn't compete or didn't have the capacity. If they tried to talk Siemens into bidding after they declined, it would be seen as collusion.

I know it's not the consensus here, but imagine the uproar if they competitively bid the contract, but determine that the contractor they were going to recommend/select was $150-200m higher than CNR. There would be public outcry that MBTA officials are just lining the pockets of there buddies. It's a lose-lose for all involved.
Click to expand...


You have to consider that CNR's motivations are a lot different. China's got a mature railcar industry and have surpassed Korea and achieved soon-to-leapfrog parity with Japan. But they have not broken out of Southeast Asia. This is an ornately government-planned manifest destiny thing to break the U.S. market, much like other markets where the Chinese are coming on hard at breaking North America. It is entirely part of the plan that they are willing to write off huge losses on the first orders to win bids over skepticism and get a way in the door. They only have to look at the long-range plans of the MTA and CTA and what immense numbers of NYC Subway and Chicago L cars they plan to order over the next 10 years to see what targets they have to have their U.S. cred established for before they have a realistic shot at those crown-jewel orders.

So the MBTA is their showcase for the really massive systems. I don't think we have to worry about these being cheap cars because of that bigger plan and the fearlessness about writing off losses to position themselves. The whole country's railcar industry is riding on this order being a success. I think they're going to throw unimaginable effort at making sure it's a success. I worry more about spec unorthodoxy from the MBTA side rearing its ugly head again and putting the debugging process under excessive stress than I do about CNR not being qualified or being the don't-now-ass-from-elbows, too-cheap-for-their-own-good keystone cops Rotem were/are. Even the best in the business have had to excessively labor to build the cars the T wants. The risk isn't just high for the newbies; the Bombardiers of the world have a similarly arduous birthing process trying to do stuff outside their comfort level for this agency.


Now...there's a lot of worrisome things about what this order symbolizes. There's the human rights criticism of China that's starting to ramp up. It's short-term, but the state is going to take it on the chin for that and this is something the public procurement process really hasn't dealt with before and has somewhat more (duh) public obligation to address head-on with reassurances. I don't think people are going to take Joe Pesaturo's brush-offs at face value. And then there's the whole farce of "Buy America" coming back to the fore. What does it matter that some legislator gets to crow in self-satisfaction about jobs in his district when it means more railcar industry jobs are likely to exit both the U.S. and Western Europe overall for China's cheaper labor. Same as it's been in other industries. This is obviously a much, much bigger issue than just the T; it has little to do at all with their choice. But the state has voluntarily stepped into the middle of that controversy and will have to deal with the slings and arrows.


FWIW...Bombardier's and Kawasaki's highball offers strike me as a message sent that they aren't nuts about the T specs and micromanaging of. Those are bids that have a 0% chance of wining, and they know it. But those are the #1 and #2 worldwide railcar behemoths, and unlike Siemens they bid on everything to drive home the message of just how powerful they are. They are, however, choosy on how much gusto they pursue a bid with, so those not-very-serious bids seem like they're passive-aggressively telegraphing that #1 and #2 don't feel like playing ball with orders that chew up too much of their overhead to design and test. Like Siemens they've been doing much higher-margin biz standardizing or building to a unique and difficult initial spec spec (like Kawasaki with the Metro North and LIRR EMU's and Bombardier with NYC subway) in order to pave the way for a new standard that nets them easy wins on follow-on orders for those agencies. It's the same message Siemens was sending...just with a little rubbing-face-in-it and "I crap bigger'n you" English thrown in. That's not a good thing. #1 and #2 drive the market. You want them being a threat to win every time to push everyone else to top of their game. The T's backed itself into a corner where the only vendors taking them seriously are the ones who--by corporate necessity--have to take the biggest risks. It's not sustainable. And they have a truly frightening number of procurements still left to make after this one, like commuter rail "carmageddon" 2020 with 200 coaches and another 40 locomotives all up for order in the same year that can't be delayed lest the system fall into another extended deferred-maintenance pit of despair. So the high anxiety over their competence in executing procurements ain't over by a longshot.
 
The MBTA spec was very performance based, it even allowed bidders to modify an already existing stainless-steel design if it could meet the length/width/height/weight requirements dictated by infrastructure. They left it up to the builders to identify the subcontractors and specific components that would be used and gave multiple options for allowable sub-system types.

The high bids from Bombardier and Kawasaki are probably reflective of the fact that they would have had to set up a "pop up plant" in Mass to meet the bid requirements. Since both have facilities in New York state already, and Kawasaki can even build shells in Nebraska, the entire cost of a facility in Massachusetts would be included in the cost of the MBTA contract because they otherwise have no need for a plant in the state. CNR on the other hand has no U.S. facility, and claims Springfield will be their base for "Buy America" requirements if they get any other U.S. orders. The second lowest bid came from Rotem, and that probably indicates they would have been willing to give up the troubled Philly plant for a new one in Springfield.

Bombardier has no problems building very customized heavy rail cars for one customer. The little cars they build for CTA are unlike anything else and the cars they are building for BART will be very unique. Bombardier (and Kawasaki) builds lots of cars for New York City, but the heavy truck design used there would never have met the weight restrictions here (or almost anywhere else for that matter). CTA last year put out bids for additional new cars and got only two bids: Bombardier (their present supplier) and Nippon-Sharyo (who have a plant in Illinois). Bombardier was the apparent low-bidder, but CTA cancelled the procurement and has put out a more generic spec in hopes of getting multiple bidders at a lower price.

