TIME FOR HSR TO INSIST ON CLEAN BIDDERS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “TIME FOR HSR TO INSIST ON CLEAN BIDDERS”

 

        Fully 19 years ago, several members of Congress pushed for a new law that would expose American wings of the French government-owned railroad system SNCF to lawsuits from families of Holocaust survivors it carried to Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz during World War II.

 

        Amid today’s wave of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic protests, even most pro-Palestinian demonstrators concede the historical disgrace that the Holocaust actually killed 6 million European Jews, plus several million others.

 

        The corps of sponsors for that bill eventually grew to 40, but it never went very far – in part because progress on California’s high speed rail system has been so slow.

 

        But that system is now making headway on its initial segment between Merced and Bakersfield, so talk of the SNCF’s World War II role is again relevant.

 

        This is because the state’s High Speed Rail Authority has advanced the huge project enough to issue a formal request for proposals to build its new trains, a multi-billion-dollar part of the project.

 

        Bidding appears greased in favor of two companies, both with shameful World War II records. One bidder on the HSR authority’s shortlist is the French-owned Alstom Group, which builds the engines and railroad cars for France’s smooth-as-silk TGV (Train a Grand Vitesse – high speed train) network, stretching from Lourdes near the Pyrenees Mountains to cities far north like Amsterdam and Cologne.

 

        Alstom has built rail stock for the SNCF (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais, or French National Railway Corp.) since 1928. It’s now the corporate sister of the SNCF.

 

        As good as its machinery is, as good as the SNCF has been at building rail lines with glassy smooth track, it might nevertheless be morally wrong for Alstom to get even a dime of the billions being spent on the California project. That is, until and unless it begins paying reparations for its role in the Holocaust. The railway carried more than 75,000 French Jews and tens of thousands of gypsies and political prisoners to their deaths, but has always claimed it was forced into that.

 

        Whatever its motives, the SNCF has yet even to apologize to survivors. Yes, there is a plaque near one entrance of the Gare du Nord (North Station) in Paris acknowledging that thousands of French citizens passed through en route to their concentration camp deaths. But no specific victim groups are mentioned, nor has the French government ever apologized for rounding up those victims.

 

        The same goes for JR East, the Japanese railroad that at one time wanted to partner in the California project with Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Nippon Sharyo Ltd., maker of most engines and cars for Japan’s bullet trains. All those companies used American prisoners of war as slave labor during World War II, forcing them to work in mines, factories and on docks. None of them has paid any reparations.

 

        In fact, the only likely foreign bidder that used slave labor during World War II and later apologized is the German-based Siemens Corp., one of the current two preferred bidders for making California rail equipment. Siemens is now majority owned by American investors and pension funds.

 

        Siemens has built trains in Northern California since the 1980s, doing design, engineering, testing and assembly at a large plant in Sacramento, where it employs more than 1,000 persons. Siemens has built trains for Amtrak, as well as the trains used in Florida for Brightline, the company now behind a projected privately-owned Los Angeles to Las Vegas bullet train.

 

        Meanwhile, Alstom – builder of the East Coast Acela trains – has plants in several Eastern cities, but years ago closed an operation in Vallejo. It is currently bidding on cars for the Los Angeles International Airport people mover, now under construction and aiming to open before the 2028 Olympics.

 

        Before taking any bids from Alstom or allowing any potential Japanese bidders into the competition, the HSR Authority must insist they clean up their past records as much as possible.

 

If all this should leave a clearer path for the Korean firm Hyundai or open the way for an American bidder, so much the better. No one should have to ride a dirty train.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net.