Healey the T straphanger
Drafts 'team' to study train contracts
Gov. Maura Healey said the MBTA is putting together an independent team of experts to stamp out problems hindering the procurement of new Orange and Red Line train cars.
The T’s new consulting group will look into manufacturing, management, operations, delivery schedule, market conditions, as well as existing contractual terms with Chinese company CRRC, which is under an $870.5 million agreement, the governor said.
“We have instructed this team to take a deep dive into these existing challenges and think through our long-term needs, and how we prioritize and make good on expediting the delivery of cars,” Healey said Thursday at the T’s operations control center.
“We understand that time is of the essence here, and we are already underway on this effort since we became aware of it just a couple of weeks ago.”
MBTA Interim General Manager Jeffrey Gonneville said last week CRRC hasn’t delivered any new Orange and Red Line cars for seven months, and despite already being years behind schedule, won’t be able to meet the new timelines it committed to this fall either.
Those timelines were December 2023 for Orange Line cars and September 2026 for the remaining Red Line vehicles, which is already far later than CRRC’s respective contractual deadlines of January 2022 and September 2023.
Only 78 of 152 Orange Line cars and 12 of 252 Red Line cars have been delivered. Shipments were suspended in July 2022 to address “manufacturing-related issues” identified by the MBTA, Gonneville said last week.
Healey said she was not considering terminating CRRC’s contract, despite the ongoing difficulties the MBTA has faced since selecting the lowest bidder in 2014, saying “we’ve got to figure out a way to make this work.”
She said her focus was on “actually getting the cars done,” rather than issuing penalties to CRRC for failing to meet the terms of its contract, when asked if the MBTA should start to issue $500 daily fines per late car, as the agreement dictates.
The governor said certain actions taken during Donald Trump’s presidency have impacted the work CRRC is doing domestically, but stopped short of saying those measures were disincentivizing the company from delivering on the contract.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 banned mass transit agencies from using federal funds to purchase rail cars and buses from Chinese-owned companies, and CRRC has ceased taking on new contracts in the U.S.
The U.S. also increased tariffs on Chinese goods by 25% in 2018, which CRRC said has resulted in $18 million in incurred costs, a number it expects to increase to roughly $35 million throughout the course of this contract. The company has requested relief from the MBTA on those charges.
Healey, who traveled to the OCC Thursday on a Red Line train put into service in 1986, said she just became aware of the dire situation three weeks ago, and has already taken action to address it, in terms of directing the MBTA to assemble a team of experts.
She also said she quickly took action to address the MBTA’s workforce shortage, saying that she plans to include funds in the state budget that will allow for 1,000 additional hires focused on operations.
The MBTA will be looking to partner with businesses, and work with community colleges, vocational and technical schools and apprenticeship programs to identify and train these new employees, Healey said.
“We want to make these jobs more desirable and provide the training and the professional development opportunities to folks,” she said. “It’s especially critical for allowing our entry level workers to come in where there are huge opportunities for advancement within the T.”
Healey also committed to improving transparency around delays, incidents and shutdowns at the MBTA, an effort she said will be apparent in the coming weeks.
She said the MBTA is developing an online system that will “collect, monitor and communicate slow zone information immediately to the public,” for the first time, and plans to post its response to the Federal Transit Administration’s safety inspection report on its website “in a month or so.”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat anything and I’ve told you from the outset, we will be transparent with whatever the facts are,” Healey said. “The information that we provide, we know is necessary for people to make decisions. And that’s why we want it to be clear. We want it to be accurate and we want it to be timely.”