Hyundai Rotem is pulling its last office staffers from its 10-year-old, 300,000-square-foot factory on Weccacoe Avenue in South Philadelphia and vacating the premises, said Lois Kang, aide to Philadelphia City Councilman David Oh.
“We did a lot of work trying to keep the company here,” Kang said. At its height, the plant — just south of Snyder Avenue between I-95 and the Delaware River — employed 300 workers, though by 2016 it had “reduced significantly.” It will close for good at the end of August.
The factory built 120 Silverliner V commuter cars for SEPTA, starting in 2009, and finished a couple of later car-refurbishing contracts for the transit agency by 2016, Kang said. It was that summer that the wide-windowed cars had to be returned for welding repairs, leading to months of train schedule cuts and overcrowding. SEPTA and Hyundai Rotem blamed the problem on a Pittsburgh-area welding subcontractor; Korean-owned Hyundai Rotem paid to rent substitute cars while the Silverliners were fixed.
Hyundai Rotem also built rail cars for Denver. The company had hoped to win another SEPTA contract to build two-level cars like those NJ Transit uses on its Trenton-New York line. But SEPTA’s board, led by Chairman Pasquale T. “Pat” Deon Sr. of Bucks County, gave the $137.5 million new-car contract to a company owned by China’s government, CRRC Corp., which last year built a plant in Springfield, Mass., to build trolleys for Boston and cars for Philadelphia and other cities.
SEPTA would “unduly limit competition” if it favored Hyundai Rotem just because it happened to be located in the city and could emp
Another one bites the dust. How much did this one cost taxpayers in tax incentives as well as now paying for unemployment and future costs of remediating the quality issues in the Chinese crap they are about to purchase?
Yeah, but this is fake industrial USA, much like the European ownership of most of the American steel industry, or “New York” Air Brake, or the ownership of Zenith when it was the “American” contender for the HDTV standard in the Nineties. And I feel little more sympathy for Hyundai Rotem than I do for EMD over the F125s; should a company that can’t manage to make drop equalizers that don’t break, in the 21st Century, expect preferred order status the next time?
Isn’t the difference here a choice bewtween buying cars from a Korean owned company with a factory in Philly and a Chinese owned company with a factory outside Boston?
I would assume that you would prefer many of the American steelworkers in the Calumet region to be unemployed than draw a paycheck every two weeks from Arcelor Mittal. And how do you feel about the auto workers on Honda’s assembly line in Lordstown, Ohio?
Also consider the various American companies with overseas plants, such as Harley Davidson, General Motors, etc.
It is wondered why Metrolink in Southern California never reordered passenger cars from that company. Perhaps the next crack-up will send bodies in the old passenger cars all over the right-of-way, and Metrolink will start crying for the strong cars!
As someone who is ‘just a railfan’, and without any engineering skills; I do not understand this problem with building passenger railcars(?).
An ‘entity’ develops a need for railcars to haul passengers from point A to point B. They either have a ‘design’ to cover their needed equipment; or a manufacturer that agrees to build ‘cars’ to suit the specific needs of the organization ordering the cars. Seems a simple enough task- build a car(s) to agreed specific designs.
The organization ordering jolds the ‘purse-strings’. That same party has an obligation to be able to inspect during the construction, and to test( if that is part of the arangement(?). If the test is no compliant, the manufacturer has an obligation to correct and make the product to the specifications agreed upon when the contract was entered into. [ Seems to be a fairly cut and dried process.
So why are these Car Manufacturers ( from off-shore ownership) come in take the government subsidies, and produce no compliant porducts; then foild their their tents and leave this country(?). Leaving non-compliant(?) equipment in their wake. And end-users who are stuck; trying to make-do with less than ideal {junk?} equipment?
It would seem like [to someone on the outside looking in] that American Industry could re-constitute a Pullman-Standard or Budd to provide new equipment?
Would not take much as we retain most of the skills at passenger car rebuilders.
What I would like to see is an agreement between Mexico and Canada to ulitize just 2 or 3 car builders in all areas concerning rail transit and come up with a standardized car design in the area of crash standards as well as shell. At that macro level we should be able to at least keep 1 or 2 builders in business with steady orders.
I work in the public transit business (buses) and the bus market is littered with defunked manufacturers. It’s a small market by world standards (6,000 buses annually), picky buyers (transit authority) and low margins. The rail market in the United States doesn’t look much better. The last American manufacturer of rail cards was Morrison-Knudsen (aka Amerail). Don’t start manufacturing buses or trains!
I would opine that part of the problem is a lack of standardization in equipment.
There are still PCC cars in service. A number of tourist railroads still use passenger cars with a VIA (CNR?) heritage. They’re getting tired, but they’re still working.
However, everyone wants their own “signature” design. Can’t have a car that looks like someone else’s - thus the manufacturers are forced to engineer a new design, and that’s just inviting problems.
