I see on the news Boston is revamping it’s green line LRT, and they use Italian technology, is there some law in the U.S. that prevents American companies to supply equipment? I read a lot about new LRT systems in American cities that use Italian, German, Swiss, Canadian manufacturers, or are there no U.S. makers of LRT trains??? We have Bombardier here in Canada and Calgary & Edmonton use German trains, who can figure this out?
Transit systems are so global that you can’t say were the company is located. The parent company Bombardier is located in Montreal, but the Rail and Transit division is based in Berlin Germany. They have plants located in 7 or 8 countries including Canada, the US, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the UK, Slovakia, and Switzerland off the top of my head. Siemens is similar.
No. There is no such law.
American manufacturers have simply failed to produce products and/or make reasonable bids to get the business.
Many if not most of the products from other countries are actually assembled and otherwise manufactured to varying degrees inside the US with US workers. Bombardier, Kawasaki and Alstom, for instance, have plants in New York.
In fact, some states have laws that require certain amounts of the products to have been manufactured or assembled in the United States.
I believed that GM should have entered the railcar market and not torn down the valuable La Grange factory. With EMD engineering they could have competed very well with foreign manufacturers and railcars would again be a USA export industry like when Budd, Brill, Pullman, ACF, and Standard built everything from streetcars to streamliners.
In the seventies or eighties, Boeing tried to build a high-tech streetcar using airplane technology. Boston and the muni in SF bought these cars. They proved to be quite unreliable and Boeing has since left the railroad business.
The boeing cars weren’t all that bad. Built in 1976, They had their problems, yes. And some (40 or so) are still soldiering on in Boston today. Some of their main problems were that they were a little noisy, they had some problems with the doors (they slid originally, and were replaced with folding doors later on) and their air conditioning didn’t work, and needed to be replaced. Otherwise, the Boeing’s weren’t all that bad, considering they were Boston’s first LRV’s, and were the first replacements for the PCC cars.
The manufacturers are chosed based on who can bid the lowest for the design specified-in this case Breda (or whoever that name is owned by.) These cars have some problems, some of which are bad construction, others of which involve the Boston system. One problem was the derailments. This was due to the light weight of the center low-floor truck between the two heavier ends, and slightly short flanges, combined with Boston’s old track. (Many europena lines are more stringent about maintenance.) Another problem was that some of the cars are starting to rust, having sat outside for only a few years.
I would be that eventually the kinks will be worked out, and the cars will run just fine.