State to Buy 88 Rail Cars From U.S. Firm : Transportation: Wilson calls Caltrans purchase victory for workers and commuters. But it is unclear how many jobs the contract will bring to California.

Proclaiming a victory for American workers as well as California commuters, Gov. Pete Wilson said Monday that Caltrans will buy 88 state-of-the-art double-decked intercity and commuter rail cars from Morrison-Knudsen Corp. of Idaho for $155 million.

However, the size of the victory for either workers or commuters was not immediately clear. Although Morrison-Knudsen Chairman William J. Agee promised “substantial numbers of jobs” in California, he declined to commit to establishing a permanent factory in the state.

Meanwhile, several of the agencies scheduled to use the cars said later they were unhappy with some design elements. Southern California Regional Rail Authority officials, for one, said they were so concerned about such things as seating and handicap access that they are not even sure they will accept the 24 cars being offered to them for free.

SCRRA, which has already bought 70 commuter rail cars from Canada, is eight months from the scheduled opening of the first three lines of Metrolink, a commuter-rail service linking Los Angeles with Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties.

Wilson nonetheless hailed the rail car order as “a major transportation development.”

“This represents good news both for California’s traveling public, also for those involved not just in the assembly but we hope ultimately in the manufacture of the cars,” Wilson said.

Agee said that at least the first 10 cars will be assembled at Morrison-Knudsen’s main rail plant in Hornell, N.Y. He promised Monday to eventually move assembly to California, but he did not say where or when.

“We will have some jobs in California this year on this (project) . . . substantial numbers of jobs--in the hundreds,” Agee said. “I can’t get specific because it depends on how we do bidding on other jobs.”

Morrison-Knudsen is a leading contender to build a new generation of cars for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District in San Francisco and has expressed keen interest in building the new standardized “L.A. Car” being developed by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

Agee said the stainless steel frames and bodies for the Caltrans cars will be imported from Portugal because there is no domestic source of such “shells.” But Agee repeated a pledge to open his own domestic shell factory within a year. He avoided saying whether the shell plant might wind up in the state.

The Caltrans cars that were the subject of Monday’s announcement--dubbed “California cars” because their versatility will let them be used for various jobs around the state--innovatively blend luxury and practicality in a way that the state Department of Transportation officials hope will entice drivers out of their autos.

When used on commuter trains--which will run initially in San Francisco--the low-maintenance stainless-steel cars will offer high passenger capacity and easy handicap accessibility, as well as the option for such things as cellular phones.

In their intercity mode--for existing Caltrans-funded routes in Northern California--the cars will include plush seats, fax machines, portable-computer outlets and “video interface” screens that will both show films and let passengers monitor their travels on computer-generated maps.

Although Morrison-Knudsen was the only one of nine prospective bidders to have submitted an acceptable design--a situation that left Caltrans to negotiate a price without competition--the cars will cost less than expected.

The commuter train cars will cost $1.55 million each, the intercity cars $1.7 million each. Amtrak, by comparison, recently paid $2.2 million each for similar cars. Amtrak official Bob Kollmar said the Caltrans cars are going to “set a standard for the rest of the nation.”

Both versions of the car will have ramps that extend mechanically from the side to allow easy access by people in wheelchairs, pushing baby strollers or otherwise unable to make the six-inch step from the platform to the ultra-low first floor of the car.

Cindy McKim, chief of the Caltrans mass transportation division, said that the innovative ramps, the first of their kind on trains, will give handicapped riders easy access to every car. She called them “a marked improvement over anything else in the country today.”

However, SCRRA Executive Director Richard Stanger said the ramps are incompatible with the Metrolink stations now being built in Southern California. Those stations, he said, will have fixed concrete ramps because mechanical wheelchair ramps and lifts have proven unreliable in the past.

Stanger and his associate, David Solow, also criticized the new Caltrans California Cars for having three-fourths of their seats on the second floor, a design they said will lead to delays in getting passengers on and off. Two single-file staircases will connect the upper level with the lower.

Meanwhile, representatives of the Orange County Transportation Authority complained that the California Cars weigh too much. At 130,000 pounds--five tons above a target of 120,000 pounds--they feared that the commuter version would accelerate too slowly and consume too much fuel.

Of the 88-car order awarded Monday, 40 of the cars will be used for intercity train service offered by Caltrans in the San Joaquin Valley and between Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. The rest are to be commuter cars, split evenly between commuter services in the Bay Area and Southern California.

If the SCRRA declines its 24 cars, McKim said they could either be used to expand service elsewhere or the money for the cars would be held in reserve until a new use could be found.