Railroad Forums 

  • Lobby against Chinese-made WMATA cars

  • Discussion related to DC area passenger rail services from Northern Virginia to Baltimore, MD. Includes Light Rail and Baltimore Subway.
Discussion related to DC area passenger rail services from Northern Virginia to Baltimore, MD. Includes Light Rail and Baltimore Subway.

Moderators: mtuandrew, therock, Robert Paniagua

 #1494685  by Backshophoss
 
CRRC will be barred from bidding, Senate critters have a bill barring CRRC from bidding on transit/commuter car contracts.
 #1496154  by davinp
 
The 8000 series cars will likely be manufactured by a Chinese company and US officials are worried that they could spy on us.

Metro recently decided to add cybersecurity safeguards to specifications for a contract it will award later this year for its next-generation rail cars following warnings that China’s state-owned rail car manufacturer could win the deal by undercutting other bidders.

No U.S. company makes subway cars, so China competes in that market against companies from Asia, Europe and Canada

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tr ... aaf2e3c246" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 #1496236  by STrRedWolf
 
The first few would be made in China, but the company would require to open up a shop here in the US. If they're spying on us, it's because WMATA would design the car with cameras, and China slipped in a board to archive the video (ultra-compressed) and dribble it out through Wifi and maybe LTE.

Would it be worth doing? Not really. China wants technology, intellectual property, stuff it can rip off and make knock-offs of. Train cars aren't full of such secrets; they're full of people dealing with politics. They're more likely to spy on BART, VTA, MTA Maryland, and maybe NYC MTA than WMATA.
 #1505464  by mtuandrew
 
Mod Note: merged in some older posts from the 8000-series thread because it looks like this topic has legs on its own.

—————

Not sure who’s running this campaign, but this week I’ve seen (paid) petition gatherers at both Cap South and Foggy Bottom using the hashtag #savethemetro. Seems to be aimed at pressuring USDOT, Congress, and WMATA not to buy CRRC products specifically because of their putative listening device. It smells to me more like a marketing effort by Alstom, Siemens, BBD, Stadler, and other specifically-European railcar manufacturers. Maybe Mitsubishi and Hitachi are in on it too, and maybe American freight rolling stock builders.

So far I haven’t found any web presence and only one or two Twitter posts on the subject, other than the original Business Journal and Washington Post articles cited above. What has everyone else seen?
 #1506128  by Sand Box John
 
"Backshophoss"
Washington post has joined the "forced adware" crowd of newspapers,basicly paywalled now :( :( :P


The way I get around the Posts pay wall is by opening the article incognito and or private window and click the stop loading icon immediately after the text of the article has rendered.
 #1527909  by davinp
 
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton says federal funds won’t be allowed to be spent on railcars and buses manufactured by Chinese state-owned companies. It’s the latest in efforts to block the possible purchase of Metro cars made in China.

Norton says a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act would block Metro — and any other transit agency — from buying cheaper Chinese railcars. The House is expected to vote on the fiscal year 2020 bill later this week.

https://wamu.org/story/19/12/11/a-congr ... -railcars/
 #1531217  by mtuandrew
 
Moderator Note: let’s direct future conversation to the WMATA 8000 Series thread, it has been pretty much parallel. If CRRC makes noises about bidding on other DMV-area transit contracts, let a mod know and we will reopen the thread.