These "pigs" as some have dubbed them, are overweight cars, using much more power, requiring additional reinforcement to bridges. These cars were appear never to have been designed to meet the original bid specifications. These cars are terribly noisy, uncorfortable, and despite being so overweight, actually have smaller interior space. They are now almost three years late in the scheduled delivery of the first order of cars. They appear never met the specifications, and as new offers have arisen, it appears to confirm that they never were going to make an effort to do so. They even offered to extra pigs to help cover the extra operating costs and keep the no-bid option to produce more pigs.

What happened every time staff told the MTA Board they weren't performing? Breda would go directly to certain Board members with ever more grandiose promises. They would appear at meetings with what may have been "rented" supporters in the audience, pleading for the jobs this car order would bring? Union members were urged to go to meetings to plea for the option to produce more out of specification cars for MTA, with the vague promise of jobs at a new car plant to be built in LA. MTA meetings were taking on Felliniesque reality as the illusory promises became ever more absurd.

Do people who doon't perform in the first place really deserve to keep no-bid options to continue that non performance? Now Breda is free to "compete", in an open process, based upon the quality of product, a record of performance, and life cycle costs, like everyone else..... or maybe not? We'll see?