A $299-million contract to purchase 78 new light rail vehicles from Kinkisharyo International, LLC, was approved Monday afternoon by the Metro Board of Directors on a 8 to 1 vote.
The approval is pending resolution of two protests filed with Metro by firms that did not win the bid as well as no negative responses from the Federal Transit Administration before the protests are resolved.
The contract also includes four options to buy another 157 light rail vehicles for $591 million for a total contract value of $890 million for 235 new rail cars. Metro staff had recommended Kinkisharyo after spending the past year evaluating bids. (Renderings of the new cars are above and after the jump).
Board Member Jose Huizar voted against the contract and Board Member Richard Katz abstained. Members Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas were absent and Board Chair Antonio Villaraigosa could not participate in the discussion due to a conflict of interest.
Metro CEO Art Leahy opened the special Board meeting by saying that agency has fallen several years behind its procurement of new rail light rail vehicles and that the agency does not have enough vehicles at this time to operate the second phase of the Expo Line and the Gold Line Foothill Extension. Both projects are under construction and could be complete by 2015.
An effort to buy 100 new rail cars ended in late 2009 when a potential deal with another manufacturer fell apart.
Under the new contract with Kinkisharyo, 28 of the new rail cars are scheduled to be delivered by 2015 and a total of 62 by May 2016. If the four options are fulfilled, the delivery of the 235 total rail cars would be complete by Feb. 2020.
The new rail cars will also replace 69 aging vehicles currently in use on the Blue Line.
Kinkisharyo International, LLC, is based in Massachusetts and is a subsidiary of Kinki Sharyo Company of Osaka, Japan. The firm, according to Metro staff, has been awarded 15 contracts in the U.S. to build 684 light rail vehicles, including recent contracts to supply rail lines in Phoenix, Dallas and Seattle.
The other two firms — Siemens Industry, Inc., and CAF USA, Inc. — bid on the contract and both filed protests with Metro after agency staff recommended Kinkisharyo. Siemens officials and many members of the public who testified to the Board said that the Siemens bid would create more U.S. jobs.
Using federal guidelines to evaluate the bids, Metro staff concluded that the Kinkisharyo bid would create about $138.8 million in U.S. job value and the Siemens bid would create about $140.6 million. Current federal rules prohibit local transit agencies from considering local job creation in rail car contracts — the rules are intended to prevent local transit agencies from potentially using federal funds to take jobs from other c
ities in the U.S.
Metro is planning to secure $240 million in federal funds to help pay for the new rail cars.
Metro staff also concluded that:
•Kinkisharyo presents the lowest risk to the delivery schedule of the new light rail cars.
•Kinkisharyo offers the best technical proposal for all rail car systems, overall car design and integration.
•Kinkisharyo has the best program management team by experience and resource capability in the U.S.
•Kinkisharyo will create a high value of new U.S. jobs, and will move manufacturing of option vehicle car shells to the U.S.
Folks, keep in mind: this is not just about the initial order. This is about over 200 vehicles which could be purchased for all of our light-rail lines. This approval will allow Sharyo to begin building these things, and will give Metro a chance to evaluate Sharyo’s ability to consistently produce a good modern LRV.
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@Bobby McGee
So then why can’t we bring the rail manufacturers here to Southern California so it will create local jobs and gain much needed experience to make rail cars on our own in the future?
Buying railcars that are built in New York owned by a Japanese company or importing them from Korea only makes jobs and money go to New York, Japan, and Korea. All the experience of making rail cars then goes to New Yorkers and Japan. We never gain experience and all we end up doing is buying, learning nothing, and not creating jobs.
In the long term, I think it’s much more better to use tax funds to bring rail manufacturing jobs here, create long term job growth, which we can then use to gain experience to build better rail cars on our own in the future.
Think of it this way: you may say Asia can build better rail cars, but they didn’t start off like that. Back then, they made poorer quality electronics than the US until they worked hard to build a better quality product. Years of experience made that happen. If we can’t build good quality rail cars, that means we lack experience. The only way to gain that experience is to bring those manufacturing jobs here.
Because LA has high taxes and provides no incentives that makes us attractive to bring any rail car manufacturing jobs here. That’s how we drove out the aerospace industry out of LA.
In contrast, New York provides lots of incentives to have Kawasaki Rail there. Kawasaki can build railcars for the NY Subway in NY and they can have it test run on their tracks immediately. This saves lots of time and money. People working at the Kawasaki facility in Yonkers also use the NY Subway to get to work and get about their daily lives, so the workers there know what is needed to build a good railcar experience. In turn, Kawasaki invests millions of dollars to create more jobs to New York. Last year, Gov. Cuomo announced that Kawasaki was investing $25 million to expand their NY facility, which even created more jobs for New Yorkers.
http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/042811kawasaki_rail
Over here, even the people working at Metro drives their own car to get to work. How are they supposed to know what’s wrong with public transit in LA when even they themselves don’t use it to get to work?
Plenty of people at Metro take transit to get to work. It’s not a perfect transit system. I think very few large cities in North America can boast having a perfect transit system.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
A very important piece in the vote was that Mark Ridley Thomas-like Antonio Villaraigosa- was shown to be conflicted in his vote as he was not present due to ethics.
“I just home they make the seats wide enough for Americans, not like those lousy Rotem cars.
I guess the South Korean manufacturer saved money on the contract by making each seat about 2″ thinner than those in the Bombardier cars.”
Those new seats are, I beleive, made in the USA and their design and dementions a dictated by the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration based on data collected from amongst other events, the Chatsworth crash.
And despite the similar names, Metrolink and Metro are two separate agencies, one of which really needs to change its name now.
“Plenty of people at Metro take transit to get to work.”
Steve,
Metro or AQMD has the statistics to prove or disprove this statement. Please post them some time.
Erik:
Here’s Metro’s most recent reply to a very tired subject: http://thesource.metro.net/2010/08/11/a-statement-on-metro-employees-taking-mass-transit/
Likewise, you could also post a lot of the source material on the various things that you state as fact in your comments. You don’t but I post many of the comments because I do believe you know what you’re talking about.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
@Erik G.
How can there be any data if Metro doesn’t have a tap-out process? There’s no data collection taking place at the point where people get off the bus or train so without that, it’s impossible to gather statistics.