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.
33 comments
This is welcome news, obviously. A less visible but equally good issue is the cost of the cars: $2.23 million per EMU is low by European standards, especially in light of the modifications required by FRA compliance. The MTA’s track record at procuring good, affordable, conservative rolling stock is commendable.
It better be. They’re probably more than half the U.S. market for passenger rolling stock. If they can’t get some economy of scale, they’re doubly stupid.
I saw a story on channel 5 news about this and it looked as if the seats were a dark-blue color (clashing terribly with the red). Does anyyone know if this is really the case, or was it an old file-video? (Or maybe the seats weren’t yet “unwrapped” for public display).
“Curvaceous luggage racks”… can’t help but laugh at that description.
Red and cream seats, very attractive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03.....f=nyregion
The seats, as I mention in the post, are red. The entire color scheme is red to evoke the history of the New Haven Railroad, Metro-North’s predecessor.
I knew that’s what they were supposed to be, and in all the displays of what “is to come”, they were red and tan (as shown in Ferryboi’s linked NYC article – that photo wasn’t from this actual train). The video I saw with the horrible blue was from the actual in-service train with the camera looking through the window. Maybe a combination of the camera lighting and the tinted glass caused a distortion in color.
Finally, some goods news to celebrate and apparently a surprise to most (if not all?).
Will these new cars have the cool, mid-’50s “NH” logo on the front, like some of the diesel engines used to have?
Sure wish we could employ an adjective other than “commuter” to describe Metro-North. Of all the regional and/or state rail operations in the New York metropolitan area, Metro-North shines for seeking out all kinds of riders, peak and off-peak and weekends — and not just “commuters.”
Let’s talk when they offer better than hourly frequency on weekends.
cheers, m8!
Can someone tell me HTF to report MetroCard machines with jammed credit card slots painlessly and easily? The online phone menu here http://www.mta.info/mta/phone.htm#nyct, does not work. (Press 4 and there is a recorded message about service change.) To report online you have to have an account (Why?) which I apparently do but cannot remember my password, and will have to retrieve. Last night I tried to report by phone and after 11 minutes spoke to a human who kept asking for my info for a refund and wouldn’t just take the damn number of the machine (0956.) Given how often the machines and turnstile slots are non-functional, you’d think there would be an easy way to report online, by mobile and phone. Do they not want to know? It’s exasperating.
MTA needs a 311 system. City Hall has expertise if the MTA wants to do it.
So aside from having electrical outlets and probably being less prone to bad-weather (and AC) breakdowns, there are no real improvements here except for comfier seats and computerized announcements???
Major fail.
They don’t cut time off the trip either by moving faster or requiring shorter station stops. They don’t accomodate 50 percent more passengers. They don’t require fewer operators. They don’t offer a greatly smoother or quieter ride. In other words, they’re not radically better than 30-year-old models.
That is a major indication of why public transit has zero chance of convincing any substantial number of people to stop driving cars except in places where driving is nearly impossible.
I just went to get a new car the other day and was utterly shocked at how much cars really have improved over the past ten years. The vehicles I looked at were better in every way than the vehicle I’m abandoning, for the same inflation-adjusted cost.
And that’s just the ten-year improvement. Imagine how much cars will improve over the lifespan of these train cars.
What exactly did you expect? Mag-lev?
Honestly, the only thing that could make these trains better imo is not having doors separating the cars.
I haven’t ridden Metro North, but the new LIRR cars (about 6 years old at this point) look pretty similar inside to these new MN cars and are a lot nicer than the ones they replaced.
Double panel doors, cuts opening time from 4 seconds to 1. Add that up over the life of the cars and thats 10s of thousands of commuter hours wasted.
Also twice as many doors to break down. Less door panels = less moving parts = less time spent in the shop, which is hours if not days wasted per repair. Those few seconds lost are more than made up for.
Best industry practice for low maintenance costs is this. Notice the subway-style double doors.
So what would you suggest they should add to rolling stock to make them better and more appealing to folks like you?
I’d like the option to use a seat belt. Use not required, but available.
I know. Not invented here.
But now Greyhound is advertising seat belts as a feature of their new buses. I like it.
Good trains running on reasonably maintained track should not need any seat belts.
