7000-series - Delivery & Updates

[briman94]

1 minute ago, Busjack said:

It might not be in which they are building, but Bombardier also did not bid the lowest, by $226 million

Part of the protest was that CSR may have lied about their predicted cost, or the Chinese government may be subsidizing the bid so that it was lower than Bombardier.

[Busjack]

2 minutes ago, briman94 said:

Part of the protest was that CSR may have lied about their predicted cost, or the Chinese government may be subsidizing the bid so that it was lower than Bombardier.

I had noted that, and also CTA was not going to uphold the protest on that basis (not in its interest to investigate that), although the feds might.

[strictures]

9 minutes ago, Busjack said:

It might not be in which city they are building, but Bombardier also did not bid the lowest, by $226 million.

As previously noted, New Flyer putting a bus completion facility in southern California seems tied to a LACMTD contract, and New York has tied bus and railcar contracts to having facilities in NY state, including Bombardier. The congresswoman didn't go to Plattsburgh just for the fun or posing behind a steering wheel. Do you also think it is coincidence that Sumitomo moved its assembly from Wisconsin to Illinois (although that solely involved state money)?

The unspoken requirement by so many transit agencies for rail cars & buses to be built locally is just driving up everyone's cost. Back 80+ years ago, the market for all of these was several times larger, but there were about the same number of plants building them, which resulted in an economy of scale.

[Busjack]

Googling "bombardier csr protest" comes up with everyone protesting in Boston (I think I mentioned it before), and more surprisingly, that about a year ago, the Chinese were contemplating taking over Bombardier's rail unit.

Paralleling allegations here is that Massachusetts officials took tours of China.

[BusHunter]

@Busjack Don't you think that it's kind of strange csr can build a factory and build the cars for $226 million less? plus bombardier building the #5000's should have an advantage knowing the costs involved and it should be fairly easy to undercut the competition? 

So if tbey did decide to sue, could they stop the contract from executing or would they get a penalty judgement against the city? 

[Busjack]

5 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

So if tbey did decide to sue, could they stop the contract from executing or would they get a penalty judgement against the city? 

They can't sue; they can only take the protest (once CTA rules on it) to the FTA, I'm not going to prejudge whether the FTA finds that the allegations have merit.

The only comparable in CTA experience is that everyone protested the award to MAN for the 4400 series buses. That resulted in a combination of the FTA upholding some of the protest and MAN leaving the country, resulting in TMC getting the contract.

[sw4400]

I can't read the whole story on crain's Chicago business(only the 1st paragraph), unless I want to subscribe for $69/year..... not doing that..... whatever happened to free articles? I'm not reading an entire paper!!!

Anyhow, I did find a link to what looks like a lot of legal haberdashery from Bombardier about CTA rigging the deal against them. I don't have the time to skim it, but maybe @Busjack can give us the short and sweet about this(it's 53 pages long)....

Link

Could this put a delay into CSR making the 7000-Series Railcars? Could Bombardier have found some legal leg to stand on with all this attorney/lawyer jargon?

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, sw4400 said:

but maybe @Busjack can give us the short and sweet about this(it's 53 pages long)....

What I had to say I said in the prior post (i.e. its up to the FTA to decide).

[Busjack]

2 hours ago, sw4400 said:

Could Bombardier have found some legal leg to stand on with all this attorney/lawyer jargon?

I'll add to that that the protest obviously appears rushed (which is argued is a ground for the protest), and it is an argument whether "not reasonable price" means a price that is too low (it not directly being established that the Chinese government subsidized the bid, but that CSR has underbid Bombardier twice). There probably is an argument whether the CSR entities are the same after the merger with CNR. The factual record is not sufficiently developed to come to a conclusion, but if enough evidence is found that CTA violated its own criteria stated in the solicitation, that would be a problem.

Of course, nobody has paid me $2 million to prosecute either side's case.

[Juniorz]

Here is the complaint in question (in it's entirety), it's over 50 pages long, but if your familiar in reading legal documents, you should know where the good stuff is located, ENJOY!

308201360-Bombardier-Transit-Corp-complaint-about-CTA-deal.pdf

[Busjack]

7 hours ago, Juniorz said:

Here is the complaint in question (in it's entirety),

Same thing as sw posted. Also, it isn't indicated that it is the protest, but that it is the brief in support of the protest. The declarations mentioned in it are not attached. The distinction is that it is argument, not evidence.

[Busjack]

About the same thing in the Sun-Times, if you are having paywall issues.

[BusHunter]

11 hours ago, Juniorz said:

Here is the complaint in question (in it's entirety), it's over 50 pages long, but if your familiar in reading legal documents, you should know where the good stuff is located, ENJOY!

308201360-Bombardier-Transit-Corp-complaint-about-CTA-deal.pdf

I skimmed over the whole brief and the complaint is basically

1. That Chicago cannot legally use federal money to dictate that a company build a manufacturing plant within city limits. (they may try and challenge this)

2. CSR never disclosed that it had a disqualification in north america, the MBTA one where they determined that the contract would not rank up to MBTA's quality standards. There seems to be a question of can csr provide a quality product.