CNR is one of two finalists to acquire a smaller European builder whose name we might recognize:
http://www.railjournal.com/index.ph...shortlisted-for-ansaldo-sale.html?channel=000

Note that the two builders from China CNR and CSR have both bumped Bombardier out of the #1 rail car manufacturer slot worldwide, Bombardier is now #3 followed by Alstom at #4. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/10/alstom-transport-idUSL6N0RO4IM20141010
 
Last edited:
I like the new rail cars in Washington, DC from Kawasaki, and would like to see the T go with them with the same shape & style, but my honest theory is that they more then likely will go with Hyundai Rotem to make the new cars. :cool:
 
This is pure speculation but: if Bombardier and Kawasaki are so upset, why don't they pursue a court case charging that "Buy Massachusetts" is a violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution?

"Buy Massachusetts" is quite clearly a case of protectionism and the Commerce Clause was originally intended to be used to counter just that sort of behavior by states.

Anyway, just rambling.
 
Matthew said:
This is pure speculation but: if Bombardier and Kawasaki are so upset, why don't they pursue a court case charging that "Buy Massachusetts" is a violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution?

"Buy Massachusetts" is quite clearly a case of protectionism and the Commerce Clause was originally intended to be used to counter just that sort of behavior by states.

Anyway, just rambling.
Click to expand...

New York City has had a New York state content requirement in their rapid transit car procurements for years, which is why they usually don't use Federal money to fund equipment orders and why Bombardier, Alstom, and Kawasaki all have facilities in New York state. That's where MA got the idea to do this from.
If Kawasaki and Bombardier made that argument and prevailed, it could open the door for CNR to sell to NYC.

Just think how inexpensive the CNR equipment would be if there was no domestic content requirement at all and they were built 100% in China. You're not going to hear much talk from Bombardier/Alstom/Kawasaki about eliminating "Buy America"
 
Last edited:
winstonoboogie said:
A-car/B-car married pairs, A-car will have a cab on one end and B-car will have no cabs.

A link that includes an image of the CNR design:
http://www.think-railways.com/usa-mbta-usd-566-6-million-contract-awarded-to-china-cnr/
Click to expand...

That's not the real design, right? The article cites 3-5 years for design. That's just the concept art they included in their bid.

Also, I doubt this will happen, but I really hope the T goes for something sleeker this time. Assuming it doesn't affect the cost, that is.
 
Whats to stop CNR from closing the plant after the cars are built to move to the next 'build in in my state contract' and putting all these worker on unemployment?
 
winstonoboogie said:
New York City has had a New York state content requirement in their rapid transit car procurements for years, which is why they usually don't use Federal money to fund equipment orders and why Bombardier, Alstom, and Kawasaki all have facilities in New York state. That's where MA got the idea to do this from.
If Kawasaki and Bombardier made that argument and prevailed, it could open the door for CNR to sell to NYC.

Just think how inexpensive the CNR equipment would be if there was no domestic content requirement at all and they were built 100% in China. You're not going to hear much talk from Bombardier/Alstom/Kawasaki about eliminating "Buy America"
Click to expand...

Yes, it's a scandal that idiotic protectionism requirements are allowed to bilk the taxpayer.

But the argument I'm pointing out doesn't affect "Buy America" (the WTO would have to object for that to happen). It affects "Buy <insert state>".

The point of the Commerce Clause originally was to give the Federal government a tool to break down barriers to trade between states. What is "Buy Massachusetts" but a barrier to trade between states?
 
The state seems to be saving $200 million on this order than what they budgeted. Is there any idea what those funds will be used for? Be great if they could put it into upgrading the signals and tracks.

Also, any idea what will be done at the red and orange yards they mention?
 
Jahvon09, you can't just post an entire article like that. It violates copyright and could get the whole forum in trouble. (See the issue with Banker and Tradesman) You need to at least provide a link to the original article, cite where it's from (I'm guessing the Globe, but you didn't say) and really should only post a brief "fair use" quote of a paragraph or two, with a link to click through for those who want to read the whole article.

You can not just copy/paste text someone else wrote without giving credit. As someone who's had my work used without permission or acknowledgement, this is seriously, 100%, not at all okay to do.

Besides that, we knew this news days ago and have been talking about it for the past few pages, you're not posting any new information.
 
Matthew said:
The point of the Commerce Clause originally was to give the Federal government a tool to break down barriers to trade between states. What is "Buy Massachusetts" but a barrier to trade between states?
Click to expand...
Excellent question. If only there were a lawyer-CEO willing to press the "big picture" legal point here. We don't realize how lucky we were to have Herb Kelleher (Southwest vs the Civil Aeronautics Board) or William McGowan (MCI vs ATT Antitrust) willing to do the heavy lifting in airlines and telecoms.
 
Last edited:
choo said:
The state seems to be saving $200 million on this order than what they budgeted. Is there any idea what those funds will be used for? Be great if they could put it into upgrading the signals and tracks.

Also, any idea what will be done at the red and orange yards they mention?
Click to expand...

They will probably set it on fire along with all the money going to SCR.

/cynic
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top