Chronic delays and concerns about shoddy workmanship by the company building a fleet of double-decker coaches for the MBTA’s commuter rail line have prompted executives to threaten cancellation of the $190 million contract and possibly seek a new firm for the work.
In a letter obtained by the Globe, state transit officials express deep frustration with the South Korean company building the 75 rail cars, Hyundai Rotem, declaring that “this seriously troubled procurement is at a point of crisis.”
That letter, dated Dec. 21, details a litany of woes, including faulty chassis and wires damaged by errant drilling on 10 of the first coaches to be built.
“I am writing this letter to you to convey my profound disappointment for Hyundai Rotem’s seemingly lack of commitment to improve its chronically unsatisfactory performance,” Jonathan R. Davis, the T’s chief financial officer, wrote. He cited materials shortages and workmanship at plants in South Korea and Philadelphia that “has degraded at an alarming rate.”
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority declined to make officials available for interviews Thursday but confirmed the letter’s authenticity.
Hyundai Rotem’s bid was 20 per cent lower than other experienced bidders so I’m not surprised at these problems.
Since the MBTA is getting the cars so cheaply it has a lot of incentive to yell at the company and the company will apologize but not make any real change.
A government buying principle is to buy everything from the lowest bidder. This kind of result is not unusual. Do any of us, when deciding to buy something, always buy the very cheapest thing we can find?
Buying from the lowest bidder is often required by law. That being said, one can imagine the hue and cry if MBTA (or any agency) did not buy from the lowest bidder, especially if they met the bid requirements.
The transit industry’s equipment situation reminds me reminds me of the steam railroads of the 1920’s in which each customer maintained a staff of engineers to draw up detailed specifications for a builder to design a locomotive to meet. The builder then went ahead and constructed a handful of locomotives to this specific set of criteria, and with some luck managed to sell versions of the design to other customers.
Then along came General Motor’s EMD with one design in either freight or passenger versions. The customer could specify the gear ratio and the paint job, but that was about it. Among other advantages, significant design costs on both the builder and customer sides were achieved.
Perhaps the rail transit industry needs a similar reformation?
Of course, but it will never happen. Every buyer is special, at least in their own minds, so they have special requuirements. The other factor in play is no one is really in the passenger car construction business in the way Pullman or ACF used to be. New entrants have to go through a steep learning curve.
My favorite example of this is BART. First the bureaucrats in charge of building it would not admit that they were building a railroad. As a result they chose a unique gauge, claiming that it was necessary to support a maximum speed of 80 MPH IIRC. Result, every axle is non-standard, custom made, and doubtless more expensive than standard gauge would be.
Then, I guess because the established carbuilders, and they existed then, were stogy or related to the nasty old railroads, they chose to have an aircraft builder, Rohr, build the cars. The cars, reasonably, had and have door interlocks - the train can not go it doors not closed. Rohr spent months, if not years, getting the doors to close so the train could run.
Finally, the crowning glory was the train control system. BART wanted something lik
I think that is what I said. And of course no one wants to overpay for something. But I think few of us always buy the very cheapest thing on the market.
As I understand your argument you contend all railroads should use sound business principles and, because of the example of BART, you contend publicly funded ones do not do that.
But you offer the New York Subway System as an example of a railroad that does use sound business principles. The New York Subway System is also a public entity.
It seems to me that the two systems you use as evidence do not support your conclusion. Am I mistaken here?
Publically supported transit agencies, whether operating on their own right of way or on freight railroad rights of way are not commercial enterprises, they are political entities.
I expect for profit entities, such as a railroad, to give serious consideration to the value they will get from any proposed investment. I am confident that they will because of the discipline that the financial markets impose on them. That does not mean they always make the correct decision, but that they make every reasonable effort to do so.
Political entities are not exposed to market discipline, nor to political discipline to any extent that I can determine. As a result they usually make political decisions, not economic decisions. On balance that leads to worse economic outcomes than if they were making economic decisions. The excess cost is not a problem for political entities since they can always use Other People’s Money, the taxpayers’, to cover the excess cost of the non economic decision making. The BART story illustrates the point that the original poster was trying to make, but on a grander scale.
As to the NYC subway system, I simply pointed out that they had long previous to BART attained at least the headway that BART wanted/needed and they did it using estiblished suppliers. I suppose I could have hypothesised that result was due to NYC subway being built with relatively less political vs. economic decision making, but that would take a book length study to prove or disprove, and was not the point I was trying to make so I did not offer that hypothesis. I pointed out NYC success simply as a contrast to BART’s failure, no more, no less.
The first sections of the New York City subway system were originally built and operated by private companies, the first municipally developed subway line was 20 years later.
The wide gauge was chosen to permit operation on the lower level of the Golden Gate bridge to connect Marin and Sonoma counties to SF. They also picked an odd voltage (1,000V) for the third rail - interesting to note that Central California Traction was using 1200V thrid rail 50 years before.
I ran across some of the reports of the BART desgn studies in the UCB Engineering Library. My impression was that BART was trying to reinvent the wheel as they were looking at things like three phase power pickup (Ohio Brass as the subcontractor). The city of Berkely was responsible for a significant delay by demanding that the tracks be put underground through the city.
One technical advance that BART missed out on was AC motor drive.
The rationale for the wide gauge was to cope with high winds when crossing the Golden Gate. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many in present BART management that wished 4’8.5" was chosen instead.
While Rohr was a funky choice for car builder, they did manage to keep the weight down on the cars. They also used established providers (Westinghouse, Safety) for the electrical gear. OTOH, the signalling system was messed up pretty badly - the system on the Bay Bridge installed in 1938 worked better.
You mean the same agency that operated a nearly 100% tower operated railroad decades after it vanished from the rest of the railroading world? That is “well managed”? That is an example of institutionalized, status quo thinking!
This is a consequence of “buy American” requirements.
It is trying to prop up an industry that pretty much doesn’t exist - with bad results and higher costs for all! We’d be better off trading for things we don’t do well and stick to those things we do do well.
Actually I was referring to another post which gave New York Subways as an example of a well managed system because it is said to use American made parts.
But I wonder if I am missing something. I understand railroad towers to be multistoried buildings used at one time to monitor and control trains. How would such a building be made to fit in a subway tunnel? And if it did how would it be possible to see subway trains from a tower?