This Railcar Manufacturer is in BIG Trouble (CRRC) 

LA Metro will receive 64 cards from the order but choose not to purchase the 218-car option on the contract after the delays and MBTA issues. They are purchasing 182 cars from Hyundai Rotem instead.

@@mitchbart4225 thanks for the info! I saw they were getting a lot of Hyundai Subway units but I didn’t know how many CRRC units would still enter service

@@CrazyDash9 That's if Hyundai-Rotem gets the ok to proceed. Stadler is contesting the award as apparently math done by the LA Metro supposedly was incorrect and the correct result according to Stadler would have led to getting the contract.

That’s Stadler’s claim, at least. That said, it’s depressingly normal for companies losing a bid to sue and try to reverse the decision - the economic incentive is so big that it’s worth wasting a few million in legal fees.

@@mitchbart4225 AnsaldoBreda all over again.

Between Swiss and Chinese manufacturing… what a hard decision lmao

Stadler doesn't have the best reputation either. Would be better to go with someone like Siemens or Alstom already.

@@YourLocalUkrainianGerman Stadler is supplying Berlin s newest metro cars , those are amazing !

@@YourLocalUkrainianGerman Stadler has a better reputation than even Siemens, and certainly better than Alstom! You are probably thinking of AndsaldoBreda or Bombardier...

Ah yes *Marta*

Need to get back to having a home grown manufacturer

ACF are still around, although they don’t currently offer passenger equipment. Budd and Pullman both were ultimately absorbed by Bombardier, which then sold the division to Alstom. I’m not sure who, if anyone, owns the St. Louis Car designs or other rights at this point.

Thanks a lot Reagan!

@@interstellarphredThe Reagan administration deserves a lot of the blame for the evisceration of American manufacturing and the prioritization of “shareholder value” over all other considerations. And now we’re seeing the consequences of it: Boeing ruining its once stellar reputation for safety; dependence on other countries for things like masks during the pandemic; vulnerability of industries like semiconductors to geopolitical threats; and the fact that there’s no American competitor in these bids, while a state-owned Chinese manufacturer like CRRC can undercut the ones with better products.

@@JohnGeorgeBauerBuisBombardier messed up its reputation with faulty subway and streetcars supplied to the TTC in Toronto as well as the subway cars that didn’t perform well in New York and Chicago. Finally Alstom is now building streetcars and LRV vehicles for both TTC and Metrolinx in the greater Toronto area and Hitachi got the subway car contract for the new Ontario subway line from Metrolinx.

I mean, Breda are nothing to write home about either.

Metro also uses Kawasaki cars and used CAF in the past.

Well, look at the Purple Line light rail being built here in Maryland, and hopefully that line finally opens when they say it will because it's been a hell of a long time coming. CAF made the trains for that. And yes, Metro's currently newest and majority fleet was made by Kawasaki, who has not been without their problems either despite like Hitachi being Japanese instead of Chinese. And those trains replaced the 70s Rohr, 90s Breda and early 2000s CAF trains because those were aging and too problematic themselves. Luckily, though, the problems with the Kawasaki cars either were or might still be in the process of being resolved. I don't know. Even Hyundai Rotem in Korea has been a little problematic, but that's outside of the DMV region. As for the new Hitachi trains, they are replacing the Breda trains from the 80s that were later refurbished by Alstom, with those from the early 80s now gone for good themselves. And any additional new cars could replace the Alstom cars from the late 2000s as well, otherwise those will eventually be the last cars in the pre-Kawasaki legacy fleet.

@@rockchildproductionsDC has the best US subway I have ever seen. It’s relatively reliable and they seem to be doing a good job fixing it up

I hope they are better than the Kawasaki 7000 series junk. The Bredas lasted forever, as did the Alstoms.

Exactly, as someone who has evaluated 'tenders' I can tell you that the forces of corruption are overwhelming, make no mistake. And the Chinese are the most corrupt I have ever see followed by East African officials.

CRRC is now banned from all contracts involving Federal Money.

