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Plant that's supposed to be building all our sparkly new safe and efficient Orange and Red Line trains is one messed up hellhole, MBTA says
By adamg on Wed, 01/04/2023 - 12:05pm
The Globe got a hold of a letter from a T official to the head of the CRRC plant in Springfield that lists more than a dozen critical problems with the way the company is ever so slowly manufacturing new Orange Line and Red Line cars that are arriving here with critical problems - some of which the T says it's been complaining about for years - and accuses the company of "completely abandoning" any concept of quality control.
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Comments
That's very strong language.
That's very strong language. Can they say "heckhole" instead?
New Orange Lines cars
Those hecking, hecks are hecked!. The Orange Line is heckin' hecked.
The seats aren't all that comfortable either.
Who could have seen this coming?
Force a company to build a factory in-state for the sole purpose of building trains for one city in a system that's infamously hesitant to expand transit? Give them all the money to do so up front? Who could have seen that coming!!!!
Insane that this state prioritized a jobs program over working with an established builder who, you know, knew what they were doing and had a proven track record. Doubly insane that the state thought this jobs program would somehow amount to a long term investment in Springfield. The money would have been better spent just handing out hundred dollar bills to citizens of the city to help them pay their bills and then buying trains that won't need thousands of hours of maintenance every year.
Agree with most of this
Agree with most of this sentiment, but they did also get orders from Philadelphia and Los Angeles that are being assembled at this plant, so it was not just for one customer.
Lowest Bidder
Maybe, just maybe, giving contracts to the lowest bidder isn't actually the cheapest of most effective way of doing things!
It isn't though
Contracts go to the lowest qualified bidder w/ track record and quality/value taken into account. It is never just the lowest bidder.
Blast Off
In an interview, when asked what goes through your mind at the moment the rocket you are riding atop initially begins it's liftoff, one of the astronauts once joked, ".....this whole amazing and complex machine was built by the lowest bidder"
Go with a proven company.
They couldn’t find a reputable Korean or Japanese manufacturer?
I just can’t believe they are surprised by the lack of quality control given the company chosen and the fact that nearly none of the workers have experience building trains.
They couldn't
You can look at the responses to the RFP. All the others were pretty bad. As for Korean - I'm sure the MBTA is still thrilled with their last shit show order from Hyundai-Rotem.
Worlds largest rolling stock company
The Chinese have been eclipsing the rest of the world recently in building new subways line, of which of course need rolling stock. CRRC is the worlds largest such company. So it's certainly reputable and experienced. The question is how that that all translated into the hellhole here?
Who's building subway cars for New York?
Why don't they have these problems?
All the more reason why they
All the more reason why they should try and get some of the old Orange Line cars back in service otherwise we might soon be looking at 20 or 30 minutes between trains at rush-hour and look back on the good old days of 15 minute waits.
Too bad Building #19 isn't around anymore
After this horrible relationship is terminated, through litigation and/or bankruptcy, the surplus cars could have been sold by Ellis & Co., like the old Hancock windows. The ads would have been hilarious. Also remembering that for years, Gossman's in Braintree had a couple of surplus WWII tanks for sale. My father steadfastly refused to buy me one.
I mean, what reaction makes
I mean, what reaction makes sense here except nodding your head and saying "yes, sounds like something the T would be mixed up in."
A Chinese company
"completely abandoning" any concept of quality control. Whodathunkit?
Quality control?
We don't spend any money on quality control! We have better uses for that money - management bonuses!
That’s why you don’t go with
That’s why you don’t go with a Chinese company. Ever seen a factory in China? It’s a total disaster. That’s the standard that Carries no matter where.
German or Japanese manufacturing is the best
Apple quality is horrible
That's why everyone hates Apple products and talks about how low quality they are. Made in China junk.
/S
But
Apple is not a chinese company. Their products are made there, but Apple controls the quality control. That's the difference.
Exactly
The MBTA isn't a Chinese company either. So the state either didn't know about the problems or ignored them.
This crap falls on Baker (and Patrick, to an extent.) There's nothing inherently wrong with hiring a Chinese company but like any contractor they need rigid oversight and agency managers with the power to stop production until the problems are resolved. If this means going to court and withholding payments, so be it.
Apple has a high build quality because they don't accept anything less. They take oversight very seriously. They have Apple reps who spend time in the Chinese factories to verify parameters.
And Patrick to an extent?
He’s the one that created this whole mess
Oh?
So Baker's team must have identified the flaws early on and ensured they were fixed or the contract canceled.
Oh wait, he didn't do that. He upped the order and this secret letter was only reveled minutes after he was no longer governor.
I blame both of them.
The first of what I expect
to be many, many revelations that the whole system is far more fucked up than even we at UH could imagine.
