MTA spends $3B the ‘wrong way’
Euro trains are faster: experts
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is preparing to spend nearly $3 billion to buy hundreds of overweight and overpriced train cars that will saddle riders with longer commutes and the cash-strapped agency with higher costs for decades to come, The Post has learned.
The MTA still wants to move ahead with another purchase of the steel dinosaurs even though federal authorities approved a regulatory overhaul in 2018 that now allows the agency to buy high-tech trains — common in Europe — that are dramatically faster, lighter and cheaper.
“MTA rolling-stock procurement is too conservative and is asking for trains that are less advanced than what the international vendors make — too heavy, for one,” said Alon Levy, who is part of a team at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management.
So far, the MTA has spent $723 million to purchase 202 M9 cars for the Long Island Rail Road — a program that was first approved in 2013. That’s enough to add roughly 10 new 10-carlong trains to its schedule when they all finally arrive, following a slew of delays chronicled in a report last year by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
Despite the problems, the transit agency hopes to double down and buy at least 432 more cars — lightly updated and known as the M9-A — for both the LIRR and Metro-North, officials confirmed to The Post.
The value of the new order is at least $1.4 billion — and the likely cost rises to $2.8 billion when factoring in the cost of financing, a Post analysis found.
Officials are still pushing ahead even though federal officials OK’d the regulatory overhaul — known as alternative compliance — which allows railroads like the LIRR and MetroNorth to operate train cars commonly used in Europe with only tiny modifications.
The European trains make extensive use of aluminum and other advanced materials, which makes them substantially lighter — reducing wear and tear on switches and tracks, dramatically improving acceleration and increasing energy efficiency.
A 10-car, steel-bodied M9 train weighs more than 660 tons — with each car clocking in at more than 131,000 pounds. A Post comparison against three comparably long European models — built by Siemens, Alstom and Stadler — with similar passenger capacities found that the heaviest one weighed in at 450 tons, making the trains at least a third lighter.
Estimates and real-world observations by Levy and Patrick O’Hara, a transit activist who runs the long-standing LIRR Today website, show the quicker acceleration would save at least 30 seconds per stop, which quickly adds up:
It would cut the 46-minute local service between Port Washington and Penn Station to 40 minutes, making it practically as fast as the express.
It would shave nine minutes off the 75 minute, 18-stop trip between Babylon and Penn, making it almost as quick as the 62minute limited-stop service.
It would knock eight minutes off the 59-minute ride between North White Plains and Grand Central, making it nearly as fast as the express.
All told, The Post found the savings from the lower purchase price, energy consumption and reduced wear could exceed $100 million annually.