My fellow Americans desperately need to re-deploy and fully embrace that saying, “you get what you pay for.” If American people and companies started acting according to this principle, so many of our issues would be solved. Quality should always trump everything else in virtually every circumstance. Unfortunately, quality these days is considered a luxury at best and wasteful or unnecessary at the worst.

I’m from Philly… and a huge train nerd. We have trains built by Hyundai Rotem that had a flaw that forced all of them to be taken out of service for months. Now, any manufacturer is capable of having issues as nothing is perfect. But, this caused complete chaos for commuters and travelers throughout the region. Once again, nothing is perfect, but this was probably caused by cutting corners and using shitty parts and shitty manufacturing…. I don’t think any company or individual just always buys the cheapest option when buying something…. If they did, they would probably end up with nothing but issues, just like these transit agencies are dealing with…. It’s so dumb!!!!

@@brianred8 Oh I hear you. up here in Ottawa, our council was so incompetent in their in their discussions with the relevant parties that we still don't have a non-dysfunctional train system 5 years after it reopened...

I agree lol but I also don’t think other state owned businesses should be able to play the game

True, but I think that the laws around acquisition of transit vehicles should be changed so that agencies don't have to go with the lowest bidder and can instead go with a manufacturer that the agency has an existing relationship with or has a track record of similar work. Personally I think that the bidding should be either longest vehicle service life or lowest lifecycle cost if possible.

@@rileycoyote4924 - That is the same way NASA felt about the traditional rocket makers, so NASA went with them, and we are still waiting for them to fulfill their promise! Fortunately, NASA also gave SpaceX some seed money, at the lowest price, and their Falcon 9 rocket has worked at pretty well.

The game is the legal system.

Not really, it was corrupt 'blue' officials who hate America!

I ride SEPTA. I don't recall any news articles about this. China has a tofu-dreg manufacturing construction problem. Subscribe to China Observer, China Insights, China Truths or any of the primary-source RU-vid channels focused on China. The problems they reveal would scare you away from these low-ball manufacturers.

Really we need more passenger rail projects nationwide so there's consistent for domestic manufacturing of high quality passenger trains. Siemens is able to have a plant in Sacramento thanks to the Amtrak, Brightline contracts along with becoming the de facto manufacturer for LRVs in North America after Bombardier imploded due to rampant quality control issues which got them blacklisted by the New York MTA.

Where do you think Stadler and Siemens build their US trains anyway? Stadler, while a Swiss company, has a factory in Utah, and Siemens has a factory in Sacramento, California, if I remember correctly.

The broad street line trains are the same age as the r62 in nyc which is around 40.

R62 was Kawasaki's next order after the B-IV's

Totally agreed. Adtranz is the company that manufactured the Market Frankford (L) trains back in 1997 - and they're absolutely falling apart, not even 30 years old yet. The Broad Street Line trains are fully 15 years older than the MFL trains and they're significantly more reliable. I suspect that MBTA's Orange Line trains will be in a similar spot as the MFL is today with these new trains, they'll end up needing to replace them before they should.

@@snowman400843 to be exact .

as a massachusetts resident, i honestly hope they keep at least a few of the old subway cars, they may be old and dirty but i love those old cars

This is going to drive way more business especially to Stadler. With the increasing emphasis on commuter rail in the USA in recent years, Stadler might want to consider a second USA plant somewhere east of the Mississippi, especially with many commuter railroads in the eastern USA in dire need of replacement train sets.

Or, Kawasaki.

Well stadler doesn’t usually do metro trains and Siemens is already busy with regular intercity rail orders so this is unlikely for the time being

There were plans on expanding the blue line car order from Siemens to replace the cars on the orange line, but the 2008 stock market crash and the MBTA not having enough money put a stop to that.

Did either bid for the tender?

CRRC was created as a merger of CNR and CSR, the MA plant was originally CNR Changchun. Honesty I think most of the problem is just the dumpster fire that is the MA plant.