They further challenge that point by saying BART, said that out of it's bidders it found that the CSR bid ranked towards the bottom of it's list of it's quality standards, so it was dropped out of consideration there.

They further state CTA contacted Argentina and was not told about car fires they had. The CTA talked with CSR and when it was disclosed chicago would receive "many jobs", Bombardier claims CTA minds were made up. They also claim the mayor breached a confidentiality agreement on March 6th, stating the manufacturer had been chose before the bids were voted before the board.

They also go to state csr has never had a north american contract and that it cannot possibly deliver a quality product based on it's bid. Bombardier could deliver a year earlier create more us jobs, but not any here in the city.

They are seeking 2 million in settlement money and the disqualification of the contract.

It does seem fishy bombardier bid on the first contract so now everyone knows what they bid, so they can undermine their bid on the 2nd. For some reason it does seem CTA did not want Bombardier to receive this order and they set them up to take the fall.

 

 

[Scionic]

So this kind of highlights my puzzlement when CSR was announced as the winner.  Are there really no heavy rail manufacturers left in the US?  I'm not trying to turn this into a political discussion or anything, but Bombardier is Canadian, CSR is (obviously) Chinese, and even if the trains are built in Chicago or Plattsburgh or whatever, the money ultimately winds up in a bank account outside the US.

[Busjack]

20 minutes ago, Scionic said:

So this kind of highlights my puzzlement when CSR was announced as the winner.  Are there really no heavy rail manufacturers left in the US?  I'm not trying to turn this into a political discussion or anything, but Bombardier is Canadian, CSR is (obviously) Chinese, and even if the trains are built in Chicago or Plattsburgh or whatever, the money ultimately winds up in a bank account outside the US.

The quick answer is no. Most of the rest participating in this market are Japanese (Nippon Sharyo, Kawasaki). The Boston article mentioned a protest by Hyundai-Rotem, which obviously is Korean (and had quality problems performing an MBTA commuter rail car contract, according to reports).

Things basically ended up this way when St. Louis Car, Pullman-Standard, and Morrison-Knudsen went out of business, and apparently Budd was acquired by Bombardier.

The only backstop is the Buy America Act.

[garmon757]

16 hours ago, sw4400 said:

I can't read the whole story on crain's Chicago business(only the 1st paragraph), unless I want to subscribe for $69/year..... not doing that..... whatever happened to free articles? I'm not reading an entire paper!!!

I can easily read the entire complaint on my iPhone 6S on that site (maybe because my phone is jailbroken).

[sw4400]

10 minutes ago, garmon757 said:

I can easily read the entire complaint on my iPhone 6S on that site (maybe because my phone is jailbroken).

I don't know why.... I'm using a PC and get this with Chicago Tribune and now Crain's Chicago Business. It's just one article, I don't see how viewing an article is going to break the company. It's not like I'm looking at the entire paper for 4/13/16, for example.

[BusHunter]

6 minutes ago, sw4400 said:

I don't know why.... I'm using a PC and get this with Chicago Tribune and now Crain's Chicago Business. It's just one article, I don't see how viewing an article is going to break the company. It's not like I'm looking at the entire paper for 4/13/16, for example.

Did you try to read the article via a phone? I can't read any of those paywall articles on a pc but on a phone I can read them all!!

[Busjack]

31 minutes ago, garmon757 said:

18 minutes ago, sw4400 said:

I don't know why.... I'm using a PC and get this with Chicago Tribune and now Crain's Chicago Business. It's just one article, I don't see how viewing an article is going to break the company. It's not like I'm looking at the entire paper for 4/13/16, for example.

I can easily read the entire complaint on my iPhone 6S on that site (maybe because my phone is jailbroken).

The main issue on these is how smart the paywalls are in detecting how many times you hit them, but I'm not going to go further into that here.

I put up the Sun-Times link, because that seemed to say exactly what Crain's did, and is not behind the paywall. (That brings up that you can often do a web search to find an alternate source; for instance RedEye is not behind the paywall, but has most Tribune content).

The scribd references should not be behind the paywall, but you may need a pdf reader.

[Juniorz]

3 hours ago, BusHunter said:

I skimmed over the whole brief and the complaint is basically

1. That Chicago cannot legally use federal money to dictate that a company build a manufacturing plant within city limits. (they may try and challenge this)

2. CSR never disclosed that it had a disqualification in north america, the MBTA one where they determined that the contract would not rank up to MBTA's quality standards. There seems to be a question of can csr provide a quality product.

They further challenge that point by saying BART, said that out of it's bidders it found that the CSR bid ranked towards the bottom of it's list of it's quality standards, so it was dropped out of consideration there.

They further state CTA contacted Argentina and was not told about car fires they had. The CTA talked with CSR and when it was disclosed chicago would receive "many jobs", Bombardier claims CTA minds were made up. They also claim the mayor breached a confidentiality agreement on March 6th, stating the manufacturer had been chose before the bids were voted before the board.

