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Healey to assemble non-T team to review 'alarming details' of the state of the T's contract for new subway cars
By adamg on Thu, 02/02/2023 - 9:22pm
CommonWealth reports Gov. Healey said she would rather work with CRRC than fight it, but that something has to be done about the fact that the company's Springfield plant hasn't shipped a new Red or Orange Line car here in more than seven months.
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Sounds like a good plan
Get the MBTA out of everything. Their ineptitude has no bounds.
Working with CRRC is our only option right now. We needed trains yesterday.
i’m no procurement expert
but given how the factory has stopped rolling out trains, and the lackluster quality of what’s come out already, would it be a better option to find a way out of the contract and get some off-the-rack trains? The T has standard gauge doesn’t it?
All MBTA lines are standard gauge, but...
...none of them can run "off-the-shelf" cars. Red Line cars won't fit through the Orange or Blue Line tunnels, and Blue Line cars take power from an overhead wire between Airport and Wonderland. The Green Line is light rail and boards from low platforms; the other three lines are heavy rail and board from high platforms, and Blue Line platforms are not the same height as Red or Orange Line platforms.
This isn't New York, alas. It's a mess. Every line's cars have to be custom built.
Yeah basically the way to
Yeah basically the way to think about it is, literally nothing above the wheels on these things is "standard."
Historically the subway lines were four separate companies that went bankrupt around a century ago and got absorbed into the city agency ("MTA" at the time). Every one was built to use standard gauge but everything else about them was different.
Yet the opposite is the case
Yes, the MBTA has issues, had issues, and sadly will have issues, but when it comes to this contract, the ineptitude ultimately lies with CRRC. They just stopped working on the contract over 6 months ago. To think, the metal shops in Everett could have probably gotten as many of the 1200 series Orange Line cars into a good state of repair as we have new trains in the same amount of time we've waited for another delivery of new cars.
Blaming the T is like blaming an abuse victim
The Legislature has steadfastly refused to adequately fund capital improvements for a generation, and now we are reaping the benefits of that policy. London recently opened a new 100 km line with 41 stations, including 10 new ones, after an investment of $23 Billion. Bike lanes aren't going to do it for Boston.
Chinese rail ban
The Chinese supplier stopped working on the contract because some Drumpf-era nonsense bans this company from any future work in the US. So their attitude is quite understandably, why bother?
If they've already been paid, to bank accounts outside US control, and there's no future work for them here, they could quite literally just skip town with the MBTA's (taxpayer's) money and say "try and stop us."
Would be nice to think a contractor you hire is going to be honorable and all, but if you hire someone and tell him, "F you, once you're done, you're outta here!" you think he's not going to half-ass the rest of the job?
Trump hasn’t been in office for two years now
Why is this just coming to light?
I don't think it is. This ban
I don't think it is. This ban was part of the rather far-ranging trade war he started with China. (Which in all fairness is still continuing under Biden with ruminations once again to ban things like TikTok, the idiotic balloon scare, and so on.)
I think
I think there's enough blame to go around here. Both with the plant and the MBTA never following through on planned deliveries and a complete lack of transparency over this whole mess.
I dunno
I mean, one can find an utter lack of transparency at the T beyond this issue, but at the end of the day, blaming the T for not getting the cars is like blaming your neighbor for having a half finished construction job when the contractors decided to take another job for a few months (assuming your neighbor didn't stop payment leading to the walkout.) Yes, they can write a bunch of strongly worded letters and threaten with the $500 a day penalty, but when work stops, it's not like the T can come in and restart it. If that were the case, they could have done the whole project in house.
To extend the analogy
Your neighbor's contractor is retiring after the job anyway so their reputation isn't a concern.
I don't think we need to get
I don't think we need to get the T out of everything...just the top five or six levels of management there. Governors come and go, even the GM's chair barely has a chance to get warm, but there are plenty of people at the top of the T who have been there for decades and manged it into its current disgraceful state. Let their abrupt dismissal serve to encourage the others.
Abolish the MBTA and set up a new agency
All union contracts: gone. All pension funds: gone. You want to work for us? It'll be on our terms; otherwise, you're welcome to go look for work in Washington or Atlanta.
We can all dream
And this is what it would take to turn it around, but it makes too much sense for it to ever happen
No contracts or pensions?
Yes, because wages and benefits are immaterial to employees at the T. That's why there's a long line of people wanting to be hired by the T.
There's always some rube
Looking to blame the workers for a systemic management problem.
I'm in favor of that...as
I'm in favor of that...as long as it only applies to the management. It's not the fault of the bus drivers and the station agents and other T staff who actually work for a living that the system's been driven into the ground.
Union contracts would be
Union contracts would be cancellable if everyone is fired/laid off abruptly, but to revoke pensions you'd need to show individual malfeasance on the part of the revokee. With T management that probably wouldn't be that hard, TBH, but on balance it's probably not worth it. Legal costs would eat up all the savings in no time.
I wonder if the company that
I wonder if the company that we contracted to make our trains is the same company that makes balloons
How to work with a foreign government owned business
If CRRC is actually owned by the mainland China government then would this give jurisdiction to the Federal government? Given that the US and Communist China are now the competing for economic dominance, global influence and dominating the south Pacific, it's not a stretch that they would use their businesses to also exercise power in the US (and beyond).
There is a high probability that the Chinese government has set up a kind of Chinese in US cities to project the governmental power. This was reported in the NYTimes. Confucius Institutes are littered throughout academia. So there is reason to wonder whether a business that ultimately answers to the its government owner is also part of mainland China's exercise of power in the US.
The more business given to mainland China the more we draw out a rope to hang ourselves. The people who gave the subway car contract to CRRC were fools from the very beginning. Fools that we now pay for with a subway system that is sewer worthy.
Deval Patrick
Has bruises on his back from patting himself so much when he announced the initial contract.