(The following appeared on the Lincoln Journal Star website on March 25, 2010.)
LINCOLN, Neb. — Earlier this week, details of another opportunity for the Kawasaki’s Lincoln rail-car builder emerged when Amtrak, the long-distance passenger railroad, asked Congress for $446 million to begin replacing locomotives and passenger cars as President Barack Obama increases spending on rail transportation.
Local Kawasaki plant manager Mike Boyle seized on that opportunity.
“Kawasaki is actively pursuing new rail car projects, particularly high speed rail projects,” he said in an e-mail earlier in the week. “One selling point is that the Kawasaki Lincoln plant is the only rail car manufacturer in the United States that builds cars from the ground up.
“Our domestic labor content is much higher than our competitors — good for U.S. jobs. Since we build complete cars, the percentage of parts we purchase in the U.S. is also higher than our competitors, further increasing U.S. jobs.
“Our competitors are promising to build or expand facilities in the U.S. if they win more long-term contracts to justify their investment,” Boyle wrote. “Kawasaki made this investment without firm promises from customers, (promising) only that we would win business and pay off our investment by building high-quality products at a reasonable price.”
Kawasaki Rail Car has operated in Yonkers, N.Y., for decades, and expanded its existing consumer products operation in Lincoln in 2001 to build rail cars.
“Our facility is online and successful,” Boyle said. “Our competitors will take years after their factories are built to develop the complex product knowledge that Kawasaki workers currently possess in Lincoln.”
As of December, Kawasaki employed 1,300 people in Lincoln, at the rail car division and at its consumer products division, which makes ATVs, water craft and other recreational and work vehicles.
That was down from 1,800 a year earlier. The company had cut temporary workers and offered buyouts to hundreds of others.
When it offered the buyouts in May of last year, Kawasaki said its rail car production has not been affected by the recession and was doing well. Rail car production had absorbed many consumer products employees and would continue to do so, the company said.
In December 2008, Kawasaki started the final phase of a $30 million expansion to accommodate more than $2 billion worth of contracts to build rail cars for the Metropolitan Transit Authority and New York New Jersey Port Authority through 2012.
The company has also built cars for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Passenger cars in Amtrak’s fleet have been in service for an average of 24 years, an all-time high for the railroad that plans to replace rail cars and locomotives over the next 30 years.
“Imagine that you bought a Chevy El Camino back in 1977 and proceeded to drive it from D.C. to New York and back again, every single day since then with a day and a half off every month for maintenance,” Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman told a congressional hearing this week.
The Amtrak fleet replacement plan includes 20 Acela trainsets, in which locomotives and passenger cars operate as a unit, for Amtrak’s fastest route between Washington and Boston. Amtrak also plans to replace 334 locomotives and 1,200 rail cars, the company said in a fleet plan.
Obama, in his economic stimulus package last year, allotted $8 billion for high-speed rail projects.