They also go to state csr has never had a north american contract and that it cannot possibly deliver a quality product based on it's bid. Bombardier could deliver a year earlier create more us jobs, but not any here in the city.

They are seeking 2 million in settlement money and the disqualification of the contract.

It does seem fishy bombardier bid on the first contract so now everyone knows what they bid, so they can undermine their bid on the 2nd. For some reason it does seem CTA did not want Bombardier to receive this order and they set them up to take the fall.

"They also claim the mayor breached a confidentiality agreement on March 6th, stating the manufacturer had been chose before the bids were voted before the board." 

I'll dispute that right away, the mayor's office made a statement that stated "a manufacturer will be selected this week on the 846 rail car procurement". Neither the mayor nor the official statement address at anytime that either CSR or Bombardier was the anticipated winner of the contract. 

Please! caution and watch for "language" "phrasing" and " usage of words" when looking at this compliant because this lawsuit might eventually be settled by "who said what and in what contexts"

Also Note, that during the March 9th award, the board asked the procurement staff do they know anything else about CSR and the staff stated "Boston currently has a contract with CSR that also includes a creation of a rail car assembly facility and we've tried to contact Boston on 5 occasions with no response" On that statement, i saw red flags immediately and at least one of those board members should have saw that too!

[BusHunter]

Well this is what bombardier says.I do remember the mare saying a manufacturer was chosen that will build a assembly plant on the se side. Now if bombardier never promised that then its a foregone conclusion who the winner was at that time.

[Busjack]

3 hours ago, Juniorz said:

I'll dispute that right away, the mayor's office made a statement that stated "a manufacturer will be selected this week on the 846 rail car procurement"...

Also Note, that during the March 9th award, the board asked the procurement staff do they know anything else about CSR and the staff stated "Boston currently has a contract with CSR that also includes a creation of a rail car assembly facility and we've tried to contact Boston on 5 occasions with no response"

 

1 hour ago, BusHunter said:

Well this is what bombardier says....

This goes back to what I said before that this is argument, not proof. That's what Bombardier says, but so far without rebuttal from CTA or CSR JV.

BusHunter was accurate in stating what the memorandum said, and Juniorz provided a link to that, so we can let it rest at that, and, eventually let the FTA decide. We know what the issues are, but not necessarily how they will be resolved.

On Juniorz's last point, the memorandum seems mostly based on inferences Bombardier made from that meeting. Again, whether those are the correct inferences will have to be determined. I suppose that the question could be raised whether the board, through that committee, exercised sufficient oversight. One of the members, by asking about collision avoidance, seemed more concerned  about another O'Hare accident.

[BusHunter]

I guess I can rest on the allegations.  But there are a few things still to discuss perhaps around the case. Like why does the argument list CSR as the object of the complaint and not CNR MA because CNR has won the MBTA bid and since the companies merged why isn't CSR CNR MA?  

I can't help but think now maybe the #3200's rehab was a good idea after all because if anything this sounds like a delay in the #7000's order. 

I also can't help wondering how this will tarnish the image of bombardier calling out the CTA like this. They have a saying that you'll never work in this town again but maybe that's a non issue if Chicago's not ordering cars for 40 years anyway.I know one thing CNR MA and Bombardier are the two biggest companies worldwide in sales. So this is almost like a heavyweight bout. Could get ugly.

[Busjack]

2 hours ago, BusHunter said:

Like why does the argument list CSR as the object of the complaint and not CNR MA because CNR has won the MBTA bid and since the companies merged why isn't CSR CNR MA?  

I implied above that the lawyer intentionally ignored that. However, technically CNR and CSR merged into CCRC, and the current CSR Sifung Joint Venture is a venture between CCRC and its American arm. The cited article sort of brings up an interesting distinction in merger law, in that it wasn't a consolidation (two into a new corporation), but a merger of CNR into CSR. It though also says "The merger is an experiment by the government aimed at reforming state-backed firms, an official from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said." Hence, it may not make any difference, although the Boston report was that both CSR and CNR bid and MBTA found that CSR was not qualified but CNR was. Other than the government backing the situation is no different than Safeway having been acquired by Albertsons, but Jewel (a division of Albertsons) is now selling Safeway brands. Kroger is supposedly considering opening some Mariano's.

 

2 hours ago, BusHunter said:

I also can't help wondering how this will tarnish the image of bombardier calling out the CTA like this.

Bombardier was the target of similar protests in New York, so I guess what's good for the goose...

BTW, Alstom complained when Bombardier underbid them, most notably a BART order, which Bombardier got. Reportedly, Schumer got them some Amtrak work.

[Pink Jazz]

If the FTA rules in Bombardier's favor, I have this strange feeling that CTA won't take the options and will bid a separate contract for the replacement of the 3200s and any cars needed for fleet expansion as a potential 8000-series cars.