Yes. The MBTA cars are built by CRRC MA, which is mostly American management.

@@edisonz2006 IMO it shows its not a "Chinese company" issue as much as individual poorly performing company. CAF, Alstom, and former Bombardier have all had their issues with various agencies worldwide.

CRRC MA is under CRRC Changchun which is formally part of CNR at the time of the MBTA contracts. CNR and CSR merged to form CRRC some time later, ironically as an attempt to stop them from having bidding wars on international projects. CRRC like its perdicessors, CNR and CSR, are a loose collection of more than a dozen Chinese rail equipment manufactures that operate semi-independently. Changchun and Sifang are the 2 major manufacturers of subway trains in China.

When it comes to American management, the unions can do whatever they want at the protection of politicians. It seems like our politicians just want CRRC to fail because they are Chinese.

Communist China builds low-quality junk?...whodda thunk it!

We should have canceled the SLV order and gone with someone else. That was delayed as well as they did nothing to help septa when those cars had the defect

Similar story with the Bombardier R179s

This. Most US agencies have abandoned this “lowest bid wins” mentality specifically because it encourages bad actors to underbid and then submit change orders to bring the contact up to its real cost. In fact, I believe FTA rules now require a multi-factor bid process. LA’s mistake is forgivable, if only because at the time CRRC’s performance issues hadn’t yet occurred, the national security concerns weren’t anywhere near what they are today, and LA was seeing positive signs both from CRRC and similar manufacturers like BYD in the LA area. LA’s order also left them plenty of room for error: the cars ordered were necessary for the D line extension, but that CAN be operated with less cars (for now) once it opens using older stock. That gave LACMTA time to bail on CRRC and go to Hyundai without risking operations for the 2028 Olympics.

Kawasakis in Philly still going strong as well

I agree on their past trains and trolley cars they built for Philadelphia have aged well and soon both will be needed to be replaced.

Hitachi has taken flak for some of their recent stuff too, most notably the Class 80x IET trains in the UK, while they're reliable, they're notorious for poor ride quality and uncomfortable seating. From a passenger standpoint they're considered objectively worse than the IC125 and IC225 trains they're replacing, the consolation prize being that they get up to speed MUCH faster than the old IC125 HSTs even in diesel mode

Hopefully Hitachi doesn’t start using Breda technology.

That’s the difference: CRRC in the US can’t just take an off the shelf train model, and tweak it to meet track envelopes and other local requirements. They had to design it from scratch, essentially. It’s a bit like telling Toyota to make a car in the US using a Japanese model’s body, but only using GM and Ford components. It’d be a disaster. Companies like Siemens handle this by having US-based manufacturing for their components, along with US engineers and assembly plants, building US-specific designs. That takes a LONG time to set up and build, with a big upfront investment, none of which CRRC was able to do.

@@kilodeltaeight…the biggest single issue is that each system is vastly different so no two subway or rail systems are the same. the closest that came were PATH’s and MBTA Blue Line cars being the same bodies but even then they had different electrical system needs: third rail only vs. dual-mode electric

CRRC is like china . an american adversary sooner later will become an enemy it depends how china will play with united states. They think always they can play with american industry. Where they learn and grow and funded their industry. Globalization help china to build their industry. They will ask you to tranfer your technology so they can copy. They are good with that. Mexico should not 100% trust them one day they will take your land and dominate it.

​​@@bostonrailfan2427 well, people here think _yay, China lost._ But end of the day, who is the bigger loser? How did China build so much rail so quickly? Yes, their gov dumped a ton of cash into it. But that's not the only thing. There is simply too much variety. Every train is being reinvented anew with every new batch of order. There is zero efficiency of scale, too much is being spent and re-spent on unnecessary R&D, and think about the spares in the coming years. The fact that the trains are so eye wateringly expensive meant it goes around, and made things worse when cities think _it's so much money, we should award points if they promise to build a new factory and create jobs locally_ so part of the cost is economic stimulus? It's just a box with wheels plus motors (for the EMUs) with seats bolted inside. WTF high-tech are we talking about here? It's a $700m contract for not quite 200 cars. How much is that per car? It's insanity. People are being fleeced. We've been building trains for hundreds of years, but they have not become commodities yet. Each is still an expensive shinny custom job. It's boxes on wheels. Yes, with more modern motors. But they still shouldn't be THAT expensive.