What magical features are the choo-choos supposed to have that make them more appealing? The platform lengths and track curvatures are fairly set in stone (largely thanks to CT NIMBys). That pretty much sets in stone the speed and car lengths. Perhaps if FRA regulations didn’t deliberately emphasize buff strength as a safety feature, lighter/faster vehicles could have been purchased, but the MTA has little control over that.
Within reason, about the only thing I think they should be getting from here is wifi.
Your complaints are about things the rolling stock has nothing to do with. The speed limit is set by the tracks, not the trains. The trains can do 100 mph; the tracks are limited to 90 in New York State, and 75 in Connecticut. The capacity limit it set by platform length; the choice of train only matters for seating vs. standing capacity questions. And the requirement for ticket-punchers and conductors is set by railroad tradition, federal regulation, and union rules, but not by the train.
The only thing the rolling stock could do better is acceleration, and that may not be possible given FRA buff strength rules. Fast-accelerating regional trains, such as the FLIRT, are illegal on US tracks without a waiver.
Presumably, the reason the set the speed limits is that there are, um, limits to the speeds the trains can safely do without derailing or striking one another or otherwise ruining the rider experience.
But assuming we don’t solve the construction-cost disease that inflates all the big public works by a factor of ten over what they should cost — and I think it’s pretty safe to assume we won’t fix that — the only solution to our problems is rolling stock that can do way more on existing tracks.
You can get more people on trains by having double or triple decker trains (though obviously you’d need to do some work on any tunnels). You can get the speed limits raised with trains that can really do faster speeds safer. (And if these current trains can already do 100 mph safely on the current tracks, then riders should be lobbying really, really hard to get the speed limits raised.)
All I’m saying is that the problems that stop big improvement in train travel seem to be engineering problems (and political-will problems) rather than laws-of-physics problems — which means big improvements are possible and those improvements could attract more riders. (And there will not be more riders without big, big improvements to public transit. The readers of this blog may see public transit at some sort of moral obligation, but most people will only use it if it works better for them than the car.)
If the opposite is the case, if these are laws-of-physics problems rather than engineering problems, then it’s stupid to invest any money in these trains at all because the coming improvements to cars will finally render them completely obsolete, certainly within 20 years, which is less than the life of these cars. (And those cars will run on batteries charged by nuclear plants, so there won’t be any reason to object to the cars based on externalities.)
Actually, to go further, if public transit quality is effectively capped by laws of physics (barring massive, massive infrastructure improvements) then, really, all long-term thought about public transit is a waste. Because when self-driving, pollution free cars triple road capacity, virtually eliminate accidents, halve parking requirements and halve the cost of car ownership (all of which they’ll do within a couple decades) the game is over. No one, and I do mean no one, will be riding these trains because of their computerized station announcements.
Double-decker trains are constrained along Metro-North routes by the tunnels underneath Park Ave. and various other clearances along the route. You can’t build something taller than the 100-year-old infrastructure it’s using.
That’s funny. I mentally went through the route (which I rarely ride) and couldn’t think of anything but a few short tunnels — short enough that I could imagine them justifying the cost of lowering the tracks.
In doing this, though, I somehow neglected that the route begins in a really long tunnel set in the heart of the continent’s most expensive place to build.
Okay. No double deckers baring some TARDIS-like train technology, which would be asking a lot.
The tunnels are in Manhattan.
“In other words, they’re not radically better than 30-year-old models.”
Actually, in almost every way, they are radically better than the 40-year-old M2s that are the backbone of the fleet. From a passenger’s perspective, yes, it looks and feels like an updated M2-the doors open, close, the train moves, there’s a bathroom, etc.
But from an operations view, the M8s are light years ahead of the M2s, as a consist of cars acts like a network of computers. No longer will you hear a conductor ask about a door light; they can look right on their screens and find out which door may be hung up. They can see any problem within the consist and fix or isolate it on the spot. They even have back-ups for the heaters and ACs.
And what automobiles have made great leaps forward in the past ten years? Other than the Volt or Prius, most cars have only added fluff like built in GPS and entertainment screens. Big deal. You still have to turn it on and drive, just like ten years ago.
Electrical outlets? The Harlem line is jealous!!
All metro north and LIRR cars have outlets already….
Not at every seat they don’t.
I just got off one of these trains. Very nice ride! About time I can say that i ride a train which isn’t older then me!
FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!