Healey deploys team to monitor China train deal
Governor responds to Herald-exclusive report
Gov. Maura Healey said her administration is “going to be all over” the MBTA’s problem-riddled procurement of new Red and Orange Line trains, in light of the Chinese manufacturing company’s latest failure to meet the terms of its contract.
Healey, responding to the Herald’s public records exposé on communications between the T and the company, said on WBUR’s Radio Boston Wednesday that the independent team of experts she formed to expedite CRRC’s delivery of the remaining train cars has already started work and will have a physical presence at the contractor’s Springfield factory moving forward.
“In fact, our secretary of transportation was out there on the ground on Monday, and we are going to be all over this,” Healey said. “Basically, right now there are operational issues that need to be addressed and problems are being corrected as they occur. The team will have a constant presence at the facility.”
Healey addressed this issue when asked to respond to a Boston Herald report that revealed a stunning number of defects that have plagued the new Orange and Red Line train cars, and repeated criticism by the MBTA that its Chinese contractor was taking a lackadaisical approach to resolving them.
The Herald reported these details based on the minutes of closed-door meetings held last year, obtained through a public records request.
These documents show CRRC only delivered nine of the 34 two-car Orange Line train sets it promised in January 2022, reused safety-critical hardware on trains, and submitted “approval to proceed” forms to bypass inspections where cars were missing materials.
The Chinese company also “force-closed” quality item reports issued by the MBTA without actually resolving identified defects and making the necessary repairs at its Springfield facility, the minutes show.
Healey said on WBUR she became aware that the Springfield facility was “way behind” on its delivery of new Orange and Red Line cars two weeks after taking office. The records obtained by the Herald reveal the problems stretch back to January 2022, at least.
To date, only 78 of 152 Orange and 12 of 252
Red cars have been delivered, with delivery set to resume this month after stopping entirely last July due to manufacturing defects identified by the MBTA.
Healey said the state “struck a deal” with low bidder CRRC years ago, referring to the 2014 contract hammered out under former Gov. Deval Patrick and later expanded by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2017 to today’s roughly $870.5 million amount, saying that the company’s Springfield facility was not up to the task.
“Most of the cars are sort of made in China and then they’re shipped over for final fabrication,” Healey said. “It turns out that there were certain things missed in the process, and it looks like the company didn’t actually have the capability to fabricate as quickly or in the way it needed to.”
A Healey spokesperson told the Herald on Tuesday that the governor had engaged three companies, Hatch, Wilmer Hale and Holland & Knight, for the independent working group, a cost that will be deducted from the project’s existing budget.
Healey said Wednesday that this team of technical experts and engineers will “figure out how to retool things at the facility and how to operationalize that so we can expedite the production and the delivery of these cars as quickly as possible.”