How another California train project went off track. Latest delay: lead-tainted water

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It was supposed to be a signature moment for Caltrans, a project that would help pull the nation out of a recession that was smothering the economy nearly a decade ago.

In September 2012, California’s transportation agency announced it was leading a multi-state partnership to buy more than 100 new passenger railcars, each one assembled on American soil. Funded in part by the Obama administration’s economic stimulus plan, the cars would start arriving in late 2015.

Instead, the project has gone badly off the rails.

Nine years after the contract was announced, not a single car has gone into service. The original manufacturer couldn’t make cars that met crashworthiness tests. And now the second manufacturer — the Siemens assembly plant in Sacramento, which took over in 2017 — has been wrestling for months with a plumbing-fixture problem that rendered the cars unfit for passengers.

The issue with Siemens: Excessive levels of lead have been found in some of the cars’ restroom water supplies, discovered during routine testing last November, said Caltrans spokesman Christopher Clark.

Caltrans’ woes with the Siemens cars obviously pale in comparison with the troubles plaguing its sister agency, the High-Speed Rail Authority, whose bullet-train project is billions of dollars over budget. Nonetheless, Clark said Caltrans has been scrambling to get the Siemens project finished quickly.

Siemens Mobility Inc., the subsidiary of German conglomerate Siemens AG, confirmed through a spokeswoman that tests identified elevated lead concentrations in the restroom water. But she said a fix has been identified.

“A solution was developed and validated for implementation on all cars, prior to entering service, ensuring the water supply is in full compliance with the FDA and EPA safety regulations.” The Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency regulate the quality of water dispensed on passenger trains.

Siemens didn’t say how soon the first set of cars, which will carry the brand name Siemens Venture, are expected to go into service. Clark said “further testing will attempt to verify the proposed solution by Siemens” before the cars can be delivered.

Nonetheless, he said Caltrans is confident all of the cars covered by the contract can be delivered by 2024 — the time frame established when Siemens jumped into the project four years ago.

The $386 million contract is for 137 cars, an average of $2.8 million per vehicle. Caltrans’ share, at $136 million, will purchase 49 cars, all destined for the Amtrak San Joaquins service in California. The San Joaquins line transports 1.1 million passengers a year up the spine of the Valley, with spurs to Sacramento and the Bay Area.

“We’re just waiting for everything to be resolved,” said Brian Schmidt, director of equipment services at the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, which runs the Amtrak line. “We were hoping to have them in service last fall.”

Schmidt said the new cars are considered vital to expanding ridership in the post-pandemic era. The cars will have plush seats, USB outlets and improved WiFi. They’re also designed to allow wheelchair-bound riders to move easily from one car to the next.

“It’s really conducive to the ADA community,” he said, referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Clark said Sumitomo Corp., the main contractor on the project, has received $28 million for design and other work. But it won’t get paid for the cars themselves “until the water quality issue has been resolved,” Clark said.

Sumitomo spokeswoman Amy Babcock said: “All parties involved have been working diligently to resolve the issue as soon as possible. This kind of issue rarely happens but could occur even with proven system technologies.”

The Illinois Department of Transportation, which is buying the cars for the Midwestern states, referred all questions to Caltrans.

Siemens Sacramento replaced Illinois plant in 2017

The recession was already four years old — and unemployment was still hovering at around 8% nationally. Building railcars seemed like a good way to put some oomph into a sluggish recovery.

Caltrans’ announcement in September 2012 that it was leading a consortium of states buying new railcars was hailed by President Barack Obama’s administration. The contract “will revitalize America’s passenger rail manufacturing industry base by creating new jobs up and down the rail supply chain and fostering a stronger market for passenger rail,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

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Because the contract was funded in part by Obama’s stimulus plan, the cars had to be made in the United States. The lead contractor, Sumitomo Corp. of Japan, selected a manufacturer named Nippon Sharyo to assemble the vehicles at a plant west of Chicago.

A major problem surfaced, though: The Nippon Sharyo cars couldn’t survive federally-mandated “compression tests” designed to simulate how the vehicles would fare during a crash.

“It just couldn’t pass the tests and they couldn’t answer the call,” said Robert Guy, chairman of the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission, which works with states to expand train service. “They quite frankly failed.”

In November 2017, Sumitomo and Caltrans announced that the project was moving. Nippon Sharyo was being replaced by Siemens’ assembly plant in south Sacramento. Babcock, the Sumitomo spokeswoman, said Nippon Sharyo voluntarily withdrew from the project.

For Siemens, it was another big contract for its sprawling French Road plant, which opened in the 1980s to assemble cars for Sacramento’s new light-rail system and has been growing ever since.

In recent years, the plant has won contracts to build passenger cars for rail systems from San Diego to Charlotte. Since 2015 it’s been adding square footage in anticipation of bidding on the state’s high-speed rail project. (The bidding process isn’t expected to begin until early 2022). The plant employs about 2,000 workers — roughly double the employment of five years ago.

The switch to Siemens came as the contract was expanded. California ordered seven more cars, to a total of 49, “to meet growing intercity passenger rail demand,” Clark said.

The newest problem: dangerous lead in water

The project seemed to be getting on track at its new home in Sacramento until the testing on water supplies last November.

Lead in drinking water has been linked to damage to the nervous system, blood disorders and other problems, particularly in children. Although the federal EPA says lead can’t be absorbed through the skin, Clark said the rail cars were deemed unsuitable for service because the restroom water supplies on some of the cars exceeded 15 parts per billion, the federal standard for drinking water.

Multiple federal agencies have been working for years to prevent contaminants in the water served on passenger trains. The Food and Drug Administration has a testing program, and the EPA signed a wide-ranging agreement with Amtrak in 2012 to conduct routine tests. The EPA says tests in 2013 and 2014 turned up fewer than 3% positive results for coliform bacteria, a possible indicator of pathogens.

Clark said Caltrans apparently has never encountered problems with lead concentrations before.

“Each rail vehicle procurement project has its own unique challenges, and no two projects are the same,” he said. “They are complicated projects involving federal design standards, strict safety protocols, and extensive global supply chains. But the complexity of this kind of delay is not typical.”

Reporter Tim Sheehan of the Fresno Bee contributed to this report.