Wisconsin didn’t hold a competitive bidding process before agreeing to purchase two high-speed passenger trains from a Spanish company last month for $47.5 million, potentially missing out on other offers.

Officials with Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration said they bought the Patentes Talgo trains because they are ideally suited to high-speed rail in the Midwest. They said they also needed to move quickly to tap into possible federal stimulus money and land jobs for Wisconsin workers assembling the trains.

“There were just a lot of things that were coming together … that made this more time-sensitive than it otherwise would be,” said Bob Jambois, general counsel at the state Department of Transportation.

The purchase is legal because a 1997 state law exempts passenger rail purchases from the state’s competitive bidding rules. As part of the contract, the state also agreed to a 20-year maintenance deal with Talgo, which could cost millions of dollars a year but will create additional jobs in Milwaukee or Madison.

The state has the option to buy two more Talgo trains if it wins some of the $8 billion in federal stimulus funding set aside for high-speed rail.

The Democratic governor’s decision to purchase the trains has drawn praise from rail advocates who say it initially should bring 80 jobs to the state and eventually lead to speedy service between Chicago and Madison.

But Republicans have criticized the deal, which must still be approved by the state budget committee on Tuesday, as a questionable use of state money in a recession.

Budget committee member Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said she would oppose the train purchase.

“Especially in these stressful economic times, I am very concerned with the smell test of this — the lack of accountability, the timeline being so fast, and the lack of a competitive bid,” Darling said.

Budget committee co-chairman Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, declined to state a position on the issue.

Purchase approved May 11

A Wisconsin State Journal review of the contract documents shows Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi signed off on a letter of intent to buy the trains from Talgo on May 11 — the same day Jambois gave Busalacchi a final version of a memo stating that the state didn’t have to do a competitive bid process for the trains under state law.

In early February, the state sought information on passenger train products from seven train companies around the world and only received a detailed proposal from Talgo, which came on March 6, Jambois said.

The state did receive an e-mail from the French company Alstom Transport and a letter from the Japanese company Nippon Sharyo, he said.

The State Journal requested copies of those communications Thursday but has yet not received them.

Officials with Nippon Sharyo and its Japanese partner Sumitomo said Friday that the brief Nippon letter had expressed an interest in doing business with the state and said the companies had been unaware the state was moving ahead with the purchase.

“If there is an official announcement, we would certainly be interested in bidding,” said Hugh Ninomiya, director of transportation for Sumitomo in Arlington Heights, Ill.

Bombardier of Montreal, Canada, another company the state said it had contacted, has no record of receiving the state’s request for information, said spokesman David Slack.

“If the (state’s) specs were for a product we could offer, we would have been interested,” Slack said. “We did not consciously make a decision not to respond.”

Doyle traveled to Spain

In March, Doyle and three top aides received a trip to Spain, paid for by the Spanish government, in which Doyle met with Talgo officials and rode on the company’s trains.

Darling said she was concerned that, in light of the visit, administration officials may have been too close to Talgo to evaluate the purchase decision objectively.

Jambois sharply disputed that, saying Doyle had sought not only the best deal on the trains but also jobs for state workers. He said the sleek Talgo trains would be cheaper to operate than the aging Amtrak-owned trains now traveling between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Rail experts said Talgo’s technology and experience give it advantages in the U.S. market. Rail lines in Wisconsin and the Midwest built for relatively slow freight trains sometimes have curves that can pose problems for high-speed passenger trains.

That means the state needs to have passenger cars that can tilt while taking those curves to maintain passenger comfort and safety and still reach the state’s eventual target speed of 110 mph.

To DOT’s knowledge, Jambois said, only Talgo trains have so-called “passive-tilt” technology, which uses centrifugal force to tilt the cars while they pass through curves.

The aluminum-body trains are also very light, allowing them to use less fuel and still seat more passengers than current Milwaukee-to-Chicago Amtrak trains. Talgo also agreed to assemble the trains in Wisconsin rather than in another state, creating some 80 jobs initially.

“We understood that whoever signed the deal (with Talgo) first was going to get the assembly facility,” Jambois said.

Experience in Washington state

Jeff Schultz, a project manager for the Washington state Department of Transportation’s rail office, said other train manufacturers offer technology that uses sensors and hydraulics to “actively” tilt cars as they pass through curves.

But Schultz said Talgo’s passive technology had the advantage of being simpler and had worked well on a curvy rail line in the Pacific Northwest.

Over the last decade, that state has purchased three much smaller Talgo trains for a total of $27.5 million, said Schultz, who said the Wisconsin price seemed reasonable.

“Overall our experience has been really quite good,” Schultz said. “They’re a reliable train.”

In 1996, Washington sought competitive bids for two sets of trains but only received an offer from Talgo.

That’s in part because the state wanted a long-term maintenance deal similar to Wisconsin’s and only Talgo was then offering that, Schultz said.

Washington is paying Talgo $3.6 million to maintain the trains this year.

But today more manufacturers appear interested in such deals and, with the difficult economy, “there’s certainly a possibility that there would be more bids,” Schultz said.

Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Coalition of Chicago, noted that high-quality trains are made by several companies such as Talgo, Sumitomo and Alstom which, with Bombardier, has helped make the 150-mph Acela trains for Amtrak service between Washington, D.C., and Boston.

But Harnish said Talgo trains also center their weight close to the ground and have each wheel attached separately rather than by an axle — factors that, with the passive tilting, help the trains take curves at faster speeds. “The Talgo really is a very different train.”