Rolling Stock

Transit’s R32s are undergoing their final rehabs before the end of the line arrives in a few years. (Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Patrick Cashin)

The MTA’s R32s are a holdover from the Swingin’ 60s. Budd’s Brightliners made their debuts in 1964 and have been rolling along for nearly 50 years. Today, these cars aren’t holding up so well. They have the lowest mean distance between failures, and regular riders on the A, C and E come to fear their air conditioners in the summer. When they debuted, they had ceiling fans, but the 48-year-old cars underwent some fairly comprehensive reworking about twenty years ago.

Last year, the MTA announced another six years for the R32s. Because of structural problems with the R44s, Transit had reprioritize rolling stock replacement, and the R179s would likely be on hold until 2017. To ease the end of life, though, Transit will invest some $25 million into these train cars, overhauling the remaining 222 cars over the next few months.

On Friday, with the rehab moving along and some photos floating around, Transit announced some details concerning the investment. The agency is calling the work a “limited-scope maintenance makeover.” The goal is to improve performance and reliability as we await the R179s, now slated to start arriving in 2014. As the R32s generally make it just over 57,000 miles between failures as opposed to a fleet-wide average of over 171,000 miles, anything to improve service will be welcome for IND riders.

“The work currently being performed on these cars will help increase customer comfort and insure service reliability until their replacements arrive,” Carmen Bianco, Senior Vice President of the Department of Subways said in a statement.

For $25 million, the MTA is going to upgrade numerous car components and systems including air brakes, auxiliary electric, car body, couplers, car body hoses, door systems and propulsion systems. Vandalized windows — scratchiti is a hallmark of these cars — will be replaced as well. Furthermore, the AC/HVAC systems will be improved in advance of next summer. Perhaps the summer switch will go smoother in the remaining few years.

Despite promises from the MTA of a 2014 arrival date for the R179s, the truth is that only the initial models will arrive then. Tests are set for the end of that year with more cars arriving beginning in 2015. Some of these R32s will have to last until 2017, a whopping 53 years after they made their New York City debut. It’s hard to believe that some of the system’s rolling stock actually predates the MTA itself, but there you go.

The always-vigilant Dana Rubinstein has an interesting bit for the rolling stock fans among us who wish to plan ahead: When CBTC is finally ready for implementation along the Flushing Line, the 7 will be trading rolling stock with the East Side IRT. The deets:

By 2016, the year that the M.T.A. hopes to complete installation of a modern signaling system along the 7 line, the M.T.A. will have swapped out the line’s cars for newer ones from the Lexington Avenue line, Capital has learned.

Some Lexington Avenue riders, meanwhile, will get stuck with the old 7 train cars. (The newest 7 cars have been in use for about 25 years.) The M.T.A. has yet to determine which of the three Lexington Avenue lines—the 4, 5, or 6—will be affected.

“Sometime prior to when it is turned on in 2016, you will start seeing the cars on the 7 move to the Lex and the cars on the Lex move to the 7,” confirmed Adam Lisberg, a spokesman for the M.T.A.

Essentially, the R62As, which date from the mid-to-late 1980s, aren’t equipped for CBTC while the R142s are. So the MTA will swap rolling stock — and hopefully update the static FIND signs in the R142s — when the time is ripe. That time, of course, isn’t for another four years so I don’t think East Side riders should be holding their breaths. Meanwhile, for East Siders looking for a silver lining, I prefer the air conditioning on the R62As to that on the R142s, and the Second Ave. Subway might be nearing its revenue date by then as well.

The first R179s will be delivered in late 2014. I miss the colored subway bullets on the front. (Rendering via Bomardier)

The MTA voted to approve the deal in late March, and today, the i’s have been dotted and the t’s crossed as Bombardier announced the signing of a $599 million deal to provide Transit with the R179 rolling stock order. The order, built entirely in Plattsburgh, NY, will consist of 300 new cars.

While we know the general contours of the R179 contract, Bombardier’s announcement gives us a timeline. The first 10 cars will arrive in New York City during the third quarter of 2014, and the remainder of the order will be delivered between mid-2015 and early 2017. These cars will replace the R32s and R42s currently in use along the C and J/Z lines respectively.

