Tracking Transportation/ State government/ Transportation

Eng confident Chinese subway car manufacturer will meet its obligations

Despite unpromising US market, GM says CRRC is committed

By Bruce Mohl 0 Comments Aug 25, 2023

THE CHINESE COMPANY building Red and Orange line trains for the MBTA faces a bleak future in the US market, but T General Manager Phillip Eng appears fairly confident the company will live up to its obligations.

At a hearing of the MBTA board on Thursday, Eng reported that he, T Deputy General Manager Jeffrey Gonneville, Transportation Secretary Gina Fiandaca, Transportation Undersecretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt, and Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao held a virtual meeting on August 16 with the chairman of CRRC, Sun Yongcai.

“We wanted to hear directly that they are committed to this project,” said Eng.

CRRC’s commitment is a question mark. The Chinese company made a splash in the US market in 2014 by securing a contract to build new Red and Orange line cars for the MBTA. The company underbid its closest competitor by $200 million and sweetened the offer by promising to build an assembly plant in Springfield. Contracts quickly followed with transit authorities in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Massachusetts in 2017 upped its order for Red Line cars.

But then Congress passed a law in 2019 barring the use of federal funds for transit procurements from Chinese companies. Since most transit procurements involve federal funds, the law dealt a severe blow to CRRC’s growth plans in the US. New tariffs on Chinese goods and the emergence of COVID knocked the company on its heels; its Springfield manufacturing plant turned out vehicles that often didn’t work right.

Eng indicated the quality issues have largely been addressed through hard work by CRRC and MBTA officials working together. He said new Orange Line cars are averaging 114,000 miles between service failures, well above the 90,000-mile target.

The general manager said he is not worried that federal restrictions on transit funding have turned the US market into a quagmire for CRRC.

“I am not worried about what their future is with regards to other work,” he said. “What I am worried about is this project. They are committed to it. They know the importance of the rolling stock to us. They also know the importance of delivering that rolling stock, not only for us, but for their own purposes. They take a lot of pride in their work.”

Eng said production output remains a problem. The latest schedule calls for all Orange Line cars to be delivered by December 2023 and all Red Line cars by September 2026, but meeting those timelines is unlikely. Fiandaca, the state transportation secretary, hinted in July that the T and CRRC had “reset expectations” with regard to production, and on Thursday Eng said the T and CRRC are developing a new schedule for vehicle deliveries.

Meet the Author

Bruce Mohl

Editor, CommonWealth

About Bruce Mohl

Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.