“They’re in the maintenance shop taking up track space. Nobody even knows how to fix them.” TA SOURCE
The Transit Authority’s new $2.2 million, high-tech subway cars are such lemons that they’ve been sidetracked all year.
“These trains are a joke. They’re worse than a flop. They’re a scandal,” one TA insider familiar with the trains said.
“They’re in the maintenance shop taking up track space. Nobody even knows how to fix them,” the source said.
Nineteen “new technology cars” – the R110s – were assigned to the No. 2 and A lines after debuting in 1993.
The new trains feature fancy new propulsion, braking, air conditioning and door systems, as well as electronic message signs and strip maps.
They were manufactured by Kawasaki and Bombardier – which are building a total of 1,300 new cars for the transit system.
The trains, set to come on line next year, will cost more than $1 billion altogether. That price also includes the cost of delivery and spare parts for the trains.
TA spokesman Al O’Leary said the cars are part of “test trains” for the system. But apparently, the tests didn’t go very well, sources said.
TA records show that the 10-car train that once served the No. 2 line has been missing in action for more than a year after brake defects were discovered. It has logged no passenger miles since then.
The other, nine-car train on the A line hasn’t run at all in 1999 and has logged only 2,411 miles in passenger service since May of last year.
A TA source said car doors don’t open and close properly and the TA lacks spare parts to patch up other problems.
Some of the cars were “cannibalized” – stripped down to repair the others.
“Those cars cannot even move under their own power anymore. They’ve been picked clean,” a TA source said.
O’Leary said that fixing the cars has been a problem because they are test trains and there aren’t many replacement parts available.
But he said the experimental trains were never intended to provide regular passenger service, and it’s not unusual that they’re in the shop.
“We use them to test components and systems,” he said.
Instead of ordering hundreds of cars and then working out the bugs after they arrive, O’Leary said, the test cars enable the TA to determine which parts work and which don’t beforehand.
“It’s a very smart way of doing business when you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money,” he said.
But train conductors yesterday said it was strange that the cars have been out of service so long.
“It’s been a year since I’ve been on them,” said No. 2 train conductor Gerald Furby.
He said that’s a shame, because the R110s are “definitely smoother and quieter than the older trains.”
Added A-line conductor Scott Anderson, “It’s a good train. You can locate a mechanical problem right away.”
But another A line conductor said he never liked the newer cars because the computer-driven systems fail during hot weather.
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“New Technology Trains” first introduced in 1993
Total cost: $42 million.
Features: Fancy propulsion, braking, air conditioning and door systems, big car-end windows, electronic message signs and strip maps.
*R110A: Ten-car train set manufactured by Kawasaki. Yanked out of service from the No. 2 line last year because of brake defects. Hasn’t logged any miles since then.
*R110B: Nine-car train set manufactured by Bombardier. Ran on the A and C lines. Suffered from mechanical problems. Some of the cars were taken out of service and used for spare parts to repair the others. The fleet has been out of passenger service this year, and has logged just 2,411 miles since May 1998.