Lawmakers strengthen Bombardier's fight

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ^ | Wednesday, December 4, 2002 | Ron DaParma

[Willie Green]

With as many as 400 local jobs hanging in the balance, a Congressional delegation led by Sen. Arlen Specter, a Philadelphia Republican, toured Bombardier Transportation's West Mifflin operations Tuesday, pledging to fight the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority's decision to select Sumitomo Corp. to build, operate and maintain a nearly $200 million people-mover transit system for Washington Dulles International Airport.

[Publius]

Bombardier, a Canadian corporation based in Quebec, is not a nice company. They play very, very dirty. They were so used to their cushy little arrangement with Amtrak that they were able to unload the disastrous Acela equipment on the Northeast Corridor.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, Washington State chose Renfre Talgo to build the beautiful, trouble-free trainsets for our Cascades Service, owned by the state but operated by Amtrak as contractor. Bombardier then spent the next 5 years using their clout in the Federal Railroad Administration in an attempt to ban our Talgo trains as unsafe, force them off the tracks and substitute standard Amtrak Bombardier equipment in their place. When the traditional "payoff" method didn't work, they tried a number of dubious legal maneuvers to get their hands on Talgo's proprietary information and corporate secrets.

I do not cry over Bombardier's plight. They offer an inferior product backed by the use of corruption and strong-arm tactics to get it sold. Let them go down.