Here is a try at it:
The California Highway Patrol, whose motorcycle officers became the stuff of legend as the result of a television show, has been unable for more than a year to buy new bikes.
After a deal to buy BMWs fell apart in July 2005, the state canceled a bid to buy Harley-Davidson police motorcycles earlier this month.
CHP testers declared that the modified Electra Glide wobbled at high speeds. The state's contracting arm, the Department of General Services, said it couldn't draw any conclusions about the testing because the CHP was using fuzzy criteria and declared it was time to start over.
The Santa Cruz dealership that lost the contract says the CHP testing was prejudiced by the department's preference for another brand: BMW.
"It was pretty obvious ... we were experiencing a bias, not a problem with the vehicle," said Mike James, owner of Santa Cruz Harley-Davidson.
The CHP, whose motorcycle corps was featured on the television show "CHiPs" almost three decades ago, countered that its high-speed motorcycle test is recognized nationally and has been in place for three decades.
"We're going to fairly evaluate the bikes," said CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader. "We're looking for a bike that meets our specifications and safety standards at the lowest cost to the people of California."
The development represented a fresh setback in the state's police motorcycle contract, which was canceled in July 2005 after the Department of General Services discovered that one of its employees involved in writing bid specifications had a conflict of interest.
For more than a year, the CHP has been unable to buy motorcycles to replace ones with high mileage. The department says it has increased the mileage limit from 60,000 miles to 100,000 miles, which it still considers to be safe.
"Safety is our number one priority," Clader said.
Local law enforcement agencies likewise have been unable to piggyback on the state's high-volume contract, which normally offers a low price.
Now that the state has started from scratch, contracting officials say they don't know when the state will finally award a contract to a police motorcycle supplier.
The cancellation of the bid Oct. 6 was an abrupt end to a process that started a year earlier, when the state invited bids for a two-year contract to supply a total of 400 motorcycles to the CHP and local law enforcement agencies.
For more than six years, the CHP bought BMW bikes through a dealership in Roseville, eventually replacing its entire fleet with the German brand. Although a majority of police agencies in the United States use Harleys, the CHP said it wanted anti-lock brakes included on BMWs. For several years, BMW was the only manufacturer of police motorcycles with anti-lock brakes.
In 2004, Harley-Davidson wrote several letters to state officials to complain about being excluded. Also that year, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell wrote one of Harley's most famous customers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, urging him to open the bidding to the company, the Associated Press reported at the time. Harley's police motorcycles are built in Pennsylvania.
After the prior contract was canceled in July 2005, the low bidder on the new contract was Santa Cruz Harley-Davidson, whose bid of about $5 million, including a credit for trade-ins, was almost $1 million cheaper than the closest BMW dealership.
Last December, the state sent a letter to the Santa Cruz dealership accepting the bid contingent on the motorcycle passing an inspection and the CHP's performance test.
That's when the trouble began.
CHP riders who tested the bike at the CHP track in West Sacramento said it wobbled at speeds approaching 100 mph, James said. The CHP would not discuss the results of its testing.
"Any motorcycle displaying unsafe or inferior stability and/or handling characteristics shall be subject to disqualification," according to the specifications.
Santa Cruz Harley-Davidson argued that the test was subjective and vulnerable to bias.
It produced statements from riders it hired that the motorcycle performed well at high speeds.
James said he complained to the Department of General Services.
The department cited the lack of clear testing criteria in its decision earlier this month to cancel the procurement.
"We are saying that the test could not be completed because of an inadequate definition of stability in the specifications," said Department of General Services spokesman Bill Branch.
The testing was also hampered by the difficulty in scheduling time at the CHP test track and bad weather last spring, Branch said.
The new specifications will include clearer benchmarks for testing the stability of the motorcycle at high speeds, he said.
James said that building a motorcycle to meet the CHP specifications cost his dealership a quarter of a million dollars, taking resources away from another project.
"It was a year's worth of work that came to a grinding halt," he said.
The dealership is preparing a claim to be submitted to the state, a precursor to filing a lawsuit.
"It's an egregious thing," James said of the state's actions. "We don't have a choice."
The CHP says that its motorcycle operations have not been hurt by the contracting delay.
Although 24 bikes have been taken out of service, leaving a fleet of 492, no motorcycle officers have been left without rides, Clader said.
The CHP formerly sold the motorcycles back to BMW at 60,000 miles because that was part of the contract, she said, but "there's nothing to say the bikes can't be run to 100,000 or even beyond."
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Topic: CHP Motorcycle Purchase.......... (Read 7123 times)