Motor Coach Industries inks huge deal with New Jersey Transit

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Motor Coach Industries has signed a massive deal with New Jersey Transit for the sale of 772 commuter coaches to be delivered over the next six years.

The deal is valued at about $395 million and is one of the largest the industry has seen for some time.

It will further solidify MCI’s envious 60 to 65 per cent market share in Canada and the U.S. it has enjoyed for the past few decades.

In an interview with the Free Press, MCI’s chief executive officer, Rick Heller, called it a “phenomenal” order.

“This is a great long-term underpinning to our order book,” he said. “That’s 130 units every year for six years. That’s a great start.”

He said it was too early to say if the large new order — which will begin deliveries in the middle of 2016 — will require the company’s large Winnipeg production to bulk up.

“We won’t need to add a second shift, but we might have to increase the line rate and hire more people; I just don’t know at this time,” he said. “It will depend on what the rest of the order book looks like then.”

MCI’s Winnipeg manufacturing facility, which is currently on summer holiday shut-down, employs about 900 people. It also has a smaller production plant in Pembina, N.D.

The bus shells for the NJ Transit order will be made in Winnipeg and finished in Pembina.

It is not the largest order NJ Transit has ever made with MCI.

In 2000, the agency gave MCI the biggest public transit order in North American bus-industry history at the time with a 1,400-vehicle purchase.

MCI and NJ Transit have a long history of doing business together. Since 1982, NJ Transit has purchased about 2,500 MCI coaches, not counting this latest order.

The clean diesel commuter coaches will feature three-point seatbelts for all 57 seats and next-generation engine technology, efficiency, environmental innovation and passenger comfort.

The order was necessary for NJ Transit to gradually replace its aging fleet of commuter coaches.

The agency estimates the new MCI coaches will allow it to boost seating capacity by six per cent.

MCI has held a dominant market share for motor coaches with both the public sector transit agencies and private tour companies.

NJ Transit is the third-largest provider of bus, rail and light rail transit services in the U.S., linking major points in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia.

This latest order further bolsters the strength of the city’s bus manufacturers.

Winnipeg-based New Flyer Industries, the largest urban transit bus manufacturer in North America, is also benefiting from a strong order book.

In the last month alone, the company has announced orders for more than 400 new buses with large orders from the Orange County Transportation Authority in California and King County Metro of Seattle.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca