The MTA is taking a step towards increasing its fleet of open gangway subway automobiles — and probably bringing the new-look rides to the numbered traces.
With funding for the 2025-2029 $68.4 billion capital enchancment plan now secured within the state price range, the transit company final week issued a request for data from firms which have expertise designing and manufacturing automobiles linked by walk-through passageways.
Rising the variety of open gangway automobiles can be a part of the transit company’s plan to spend $7.6 billion over the subsequent 5 years to switch R62 mannequin subway automobiles which were operating on the numbered traces — referred to as the A Division — because the mid-Eighties.
“[New York City Transit] intends to purchase 1,140 R262 A-Division Subway Cars and a portion of those subway cars may be open gangway,” reads the request for data posted to the MTA web site. “The intent of this request is to identify industry interest in designing and manufacturing an open gangway system.”
The proposed allotment within the subsequent capital program for brand new subway automobiles makes up the MTA’s second-biggest chunk of deliberate spending on system upgrades, after the practically $12 billion pegged for station enhancements.
The necessity to exchange automobiles which were operating past their helpful 40-year life stands to considerably enhance the variety of open gangway fashions, which permit riders to stroll the size of a practice by means of tender, accordion-like or hard-shelled connectors. Such trains are frequent within the Paris Metro and the London Underground. Nearer to house, the Toronto Transit Fee has had them for greater than a decade.
However such automobiles have had a slower rollout within the U.S., with the Metropolitan Atlanta Speedy Transit Authority earlier this yr beginning to take a look at open gangway automobiles that can ultimately exchange MARTA’S total fleet.
Yonah Freemark, a researcher on the City Institute who has written extensively in regards to the new-car expertise, stated the tempo of the shift by U.S. transit techniques is baffling.
“Every train manufacturer that is building metros anywhere in the world knows how to build open gangway trains and we know that because they are building them everywhere except for the United States, in essence,” Freemark advised THE CITY. “That includes all the stalwarts that the MTA has used in the past, whether that’s Alstom or Kawasaki or the other companies that make subway cars.”
In February 2024, the MTA grew to become the primary U.S. transit system to place such automobiles into passenger service when a pair of 10-car open gangway trains started operating alongside the C line. In March, a few of these automobiles had been shifted to the G line, which now has two five-car trains in use.
Thus far, riders appear to be open to the brand new design.
Hubert Parham rides on an open-gangway G practice, Could 12, 2025. Credit score: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
“I was saying to myself, it’s like an accordion, I like it a lot better,” stated Hubert Parham, 62, who was using the G practice Monday morning. “I started walking from down there on the first car and I walked all the way through.”
The 20 open gangway automobiles at the moment in passenger service had been bought as a part of the MTA’s two earlier five-year capital packages, with Kawasaki Railcar Manufacturing Inc. designing and engineering the R211 mannequin.
The MTA board in December accepted an order for 435 further R211 subway automobiles to run on the lettered traces, together with 80 extra of the open gangway fashions.
MTA knowledge exhibits that the R211 automobiles, together with the 20 the place riders can stroll freely throughout the size of the practice, encounter mechanical failures far much less ceaselessly than the typical throughout your entire fleet of greater than 6,700. In March, the systemwide Imply Distance Between Failure price — a key metric for monitoring how far subway automobiles journey earlier than a breakdown — was 126,652 miles, in contrast with greater than 220,000 for the R211 automobiles which started operating in March 2023.
Along with being outfitted with wider doorways, brighter lighting and several other cameras, the most recent automobiles within the fleet and all future fashions — such because the R262 — can be suitable with the fashionable sign system that the MTA is rolling out throughout extra traces.
Whereas MTA officers stated the take a look at trains have been well-received by riders, some straphangers identified that seating could be more durable to return by within the latest automobiles.
“Especially when you just come off work, and you just want to sit down and get home, you could use more seats,” stated Juan Ortiz, 42, who was using Monday on an open gangway practice on the G line.
Transit officers have beforehand touted riders’ capacity to maneuver between automobiles, together with the broader doorways that create extra capability and likewise assist velocity boarding and lower the period of time trains spend at stops.
As a part of its evaluation for probably including open gangway automobiles to the numbered traces, the MTA is asking potential producers a sequence of questions.
These embody queries on the businesses’ earlier expertise in designing and manufacturing such subway automobiles, how they’d adjust to hearth and smoke requirements and any challenges that might accompany including open gangway designs to the numbered traces.
The R262 automobiles can be 51.2 ft lengthy, in response to the MTA’s request for data. Potential working challenges embody tight radius observe curvatures and the necessity to isolate automobiles whereas remaining in service in case of damaged glass, door failures or customer-related incidents.
Future open gangway automobiles would even have to satisfy New York Metropolis Transit’s “standards of durability, customer safety and vandal resistance,” the doc reads.
Freemark stated that there isn’t any return to unlinked automobiles for international transit networks which have made the shift.
“The transit systems that have decided to go towards open gangways have essentially said this is a better model for us and have stuck to it in future procurements,” he stated. “So that’s why you see the fleets of mainline metro systems virtually everywhere else in the world converting entirely to open gangways.”
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