CHANGCHUN, China — Chinese-made Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Orange Line cars are expected to depart for the U.S. Nov. 18.
Officials for CRRC MA — the Boston-based arm of the gigantic Chinese rail rolling stock and equipment supplier — say cars will first move from northeast China were they were made, to the major port city of Shanghai in the center of the country. The first four-car set made a public run in China on Monday with CRRC, Chinese government, and MBTA officials attending.
The cars are the first of a 404-car order for MBTA, 152 for the Orange Line and 252 for the Red Line, company officials say.
CRRC MA workers are also building a $95 million, 204,000 square foot assembly plant in Springfield, Mass., where the bulk of cars will be finished — though the final number built in the U.S. has yet to be announced.
“These state-of-the-art vehicles provide improved passenger comfort and incorporate technology,” says Jia Bo, CRRC MA vice president. “Including solid state microprocessors, LCD passenger information displays, CCTV cameras, platform gap mitigation, automatic passenger counting and computer-based training simulators.”
The company also has contracts to build cars for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and LA Metro.
A separate company, CRRC Sifang America, broke ground on a south Chicago assembly plant earlier this year. U.S. workers in that plant may build as many as 846 cars for Chicago CTA’s elevated rail network.
Living in Massachusetts, unfortunately, we HAD a “governor” who went to China, and helped to set up the contract with China, for these cars.Patrick went to China, one of our adversaries, and gave them the contract and the help of the US Government. In the early sixties, the MBTA bought subway cars from Pullman/Standard, and some of them are still rolling,today, in limited capacities. Patrick made numerous mistakes while “governor” of Mass. , But this was a very UN-AMERICAN deal. It will be very interesting to see how they hold up during the winter & summer months. The cars look like they fit in very well with Halloween.
Mr. Bolsega, where is your car manufactured? Because it has an American name, don’t think it was manufactured in the US. By the way, Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Subaru, Mercedes, BMW, and perhaps other “foreign” manufacturers all have assembly plants in the US. It is a global economy, we, as consumers, should take advantage of that fact.
Great job MBTA – helping to finance new Chinese-made atolls in the South China Sea. Bah Humbug! )-: What’s wrong with supporting strong allies of the US that also build quality equipment!
There are no US companies that build passenger cars any more,i believe Pullman was the last US based company that built passenger cars and the Budd Co was the last one to build those combination diesel/passenger cars (sorry i couldn’t remember the name)
Where is your Washing machine made? Refrigerator, stove, vacuum cleaner clothes? We could go back and forth on this but the fact is that our balance of payments with other countries is way out of line. China is also one of the largest real estate owners in this country. I’ll gladly pay a little more to support my country and I do whenever possible. Sorry to have gotten off topic but I’m tired of sending our money to country’s that want nothing more than to see us fail.
The Chinese got this contract because they could deliver the product at a price point that other builders could not. Maybe Boston could have put all kinds of “made in the USA” but it would have raised the price considerably and nobody wants to pay that price.
Mr Bolsega, Boeing makes a line of Airplanes in Seattle, GE still makes locomotives in Erie and Ft Worth. I forget where Catapiller is making locomotives(in Indiana). Um Siemens is making locomotives and streetcars in Sacramento(last time I checked this was still in the US of A). Cessna, Piper and Beechcraft are also making airplanes in Wichita, Ks(IIRC).
Even if many of the cars are eventually made in the U.S. the profits will go to China, The U.S. becomes more of a consuming country than a producing one every day and one day will be subservient to other governments. Think about it. What do we make here anymore?
Given the quality of Chinese-made products, these should need replacing starting in 2020…