Seeing how Alstoms reputation has rapidly been declining, they might not have been much better

Sooner or later that can change

@@evanstonbalce9588 Alstom is at the beginning of a Boeing type decline, the French would need to push them hard to prevent it going further

@@gandhihype ironically their issues started after acquiring the Bombardier Rail division

even bullet trains design is ugly as hell european is way better. They try but they failed they are weak on this competition spare parts and logistics and support. They are new on this business and they are not willing to grow and learned the western way. Not like their competitors years of decades of existence.

@@Ryan-he2qz "Not willing to grow and learned the western way" is quite a claim. What about your gleaming, done-western-style new MTA R211 Kawasakis that keeps getting taken out of service?

@@robinsonshawqx kawasaki is the best i can say its actually older than chinese government own railway manufacturer. Its has more experience in manufacturing designing and its own technology. Not just copying some bodys technology. Japan has more builders than china . Chins just have more rails

@@Ryan-he2qz Quite astonishing commentary here. I guess it's better to leave you alone and entertained in your fantasy world. :D

I agree. For instance, the first generation MTR and KCR trains in Hong Kong (I'm from there) that were supplied by Metro Cammell had been built to last and were quality products. The original KCR trains (so-called "yellow heads") had a designed lifespan of 30 years, but ended up lasting 40 years (and that was on top of a mid-life refurbishment in the late 1990s that increased their crush load by 15%). The MTR Metro Cammell trains that were built between 1976 and 1994 (also refurbished in the late 1990s) are now just starting to be replaced by CRRC-made trains, and the latter have big shoes to fill. Metro Cammell was a testament to solid British craftsmanship and engineering. If only Singapore's MRT had gone with Metro Cammell for its first generation rolling stock, the firm would have been in less troubled waters financially and perhaps would even have been able to stave off bankruptcy and subsequent takeover by Alstom.

@@Polyglot0613 Singapore's MRT eventually awarded the contract for its 1st gen rolling stock to Kawasaki, supposedly because it had a more modern propulsion system (GTO) at that time. These stock are now being replaced by newer ones by Bombardier though (which has since been acquired by Alstom, & made at CRRC Changchun factory I think)

They made the south shore cars!

@@markvogel5872 Correct, they also made all new metra cars for the last couple of decades and some other stuff in North America. They also made a bunch of stuff for South America, Southern and Southeast Asia as well as their home country of Japan, which includes some Shinkansen trains.

RIP P865/P2020

That is because CRRC owns multiple factories that were originally separated and competed with each other (which is still kind of true today). MTR's early CRRC trains are from CRRC Changchun, while new Q-Trains are from CRRC Qingdao Sifang with better quality.

Well even within the same factory, they still have a huge quality gap. The S train and TML C train which are also from CRRC Changchun are of higher quality than the URL C train which is from the same factory. More blizzard, the later batch of URL C trainsare actually higher quality than the earlier batches

Indeed. Here in Sydney Australia we bought 80x 8 car sets from CRRC Changchun delivered around 2011 with a further 41x 8 car sets, which were delivered 2020-2021. They were co-manufactured with a local company here who did the final assembly and commissioning. By all accounts those have been the most reliable and are the best sets we have on the network. I suspect that especially good contract management is a key part of getting a good outcome with this manufacturer.

