Hopefully, the problems will be fixed before the factory starts building the T's new commuter-rail coaches

By adamg on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 11:10am

Philly.com reports the Korean-owned factory building coaches for Philadelphia's equivalent of the MBTA - and eventually for us - is having a few problems. The communications, heating and AC systems don't work and the cars are too heavy. And then there are the cultural differences between the Korean managers and the American workers:

[The factory manager] acknowledged cultural differences. He said he was unaware of slapping incidents, and he said he believed the crotch-grabbing incidents represented "a difference of way of expression, maybe."

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The T

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Commuter rail

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Comments

crotch grabbing

By John-W on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 2:10pm.

Don't they know they're supposed to wait until the trains are in service before they start grabbing at crotches?

So,

By Anon² on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 3:02pm.

Are we going to nip this in the butt before millions are spent on useless cars?

Lowest bid contracts and Buy / American are some of the worst fiscally responsible actions are government is involved in, since they seem not to hold contractors responsible for faulty design, poor manufacturing, or cost / time overuns.

Can someone tell me why that's never written into the contracts? Why are taxpayers held hostage when say Big dig contractors run over time and budget, or the Green Line cars break down and don't work properly, as they were sold to us as?

Fine, buy American and contract to lowest bidders, but make sure they take on burden if they don't do a job to spec, or complete it on time.

Anyways, this looks like the MBTA is inevitably going to be wasting even more money for sub-quality cars. The governor would do good to squash the contract asap.