If you saw the article in the January 30th Matier and Ross column in the SF Chronicle about BART's new fleet of rail cars being built overseas, you might have some questions about the sourcing on BART’s new rail cars. BART has respectfully asked that the record is corrected, their response is printed below:
BART’s new train cars will be assembled in America, not overseas.
That’s the law. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) requires
that 60% of the value of the material be domestic and that final
assembly take place in the U.S. However, the FTA laws prohibit BART
from considering where in the U.S. the final assembly will take
place. If BART intends to use federal funds to help pay for these
much needed new cars, we cannot give preference to a car builder who
says they are going to assemble the cars in California or even the
Bay Area.
What BART can do legally and has done, is to provide an incentive in
the bid evaluation process for car builders to exceed the required
minimum 60% domestic content. BART's Buy America Bid Preference
Policy for Federally Funded Rolling Stock Procurements, a first for
U.S. transit agencies, factors in additional American-made content in
the price proposal scoring process, all in the interests of creating
and supporting American jobs.
The column also reported on the cost of our new fleet by citing a
funding agreement that includes engineering and inspection expenses.
These kinds of expenditures are important. Think of someone planning
to buy a piece of land and then build a new home on it; among other
things they need to hire a land surveyor and an architect to design
and oversee the project.
Designing the next generation of high performance train cars for the
unique features of BART is a quantum leap in complexity compared to
building a house. The estimated 16.9% on the base order of 260 cars
(total cost $1.3B) or 12.1% on an order of 775 cars (total cost
$3.2B) for those design, engineering, inspection, safety
certification, testing and warranty administration services is well
within the norm for transit agencies purchasing new vehicles. For a
contract of this size and complexity, prudent expenditures on project
management is protection against schedule delays and cost overruns.
They can help to ensure that the cars that roll out of the car
builder's domestic assembly plant are ready to provide safe and
reliable service to BART's 370,000 daily riders.
Based on the pricing in initial proposals for the new car
procurement, BART expects that the pricing in final proposals will be
such that BART will ultimately pay considerably lower average per car
prices if it is able to order all 775 cars as compared to only the
base order. Also, many engineering, design and testing costs are
payable to the car builder only for the base order of cars.
BART will continue to listen to the concerns of all stakeholders in
the new car procurement, but we need to continue to conduct the
procurement in a manner that complies with all applicable laws and
does not jeopardize federal funding.
We do need to replace all of our trains. We have the oldest train car
fleet in the nation. Many of our train cars are 40 years old and it’s
not only harder to find replacement parts, it takes more time and
labor to keep them running.
We want to collaborate with all the stakeholders in ensuring that
BART continues to provide safe, reliable transportation for future
generations of riders and to keep the Bay Area economy running.
What’s the economic risk of not reinvesting in BART? Consider the
fact that during the rush hours, BART carries 50,000 commuters across
the bay, as many as the Bay Bridge.
-John McPartland President, BART
Board of Directors
Labels: BART, FTA, rail cars
