CTA Bus Bids - "The Also Rans"

[geneking7320]

I'm curious which other manufacturers bid on the CTA that New Flyer won.

Does the CTA make this information available? If they don't is there another way of finding out?

Gene

[Busjack]

Unless you have an in with the CTA (and your asking the question presupposes that you don't), or an investigative staff like Crain's Chicago Business, you would have to rely on the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, which provides at 5 ILCS 140/7:

(h) Proposals and bids for any contract, grant, or agreement, including information which if it were disclosed would frustrate procurement or give an advantage to any person proposing to enter into a contractor agreement with the body [is exempt], until an award or final selection is made. Information prepared by or for the body in preparation of a bid solicitation shall be exempt until an award or final selection is made.

Thus, theoretically you could make a request, now that the contract has been awarded. However, it might be blocked if the requested documents contained "Trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person or business where the trade secrets or information are proprietary, privileged or confidential, or where disclosure of the trade secrets or information may cause competitive harm."

Also, there was a debate on Ask Carole on whether appraisals of the pending sale of the Wilson Yards were subject to disclosure, but subsection (s) exempts "[t]he records, documents and information relating to real estate purchase negotiations until those negotiations have been completed or otherwise terminated."

If you want to pursue the Freedom of Information Act (I'm not Ask Carole's Hugh), here is a link to CTA's FOIA site.

Since there aren't that many maufacturers left, we can guess who they were (and if the criterion was other than lowest price, why NABI wouldn't have won).

[venom_20]

I'm guessing Neoplan had no choice to bid. They're at the brink of going out of business.

[Busjack]

I'm guessing Neoplan had no choice to bid. They're at the brink of going out of business.

Do you have any source for that?

[venom_20]

go to bustalk.net . in the forum, look under transit manufacturers, there's a huge dicussion about it. These guys are usually right. I'm sorry hot topics and current events.