@@mallardlner5473 I remember HK also put the Q-Train under more scrutiny as the factory making them also made the C151A rolling stock for Singapore's MRT, 80% of which had cracked bolsters after just 2 yrs +, & which was made known to the public only 3 yrs later (when HK news agency Unwire flew a drone into a port & filmed C151As being loaded onto a ship to be returned to Qingdao for repair). What's more, in that 3 yrs, the same factory (under the same JV with Kawasaki used for the C151As too) won yet another rolling stock contract. Singapore would then award a subsequent rolling stock contract to CRRC's Changchun factory instead (but branded as Bombardier (now Alstom)), maybe due to the Qingdao factory's bad press, but after that I guess Qingdao managed to regain enough trust & won another contract, this time without Kawasaki (though it has parts made by other companies e.g. Siemens will be making it's electrical components)

Note to self: NEVER buy anything made in America.

I think it's because of their rushed approach to the US market, they didn't even have a factory before winning the bids. I'm no railway expert but CRRC stock in my city are on par with Alstom and CAF counterparts, at least in ride quality, but those were built in China, and they're really new so I don't know if they're gonna last long. We'll see if they have success but as of now there's no trouble with them.

That's ridiculous.

What do you think makes the Q-Trains 'meh' in your opinion?

it’s not the first time the T regretted their winning bidder…the Type 8s were only accepted into service after major modifications and legal actions that forced the train builder to fix them at mo expense or the contract was nullified

The world knows Unionize American workers Quilty product.

The exo cars are not in service as they suffered from software issue. As of today, I believe these cars are still in testing (and yes they look like milk cartons).

And that was passed into law, as I understand, at least with CRRC...

Doesn't Alstom have existing issues with a large Amtrak order?

@@LouisHansell I didn’t say that the best trains were completely reliable. The Avelia line of trains are pretty reliable. It’s the tracks in the US that are not.

​@@LouisHansellyes the Acela replacement trains, Siemens is making the Amfleet replacements

​@@LouisHansell Well, they own Bombardier and Pullman...

They won’t go out of business entirely bc of their domestic market hold they have in China. However yes in North America I agree that CRRCs days are numbered and they have no one to blame but themselves.

There did seem to be a software issue but it seemed like they got it fixed in a month or 2

While I do like the 2600s, I do prefer the 3200s and I want them back on the Brown Line.

Ehm, not always. ÖBB had several issues with delayed rolling stock and delayed usage certifications. But they produce quality rolling stock, i agree.

There are a ton of cars from Alstom in NYC. The R160A cars are all Alstom built. R160B cars (smaller fleet) is from Kawasaki with the majority using Alstom propulsion. Then the R211 from Kawasaki subcontracted with Alstom for propulsion.

Siemens is extremely popular in the lightrail market, and them and alstom both are probally going to be the major HSR providers in the future too. For CAF I dont know any of their products besides my city but their trains seem fine after 20 years of service

We might see more Alstom in the future with Montreal having the first Alstom Metropolis Metro Family user in North America. Maybe Siemens can come in too with their Siemens Modular Metro, like the name implies these trains are able to be design for local needs of any metro agency needs, just like how Toronto got a Bombardier Movia variant, the Rocket.

As others have pointed out, Siemens essentially has a monopoly over the light rail market with the S70 and S700 models. They’re everywhere. CAF does mostly streetcars (Kansas City, Cincinnati, Omaha, etc.) but they’ve also done some LRVs for Houston and the Maryland Purple Line. Not much heavy rail stock, though.

*Siemens

Seamsn = Siemens. It's German company w/ a German name...

because they weren’t fully in service yet then…it took a complete shutdown and forced finishing of the existing trains in the US to get them into service

MTA and BART are suffering because of bombardier being just as garbage lol

lmao true​@@thatrandomguy8124

CRRC _is_ building all of MBTA's trains in the US. They were just bad at it...

What happened to the possible Siemens trains for Line 2. It would make sense if they go with Alstom if they just build the Movia/Rockets again or unless they build Metropolises. It’d be interesting for Hyundai Rotem, might see a Canada Line style train like in Vancouver. Though LA might have them in the future seeing that they have similar dimensions only off by a few increments

in typical state fashion, it was to get union jobs despite higher costs to the taxpayers, longer delays in building, and no track record of success in the US

Where in Canada are they using Comets?