This is in response to The San Francisco Examiner’s Feb. 1 editorial about BART’s effort to replace our oldest-in-the-nation train cars. BART will continue to listen to the concerns of all stakeholders in this process, but we need to comply with all applicable laws, thus not jeopardizing federal funding.
BART’s new train cars will be assembled in America. That’s the law. The Federal Transit Administration requires that 60 percent of the value of the material be domestic and that final assembly take place in the U.S. However, FTA laws prohibit BART from considering where in the U.S. the final assembly will take place. If BART intends to use federal funds to help pay for these much-needed new cars, we cannot give preference to a car builder that says it is going to assemble the cars in California or even the Bay Area.
What BART can do, legally, is provide an incentive in the bid process for car builders to exceed the required 60 percent domestic content. To create and support jobs in the U.S., BART’s Buy America Bid Preference Policy, a first for U.S. transit agencies, factors in additional American-made content in the proposal scoring process.
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