Subway train comes apart
10 people evacuated; city yanks all new cars from rails
Two subway cars came unhitched and separated from each other around 1 a.m. Wednesday on an uptown A train near Chambers St. in lower Manhattan, forcing the MTA to evacuate 10 passengers from a tunnel.
In response, MTA officials pulled from service all of its new R179 cars, which had been a headache for the agency even before they went into service in December.
“At this time, we believe this to be an isolated incident. However, I am launching a full investigation,” said interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg.
The sixth and seventh cars on the 10-car, R179 train came apart, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said.
The breakup occurred because a pin was missing from a metal bar that holds the cars together, said a source with knowledge of the incident.
The source said the incident does not appear to be an act of vandalism, as no damage or strike mark was observed near the missing pin.
Of course, the MTA regularly pulls trains apart in subway yards.
But it goes without saying that trains carrying passengers in subway tunnels shouldn’t come apart, the source said. And the two cars that separated — the sixth and seventh cars of a 10-car train — are not ever supposed to come apart, even in a train yard.
The snafu is the latest in a long history of problems with the R179 cars.
The MTA in 2012 ordered 300 of the R179s for $600 million from Bombardier, a Canadian manufacturer. The cars were supposed to be delivered by January 2017. But bad welds and poor engineering delayed the delivery to December 2019.
Bombardier gave the MTA an extra 18 cars for free as a result of the trouble.
But even after the order was filled, the R179s still caused trouble. All of them were pulled from service in January because some of their doors weren’t fully closing.
Bombardier and the MTA launched a mass inspection of the cars, and got them back into service in February.
But Wednesday’s incident revealed entirely different issue, and Feinberg was quick to blame Bombardier for its latest screwup.
“This marks the latest unacceptable issue with one of Bombardier’s R179 cars,” said Feinberg. “Customer and employee safety is NYC Transit’s north star. We will not compromise one inch on safety.”
Bombardier is one of just two companies that build cars for the city’s subway, leaving the MTA with little choice but to deal with a manufacturer it has found unreliable.
“We are working in collaboration with NYC Transit and Wabtec, the supplier of the link bar between the cars, to conduct a detailed analysis and to implement an inspection plan for the entire R179 fleet,” said Bombardier spokeswoman Maryanne Roberts.
Until the R179s are cleared for service, the MTA will rely on its very old set of R32 cars, dubbed “Brightliners.”
The cars — recognizable by their corrugated metal exterior — were first put in service in 1964, and are the oldest cars in service in any subway system on the planet.