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A CRRC executive
confirmed the news on Monday, which was first announced by the
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
(LACMTA) late last week.
The LACMTA said these cars will be used for the metro's red and
purple lines, and they may also opt to buy another 218 subway
cars, bringing the total order value to about $647 million, it
said.
The contract, which is the Chinese company's third major win in
the United States, comes ahead of an expected meeting between
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump
next month in Florida, where openness to trade and investment
between the two nations will be a central theme.
"The company had the highest-rated technical offer and lowest
price while offering the most robust local employment program
and highest U.S. component content," the LACMTA stated, adding
that it has already met Washington's "Buy America" provisions,
which require 60 percent of components to be made in the U.S.
CRRC plans to invest in a Los Angeles-based facility to
manufacture major components, including propulsion and
air-conditioning. It is expected to deliver the first car by
2020, and all 64 cars by September 2021, it added.
The metro cars' exterior shells will be manufactured in one of
CRRC's factories in northeastern China, while the final
assembling will be done in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the
company is also manufacturing trains for Boston's subway system,
the LACMTA added.
This win reflects how CRRC has been steadily gaining ground in
the United States. The company had won a $567 million Boston
contract in 2014, and another bid worth $1.3 billion last year
to build rail cars for Chicago.
Tony Liu, assistant marketing director at CRRC's Qingdao Sifang
unit, which won the Chicago project, told Reuters last week that
the firm was focused on several other U.S. projects, including
San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit project.
"The rolling stock market in the United States will come to
another round of renewal for the existing fleet," Liu said. "We
see great potential for the market in the United States in the
coming decade."
(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
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