Raymond Bachant, President, Bombardier Transportation North America, said: “Bombardier’s partnership with NYCT began in 1982 with an order for 825 subway cars. Since then, we have delivered close to 1,900 vehicles to our valued customer. We are proud that NYCT has shown its confidence in our products and technologies once again, and we look forward to providing high quality, reliable, safe rail cars for the millions of people who ride New York’s subway system every day.”

We still don’t have many details about the inner workings of these newest rolling stock order. They will, of course, come replete with dynamic strip maps and the like, but by the time these arrive in New York City, that innovation will have been on the rails for the better part of a decade. We’ll see what other new features the R179s carry soon enough.

In a few years, the R160s will no longer be the newest members of the Transit fleet. (Photo by flickr user Queens Surface 295)

When the MTA Board gathers to meet later this morning, the august governing body will vote to determine the fate of the system’s next rolling stock purchase, and all signs indicate that they will award Bombardier with a $599 million to build out the R179s. The entire construction process, as Joe Lhota told me on Monday, will take place in New York state, and the MTA will receive 300 new cars as it gears up to retire the oldest rolling stock in the system.

As of now, the exact technical schematics of the new cars are unknown. It appears as though they will be surveillance-camera ready and will likely be modeled off of the R160s currently in service. We know that the 300-car order will spell the end of the line for the R32s and R42s currently in use along the C and J/Z lines respectively. Bombardier, builders of the R62A and R142 cars, bid approximately $57 million less for the project than ALSKAW, according to MTA documents.

Impressively enough, the cars these R179s will replace beginning in approximately 38 months — or by mid 2015 — have held up remarkably well considering their age. The R32s were the first mass-produced stainless subway cars and entered service in the mid-1960s. They will be past 50 by the time they are shelved, and their current upkeep and maintenance stats show their age. These cars breakdown more frequently and require more maintenance than the MTA’s newer models. The R42s, the city’s first fully air conditioned cars, entered service in 1969 and 1970.

The history of the R179 is an interesting one as well. When the MTA wraps Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway in 2016, it will need additional car sets to maintain service levels along the BMT Broadway line and the four-stop extension to the Upper East Side. Originally, the authority had planned on requesting a base order of 290 cars for the R179s with a purchase option for an additional 80 cars that would service Second Ave.

As the MTA notes in the staff summary, though, the funding didn’t materialize as expected and the authority weighed demand. “A reassessment of projected ridership growth as well as anticipated changes in ridership due to changes in demographics in certain parts of New York City led to the conclusion that 300 new cars would satisfy NYC Transit’s need in lieu of the original 290 plus 50 cars,” the document says. “It was determined that car requirements for 2nd Avenue Subway Phase 1 can be accommodated with existing spare cars.”

So with the impending end of the 222 R32s and 48 R42s still in service, straphangers want to know if their line will get the shiny new toys. Will the C train move up from worst to first? And what of the sets along the Jamaica lines? Early reports indicate that the new cars will head elsewhere while the C line will get the hand-me-downs. I’d imagine the A will enjoy the R179s while the C gets the old R46s that run along the A.

And so, the upgrade of the rolling stock, an unsung hero in the revival of the subway system, will continue. Now how about those R211s?

Is this an early glimpse at the cars delivered as part of contract R188? (Photo via Wikipedia)

The Internets were all abuzz today with word that the first of the R188s hit the Corona Yards last night with more to follow. The cars aren’t yet ready for revenue service, but they are sitting out in the open for shutterbugs to snap. Reportedly, the photo above from Wikipedia is the first glimpse we’ve had of the new order of rolling stock.

The R188 order is a strange one. The MTA is purchasing only a limited number of new cars while they’re converting a bunch of R142As into CBTC-ready sets. What you’re seeing here is a converted R142A. The new cars aren’t yet ready for delivery, and the 7 line isn’t yet ready for CBTC either.

A few weeks ago, Transit announced that it had accepted the delivery of the final R160 units. With that order of cars, the next push to upgrade the rolling stock would involve the R179s, and the city’s fleet of subway cars is getting newer all the time.

Yesterday, in a great behind-the-scenes glimpse, the good folks at Transit’s NYCTSubwayScoop Twitter account published a series of photos concerning the new rolling stock. They traced the origins of the car from its production in Brazil to Hornell, New York, where the cars are assembled to the train yards in the city where the cars are put on the rails.

My favorite shot is the one atop this post. The new car is wrapped so nicely, and when the engineers at Transit open it up, they’ll find one of 1662 new subway train cars awaiting service.