Suburban pushback to lab boom | Healey gives cold shoulder to uber progressive senator | T at the mercy of Chinese rail giant | About Contrarian Boston |
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Another MBTA fiasco? Chinese rail company behind defective and long delayed new T cars takes financial hit
The Chinese rail giant behind the T subway car debacle may not be officially in the red, but its balance sheet is not looking so hot right now.
CRRC, which recently informed the T that the promised fleet of hundreds of new Orange and Red Line cars will be delayed by another year, saw revenue drop 15 percent while earnings fell by a third, according to the company’s “interim report” for 2022.
And it is likely worse: The report is unaudited and CRRC is a state-owned enterprise controlled by the Chinese government. So, consider the source.
The financial challenges come as CRRC pushes back the delivery of the bulk of the long-promised fleet of new Orange and Red Line cars that it is under contract to manufacture for the T.
The new Orange Line cars, which were due in January, now won’t be delivered until the summer of 2023, while new Red Line cars won’t make their debut until the summer of 2025, almost two years past their original delivery date.
We’ve been hearing for years about the T’s new fleet of Orange Line cars, but it’s proving to be a long, long wait (photo by By Edward Orde)
And the few cars that CRRC has managed to deliver from its plant in Springfield have been plagued with various defects, requiring repairs.
While much of the news coverage has focused on the issues at the Springfield plant, CRRC has had its share of trouble delivering on similar subway car contracts in other countries.
A CRRC subsidiary in 2016 had to recall defective subway cars exported to Singapore, according to the China News Service, citing media reports.
The rail giant has also been in danger of losing a major contract to supply 216 subway cars to Bangalore Metro in India. CRRC won the deal in 2019, but then failed to set up a local factory in which to do the work.
CRRC’s core expertise is with high-speed rail, with the state owned enterprise struggling with “weak mastery” of the “core technology” involved in building subway cars, according to that CNS piece referenced above.
Probably something the T should have explored further when it delightedly accepted CRRC’s low-ball $567 million bid for the subway car contract nearly a decade ago, coming in more than $150 million below the nearest competitor.
Too good to be true is often exactly that.
All eyes on Natick: Suburb poised to roll out lab regulations amid life sciences development boom
Millions of square feet of new lab space is on the drawing boards across the Boston area, including a hotly contested plan to convert the Neiman Marcus at the Natick Mall into a lab complex.
Now Natick health officials are expected to roll out new regulations that could restrict what types of labs and research is conducted in town.
The new rules, which could be posted as soon as Wednesday, may put the kibosh on Level 3 and Level 4 labs, which handle more sensitive research. In particular, BLS-3 labs deal with “infectious agents or toxins that may be transmitted through the air and cause potentially lethal infection,” while BLS-4 labs study infections and life-threatening diseases for which there are no vaccines or treatments, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The proposal to convert Neiman Marcus into lab space has met with opposition from condo owners at the adjacent Nouvelle high-rise, where units can sell in the $700,000s and $800,000s.
Natick’s new regulations are likely to be closely read by other suburban communities as the booming life science sector expands outward from Cambridge and Boston in search of new lab space.
Maura Healey seen as dissing progressive senate candidate locked in tight suburban race
That would be state Sen. Becca Rausch, the uber progressive Democrat battling a challenge from a moderate Republican.
Healey, the Democratic candidate for governor, has declined to endorse Rausch in her race against Republican state Rep. Shawn Dooley of Norfolk, who is hoping to move up into the Senate, tweets Frank Phillips, the former long-time Boston Globe State House bureau chief.
Healey: More afraid of ruffling feathers at the State House than of her erstwhile Republican opponent (By Zgreenblatt )
The scuttlebutt is that the Needham Democrat got on the wrong side of some of her senate colleagues, including Senate President Karen Spilka, according to Phillips. Coincidentally or not, Rausch’s district was redrawn in a way that may give a modest edge to Dooley in a stretch of Norfolk County that was already known for voting Republican. Dooley, for his part, has been endorsed by Gov. Charlie Baker and former Gov. Bill Weld.
In giving the cold shoulder to Rausch, Healey is looking to stay on the right side of some powerful State House players, whose help she will need if, as expected, she wins the governor’s race next month, Phillips notes.
Quick Hits:
Baker lite? “In Healey’s bid for governor, she sounds a little bit like the Republican she’s vying to succeed” Boston Globe
Wu feels the heat: “Boston City Council’s self-boosted salary hike ‘too high,’ Michelle Wu says as she mulls veto” Boston Herald
Yes, we’d love to see more stories in the local media about UMass and state colleges, and less about Harvard, MIT: “Don’t fixate on the state’s elite private schools” CommonWealth Magazine
Say what? “Healey Wants "Climate Corridor" In Massachusetts” State House News Service
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
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