Relief is coming to the New Haven Line.

Nearly a month to the day since Metro-North announced it would have to scale back service amidst a rough winter and a maintenance crunch, the MTA yesterday unveiled the first set of M8s to enter service. With the debut of the new rolling stock, the MTA also announced that full rush hour service would return to the New Haven Line beginning on Monday.

The new cars, though, long billed as the MTA’s commuter fleet’s next-generation rolling stock, received top billing yesterday. They deserved too after extensive delays in both funding and testing had them on blocks for months. “These cars have successfully completed extensive, systematic tests. The many challenges that were revealed during intensive, real-world operations of the most complex rail car in North America on the continent’s busiest rail corridor, have been resolved,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said. “This testing took over one year to ensure that the M-8 will provide quality service for its 30 year life. We plan to put more of these cars into service as soon as they complete individual quality assurance testing.”

The new cars, says the authority, make for a nice ride. In a press release, the agency described the upgrades:

Inside the cars, customers will notice are roomier, high-back, contoured seats with individual headrests, curved arm rests anchored at both ends in the upholstery. They will see larger windows and better lighting, especially in the vestibules for improved safety. Other features include LED displays that show the next stop and automated audio announcements. Each seat is outfitted with electrical outlets, grab bars, coat hooks and curvaceous luggage racks. The cars also are equipped with an intercom system that customers can use to contact the crew in emergencies.

Outside, customers will see prominent electronic destination signs and hear external public address speakers. Single leaf doors provide high reliability and less susceptibility to snow intrusion. The color scheme is a vibrant red, the historical color of the New Haven Railroad, predecessor to Metro-North…

In the M-8, critical, solid-state, computer-controlled electrical components are protected within the car body rather than exposed under the car so that inclement weather will not interfere with their operation.

Redundancies are built into the cars to ensure continued operation if a system malfunctions. For example, as in the M-7s, each car has two, modular air conditioning units so that if one fails, the other will continue to cool the car until the broken one can be removed and replaced with a spare. Older cars such as the M-2s have one AC unit that was integral to the car so that the entire car had to be taken out of service while repairs were made.

The cars, which cost $2.23 million each, were first ordered back in August of 2006 when the MTA and Kawasaki executed a 300-car, $761-million deal. Last month, the authority exercised two options — one for 42 more cars and another for 38 — that will bring the total to 380 cars. The authority expects to have 26 cars in service this spring with 80 total by the end of 2011. All 380 will be in service by the fall of 2013.

“I am thrilled to be able to introduce a new era of comfort and reliability for New Haven Line riders,” said Jeff Parker, Connecticut’s Transportation Commissioner. “Even a single eight-car train set will help alleviate crowding and bring hope to our beleaguered New Haven Line customers. These cars are the first of the new breed of technologically advanced trains that will serve us for decades to come.”

It’s been a long trip for the M-8s, and New Haven riders have borne the brunt of the delay. Now that these cars are in place and hitting the rails, though, Metro-North, the nation’s most popular commuter rail system, should enjoy smoother sailing in the years ahead.

Last week, due to extreme weather and an aging fleet of cars that are bad need of maintenance, Metro-North had to scale back service on the New Haven Line. Nearly half of its current M2 rolling stock is laid up in the shop, and while the M8s are still undergoing testing, commuters are left with crowded trains in danger of breaking down.

To better maintain the fleet, the New Haven Line saw its service cut by 10 percent through at least early march. “The service we have been providing has been far less than what our customers have come to expect from us and we strive to provide for them,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said in a statement last week. “It is time for us to take these additional steps to improve our service reliability and minimize further inconvenience.”

Today, the MTA takes us inside the M2 shop to explain the problem with the fleet and the work that must go into it. This breakdown along the New Haven Line is a clear sign of what happens when states stop investing in mass transit. Hopefully, the M8s will be up and running soon, but for now, commuters from Connecticut are paying the price.

The M-8s were first ordered in 2006 and unveiled in 2008, but they have yet to enter revenue service.

For the past four years, Metro-North and the Connecticut Department of Transportation have tried to ready the new M-8s for rollout along the New Haven line. After a 2008 announcement from then-Gov. Jodi Rell that promised a prototype by the end of 2009 and ten cars a month after that, things went wrong. The cars failed a stress test in June of 2009, and last month, reports surfaced of delays in testing the new rolling stock.

Now, the New Haven line is starting to buckle under the weight of train cars in dire need of replacing. As Michael Grynbaum reported this morning in The Times, Metro-North is cutting service on the New Haven line because half of the current fleet has been “knocked out by weather-related repairs.” As of this upcoming Monday, commuters from Connecticut will see their regular weekday service greatly reduced, and Grynbaum says these changes will “stay in effect indefinitely, at least until engineers can muddle through a steep backlog of repairs on the railroad’s aging, exhausted fleet.”

“We are not able to run a stable operation on the New Haven Line,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said to The Times. “The trains are overcrowded, and the trains are so unreliable coming into the Bronx that they are now delaying Harlem and Hudson trains.”

Grynbaum has more:

For weeks, the line’s 67,000 riders, who hail from commuter enclaves like Greenwich, Conn., and Larchmont, N.Y., have had to squeeze into rail cars with barely enough room to stand. Many trains are too packed to board at all. Delays and cancellations are commonplace, and confused crowds have mobbed Grand Central Terminal at rush hour, trying to decipher train schedules that seem to have run amok. “This is a significant step which we almost never do,” Mr. Permut said of the new schedule, which is still being drawn up. “We’ve never had this amount of cars out of service.”

Nearly half of all New Haven line trains have been relegated to repair yards for problems like frozen brakes, broken motors and malfunctioning doors, and Mr. Permut described the railroad’s facilities as “inadequate” to handle the needed maintenance.

Most of the trains were built in the 1970s, and their electronic systems have proved ill equipped to handle the storms and icy weather affecting the region. High-tech replacement cars have been delayed for years because of manufacturing problems and a lack of financial support from the Connecticut government, which covers part of the costs for the line.

The breaking point, as Grynbaum noted, appeared to be a YouTube video that showed a New Haven Line train riding into Grand Central with a door wide open. Passengers acted as though this malfunction were a routine occurence, and from the sound of things, it just might well be.

Now, I don’t want to read too much into this announcement. After all, this winter has been particularly rough on infrastructure, and January saw record snowfalls across the region. But on the other hand, this is a clear sign of what happens when we simply stop investing in rail infrastructure. Connecticut has dragged its feet for years when it came to funding the M-8 project, and now, the MTA has no choice but to cut off a part of the country’s most reliable commuter line. Investment patterns have to change, and we as a region must do more to ensure that the modernization of our rails moves ahead as it should.