It was not so long ago that the U.S. built some of the best rail transit cars in the world, cars so good and technologically advanced that the designs were licensed to overseas companies.
But today, executives of the Bay Area Rapid Transit district in San Francisco and of Los Angeles` transit system are obliged to look overseas to find most of the top bidders to build rail cars for their commuter lines.
The situation has inflamed anti-Japanese feelings and prompted calls to favor the domestic industry.
Foreign competitors with heavy government subsidies stepped into the rail car market while the American industry faded in the 1950s and 1960s. American commuters drove cars to work in increasing numbers while workers in Europe and Japan rode trains.
U.S. technology once was the standard other countries followed. The first sections of the Japanese bullet train evolved from American engineering of the 1930s and `40s. Until recently, 40,000 rail cars in Canada, Europe and the Soviet Union were based on American designs.
So, successful rail car builders include Kinki Shayro, Bombardier, Nippon Shayro, Kawasaki, GEC Alsthom, Breda Costruzioni Ferromiarie, Siemens-Duewag and Tokyu Car.
But with the U.S. in recession, ”Buy American” mail is heavy at BART, which bought its newest 150 cars from French-owned GEC Alsthom in the mid-1980s and is considering bids from one U.S. and two Japanese firms.
The lone U.S. firm, newcomer Morrison Knudsen Corp., still is proving itself.
With one difference, BART`s elected directors will face the same question in March as Los Angeles did: Should they award a contract to one of two experienced Japanese rail car builders-Kinki Shayro or Kawasaki-or take a chance on Morrison Knudsen?
No foreign company was interested in 1969 in building BART`s first 450 cars, but two major U.S. transit rail car builders, Pullman Standard and the St. Louis Car Division of General Steel Industries, bid on the work. So did aircraft component maker Rohr Industries Inc., near San Diego, which got the job.
There was a lot of sentiment then that U.S. high-tech aircraft and aerospace skills possessed by firms such as Rohr should be applied to solving urban traffic problems. But it did not work.
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BART cars ran so poorly that they became an embarrassment. Competitor Boeing Vertol`s San Francisco Municipal Railway cars delivered in the late 1970s and early 1980s have been less reliable than the BART cars.
The quality of many U.S.-made rail cars declined because the manufacturers saw no need to spend money on research and development and factories when their market was disappearing.
St. Louis Car and Pullman Standard went out of business more than a decade ago. The Budd Co., then German-owned, delivered its last U.S.-built transit cars in the mid-1980s.
So, American transit systems turned to foreign builders, with final assembly being done here.