CRRC MA Co., Ltd. is a Chinese-American rolling stock manufacturer in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is part of the larger Chinese state-owned rolling stock manufacturer CRRC. Its offices and company headquarters are located in Quincy, MA.
This Springfield facility is responsible for the manufacturing and delivery of metro and commuter rail cars for the MBTA and LA Metro.
History
CRRC MA was first established as CNR MA in 2014.[1] It won a state contract to manufacture new railcars for the MBTARed and Orange lines within the state of Massachusetts.[2] At the time, no railcar manufacturing facilities existed in the state of Massachusetts.
The new 150,000 square ft assembly facility was built on the former site of a New England Westinghouse Company property and manufacturing started shortly after the facility's opening.
Contracts and delays
In March 2017, the company was awarded a contract to build 45 train cars for SEPTA at the cost of $137.5 million with the cars expected to arrive in Philadelphia in 2019.[3] A month later, they had won a contract to build the HR4000 series cars for the Los Angeles Metro Rail, and deliver the entire base order of 64 subway cars by September 2021.[4]
On July 2, 2019, SEPTA and CRRC agreed to a six-month extension on the delivery deadline for the 45 Springfield-built double-decker commuter rail cars.[5] A few weeks later, Congress banned federal funding for new railcars for practically all Chinese-made buses and trains, citing connections with the People's Liberation Army.[6] However, funding from other sources is still allowed, but it is rare for this to happen.
Some delays had been found in the factory but there is work to improve the situation as of early 2022. However, quality control issues still have surfaced. Federal transportation officials visited the Springfield facility in March 2023, as part of its "scheduled review” compliance with the Buy America provision in place.[7]
In December 2022, the MBTA accused the CRRC MA of abandoning their core values after a MBTA engineer conducted a recent inspection and found failures of power cable, and pulled nine cars of Springfield-built Orange Line cars from service.[8][9]
CRRC MA notified MBTA officials in January 2023 about delaying the delivery of the remaining Orange and Red Line railcars by December 2023 and September 2026.[10]
In August 2023, LA Metro received its first trainset of the 64-car order.[11] The second MBTA Red Line trainset entered service in January 2024, few years after the first had entered operation in December 2020.[12]
In late March of 2024, the state of Massachusetts and CRRC officials agreed to extend the company’s deadline to deliver a total of 404 railway cars from the long-missed due dates of January 2022 and September 2023, until 2029. The state also agreed to increase the cost of the contract by $148 million to over $1 billion.[13] With SEPTA not receiving a single car due to delays, it had announced it would terminate [the contract] for cause.[14]