It may already be there, but maybe the manufacturers need to be telling the customers that “you can’t get there from here.”
What you describe is how the project should ideally work. The N-S PRIIA bi-level cars are good example what can go wrong.
The project started with specification that contains a number of conflicting requirements like buffer load, weight limit, layout with requirements for locations of openings.
N-S got the order as subcontractor of Sumitomo. The bi-levels were designed in Japan and built in Rochelle according to Buy American requirements. Though in the Finite Element Analysis successful the carbody failed the 800,000 lbs buff load test.
N-S tried far more than a year to correct their design before the lost the order to Siemens single level cars.
It still disturbes me that N-S didn’t find a solution and Japanese engineers don’t give up easily.
So there must have something in the specification they were not able to meet under any circumstances.
And then the buyer needs cars desperately…
I expect that N-S payed a lot of damages.
Regards, Volker
The problems of passenger car construction that I think I am seeing is going back to the differences between locomotive manufacturers in the 1940’s. EMD basically said - we are building one standard locomotive, buy it or go elsewhere if you want a whole bunch of different bells, whistles and doo dads. If you insist in having locomotives designed in the specialized steam engine manner - go to the former steam engine manufacturers Baldwin, Lima, ALCO. The steam engine manufacturers had not designed sufficiently good diesels, which soon became appearent with their high maintenance costs.
Todays passenger car procurement agencies all want their own bells, whistles and doo dads and they don’t want accept any other agencies basic designs. Every time you have to reinvent the wheel it costs more and more with each reinvention.
It is amazing what was accomplished with the PCC street car, back in the day.
Volker Landwehr added [in part]“…The project started with specification that contains a number of conflicting requirements like buffer load, weight limit, layout with requirements for locations of openings…N-S got the order as subcontractor of Sumitomo. The bi-levels were designed in Japan and built in Rochelle according to Buy American requirements. Though in the Finite Element Analysis successful the carbody failed the 800,000 lbs buff load test…”
Both VolkerLandwehr, and BaltACD seem to be saying that the problem lays in the Engineering Specifications( and possibly, their interpretations by the manufacturers(?).
It would seem that in this area; would it not be appropriate to have an Engineering Body, maybe under the authority of the AAR write the
It should be noted that while the PCC car was a standardized design, it was also a modular concept, not one-size-fits-all. A transit operator could order a car with the appropriate front platform, number of doors, or any of a variety of standardized options.
I would assume that Siemens markets and manufactures its light-rail equipment in a similar fashion.
This forum contributor has some experience with the history of buses and their financial acquisitions, at least I can relate to it.
A heavy handed government decree in the 1970’s was the Transbus, a very low to the ground miracle bus. A number of bus transit systems banded together and put out specifications for transit bus manufacturers to bid on. The glorious day arrived, and bids were opened. Trouble is, there were NO bidders! The humiliated government had to leave like a dog with its tail between its legs and howling in agony.
All the old transit bus manufacturers have left, and new fools try to make a go of it. The same with rail transit! Hyundai Rotem is the latest victim.
I am not up on transit rail’s current crashworthiness, except Metrolink in Southern California has a fleet of Hyundai Rotem cars. They are the only Metrolink cars I will ride for my own safety. And, I have an opinion where the next big Metrolink crash will occur, and it will have a few older cars that may or may not disintegrate in the freak mishap! The saving grace is that the believed line of the future crash has super bad (low) ridership currently. But, I believe that future accident will forever change rail transit, and strong Hyundai
Not only. You need always two, the buyer with his specification and the possible bidder. To stay with the PRIIA bi-level car procurement, a number of car builders participated in the design of the specification. But in the end it was designed by a committee. There were no priliminay calculations to verify the requirements.
Interesting is the two step bidding process for these cars. Seven buiders showed interest but Hyundai-Rotem dropped of before the first step, the draft. After the draft the bidders were told in confident meetings where they weren’t compliant to eliminate this points for the final bid. Bombardier didn’t provide a final offer. Siemens and Alstom left the non-compliant points in their final offer and were eliminated. Out of the remaining three Sumitomo won. https://www.arema.org/files/library/2013_Conference_Proceedings/Implementation_the_Nations_First_Standardized_Intercity_Rail_Car_Specification.pdf
The prelimininary analysis was done by every bidder for the draft bid. It looks to me like four bidders did find requirements they were not able to comply to and choose different exit strategies.
I’m not sure that there is the necessary expertise for this task anywhere beside the builders.
On the other hand each builder has his own building procedures optimizing his costs. With a ready design that is only possible
Are there consistent performance specifications - specifically, a buff (compression) test requirement, and the like - that the trolley/ LRV cars must comply with? That industry seems to add cars routinely without such issues (although dominated by foreeign companies), and mainly built to proprietary designs.