MTA train orders way behind sked
A train car builder is running late delivering hundreds of new cars meant to smooth New York region subway and commuter rail trips.
Japan-based manufacturer Kawasaki — which builds cars in Yonkers and Lincoln, Neb. — expects to be at least 13 months late delivering 66 new rail cars for Metro-North’s New Haven line, MTA officials announced this week.
The cars, called M8s, were supposed to arrive in January, but are now due in February 2022.
“Improper workmanship” and “workforce shortages from the pandemic” were cited as causes for the delays, officials said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has already received 405 of the cars, and in 2017 opted to buy dozens more. The cost of the last 66 cars in the order stands at roughly $116 million.
It’s the second time this year that Kawasaki reported severe delays in delivering new train cars to New York.
MTA officials in January reported that the delivery of 535 cars for the lettered subway lines and Staten Island Railway was delayed by at least 13 months — from July 2023 to September 2024 — due to the pandemic.
Those new cars, called R211s, are budgeted to cost $1.77 billion, and are supposed to replace trains that date back to the 1970s.
“We want people to come back to transit, and we want modern, efficient, smooth, attractive rolling stock for them,” said Andrew Albert, the rider advocate on the MTA board.
“The old cars jerk-start,” Albert said. “They don’t start smoothly. If you’re not holding onto something, you could easily fall. Eventually, they’re not going to be able to use them.”
The new cars would also enable subway signaling technology called communications-based train control, which allows trains to run faster and closer together.
The MTA also ordered 20 of the cars — or two trains’ worth — to have an “open gangway” design that would allow riders to walk between cars. Transit officials plan to see how New Yorkers handle the design, which is common in transit systems across the globe, including the London Underground and the Paris Metro.
MTA spokesman Ken Lovett said transit officials are aware of the delays and “reserving all our rights pertaining to late delivery.” The agency has in the past forced companies to pay penalties for late train car deliveries.
The snafu is the latest in a long line of bungled train purchases by the MTA.
The Canadian company Bombardier — which operates a plant in upstate Plattsburgh — was nearly three years late in delivering 300 new subway cars.
In January 2020, just after Bombardier finally completed the order, the MTA temporarily pulled all of the cars from service due to a door issue. It pulled the cars again in June after two came unhitched in a Manhattan tunnel.
MTA officials could not say when the last time a subway car delivery arrived on time.
Transit leaders have for years blamed issues with subway car purchases on a lack of companies that build them. The MTA currently buys new trains from Bombardier and Kawasaki. There is no U.S.-based company that currently makes subway cars.