DJI is a Chinese company
and their products are well-designed and well-made. There are many other examples. China does more than a quarter of the world's manufacturing; of course there's junk made there. There's junk made everywhere, including the USA. But not everything made in China, by Chinese companies, is junk. This is just cultural prejudice.
I am old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was thought to be synonymous with "shoddy junk". I haven't heard that in a while. When Japan was building itself up as a manufacturing power, it started out by concentrating on making things cheaply. It then went on to figuring out how to make them well. China is following the same path. It is hindered, of course, by its corrupt, tyrannical, incompetent political system, but Chinese ingenuity has figured out how to subvert this system, how to build a vigorous capitalist machinery under the communist veneer.
It’s more complicated than country of origin
It’s more complicated than country of origin.
iIRC about 35 years ago VW compared the defect rate for cars made in Mexico vs Germany, and the Mexican quality came out ahead. One proposed explanation was that lower labor costs in Mexico led to less pressure to reduce labor hours per unit made, which led to more resilient processes etc.
lol
I like how they try to blame the Chinese for this but all the problems are being described at the plant in Springfield where (due to protectionist laws) these trains are required to be assembled by American workers in America.
Not even made in America/Buy American
It's even worse, this doesn't even qualify for Build America and matching federal funding since the MA government forced the plant to be built in Springfield. It's so much worse.
Irony
Irony here that this comes out on the day Baker does his lone walk out of the statehouse. Sure Deval was the one who made CCRC happen here in MA, but it was Baker who wanted the Red Line cars also done here too.
Again I've been saying this for years but "no surprise". You pick the cheapest option, you are going to get what you pay for.
We could have had some nice Seimens trains like the Blue Line. Over 10 years of service and very few problems (that are related to the trains themselves.. BL wiring is a culprit most of the time of any issues on the BL)
But 'cost savings' gotta save that money.. so we didn't. And here we are.
My horrible prediction is CCRC does nothing, and abandons the factory taking much of the $ it got from the state with it. Since its a chinese company, there's little we'll be able to do about it. The state will take over the factory and try.. BEG.. someone else to come run it and fix the problems.And it'll end up costing more money than it did if we just went with Seimens.
I also predict that the Red Line order will be partially cancelled and made by another manufacturer before this whole shittake is done.
Furthermore, these cars are going to be so bad that by 2027 they were will be another RFP out to rebulld ALL OF THEM because they are being taken out of service so much for critical issues.
its 1976 again and we just got our first load of UTMS/Boeing cars. By 1987 those cars were being replaced. 10 years. I give these CCRC cars at least that long.
Do you live in an alternate reality?
It's been pointed out before, but, Seimens didn't even bother to respond to the MBTA's RFP. Do you think Hyundai Rotem was going to do better? Bombardier? Those are the real other options that all have previously royally screwed the T (or others) on procurements.
The main fault seems to be the asinine built in Massachusetts requirement more than any vender choice, which if anything made the whole thing more expensive.
I don't care
I don't care. Thanks.
Maybe Siemens didn't reply because they know how much of a hot mess the MBTA is and figured they got enough clients. :-)
But again I don't care. Thanks.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Sorry Cybah, but I think you've seen me and I've seen you around for a long time. Responding back "I don't care" is making this assessment political. As in "it must be Baker" and if the facts doesn't fit, then I will ignore the data.
You can't both say "could have had some nice Seimens trains like the Blue Line" while ignoring Siemens didn't bid. And the reason why is frankly the "Build in MA" backfired hard. And saying "Baker who wanted the Red Line cars also done here too" somehow means he deserve more blame than Deval.
I'm not trying to make this political btw, I'm just really passionate about the MBTA and I really want the facts to prevail in very vain hope that it will eke out lessons so we can fix something. But somehow framing that Baker choosing to expand an order that already exists as somehow that's more egregious is making the lesson "it's because we had a republican in the state house and thus our situation"
That's not okay. Oh, I'm not saying Baker was good for the MBTA to be clear here. But it is important lesson here, with increasing percentage I'm being wrong is shrinking fast, "Made in MA" was a mistake. We should never do that again and good luck to rectifying for us all if CRRC really have checked out on building trains for us.
Huh?
Would the results have been any different if CRRC had set up the factory in, say, Mississippi?
Inept management is inept management, it seems to me.
The right way to do this is to find another city that is happy with what they're buying, and say: we want some of those.
Yes, I know that not only will no one else's cars run on the MBTA, but each line's cars are unique won't run on the other lines. That's insane. Can you imagine the chaos if every subway line in New York had to have uniquely designed rolling stock?
Spend the money and fix it. Old Berlin U-bahn cars are running in Pyongyang, but Red Line cars won't run on the Orange Line. What idiots the MBTA look like.