It’s deja vu ... again!
MBTA yanks new Orange Line trains out of service for part issue
All of the new Orange Line trains have been taken out of service for the week after officials discovered an issue with one of the parts, the MBTA announced Tuesday morning.
“Inspectors identified a fault with the bolsters which is being corrected to ensure the vehicles are reliable and safe for the duration of their service lives,” the MBTA wrote on Twitter. “We expect to return them to service later this week.”
This is not the first time the MBTA has identified a problem with the new Orange Line trains and temporarily removed them from service; in December, the transit agency took them out of service for a month due to an “uncommon noise” issue.
When the cars were returned, MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said in a statement that, going forward, trains “may be taken out of service from time to time” for analysis and testing if potential issues are detected.
Since the new Orange Line cars were deployed in August, they’ve also experienced door issues and a derailment.
“The refinements and lessons learned now help ensure that this train, and future trains on the Orange and Red Lines, will be able to perform as designed for the duration of their service lives,” the MBTA tweeted in January. “We appreciate our riders’ patience as we work to return the new vehicles back into service.”
The Chinese Railway Rolling Stock Corp. has $800 million in contracts to build more than 400 Orange and Red line cars at its sprawling manufacturing facility — the only one of its kind in the U.S. — in Springfield.
CRRC also has contracts with transit systems in Los Angeles and Philadelphia to build passenger cars, a spokeswoman said. Most of the work is done at the Springfield plant that opened in 2017 and employs about 280 people.
The MBTA recently said the transit agency will soon be taking bids for two more large train-car contracts: 100 more bi-level Commuter Rail cars — with options for another 100 — and 165 of the new, much larger “Type 10” Green Line cars the T plans to roll out as part of an overhaul of that line.