The brand new-look trains rolling on a number of the lettered subway traces provide a glimpse into the fleet of the long run.
With wider doorways, brighter interiors and superior cameras, the automobiles referred to as R211s can now be seen on the A, C and G traces.
As a part of the MTA’s proposed $68.4 billion five-year capital plan, the transit company needs to purchase 1,500 extra new automobiles — changing a fifth of your entire fleet and aligning with its subsequent wave of sign upgrades.
They might finally take over for a lot of of these acquainted orange-and-red-seat rides that had been manufactured near half a century in the past, and which officers say are five-and-a-half instances extra prone to undergo mechanical failures that may delay commutes.
“Investing in safe, reliable and modern train cars is the key to building New Yorkers’ trust in the long term,” Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Building & Improvement, stated in an announcement to THE CITY. “The new capital plan makes a generational investment in rolling stock that will completely transform the riding experience for our customers.”
The proposed $7.6 billion allotment for brand spanking new subway automobiles accounts for the second-largest chunk of New York Metropolis Transit’s share of the 2025-2029 capital plan, whose funding stays in query. Solely the $11.9 billion marked for station upgrades — which incorporates increasing the variety of stops totally accessible to individuals with disabilities — is larger.
Not because the first capital plan in 1982-1986, when the MTA purchased 1,575 new subway automobiles to assist deliver the system again from the brink of collapse, has the company’s blueprint for the long run teed up such a large one-time funding within the autos that now transfer near 4 thousands and thousands riders every day.
“Those subway cars are past their useful life,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO stated final fall on the unveiling of the capital plan. “They need to be retired.”
Need to know far more in regards to the largest subway automotive fleet within the nation and its ongoing overhaul? Right here’s a rundown to get you on monitor.
What number of totally different practice automobiles are within the subway fleet — and why aren’t they uniform?
New York Metropolis Transit presently has 6,712 automobiles in passenger service, with 15 totally different fashions on its numbered traces (known as the A Division) and lettered traces (the B Division).
There’s an enormous distinction between the automobiles and tracks on the 2 divisions — a product of the subway system’s origins within the early a part of the final century.
First there was the privately owned Interborough Fast Transit Firm (IRT) on what are actually the numbered traces and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company (BMT) on what are actually most of the lettered traces. Later, the city-owned Impartial Subway System (IND) included the lettered Sixth and Eighth Avenue traces in addition to the Brooklyn-Queen Crosstown Line that carries G practice riders.
Vehicles on the numbered (A Division) traces are shorter and narrower as a result of tunnels alongside these routes are smaller, with tighter turns. On common, they’re additionally older, based on the MTA, with a imply age of 28.4 years
The bigger tunnels on the lettered traces (B Division) are capable of accommodate longer and wider subway automobiles, which have a mean age of 23.34 years.
The width between the rails that trains from the 2 divisions run on differs, too, which means that automobiles on the numbered traces can not function on the lettered traces and vice versa.
Of the hoped-for bulk subway automotive buy within the subsequent capital plan, 1,140 could be for the numbered traces, with 355 for the lettered traces, with others introduced in for “additional rolling stock support.”
Aren’t we already commuting on new practice automobiles?
Sure — and that’s simply the beginning of issues, or so the MTA hopes.
Again in 2023, new automobiles started working on the A and C traces, because the transit company rolled out its first new subway automobiles in 5 years. They’re those whose wider doorways flash inexperienced lights once they open as trains pull as much as platforms — and purple lights simply earlier than the doorways shut.
In addition they only recently started working on the G line and the Staten Island Railway.
The high-tech R211 automobiles designed and engineered by Kawasaki Railcar Manufacturing Inc. are half of what is going to finally be a complete of 1,610 new automobiles that had been bought for $4.5 billion over the course of two capital packages — the 2015-2019 and 2020-2024 plans.
To date, the Japanese producer has delivered 475 of these R211 automobiles to New York Metropolis Transit after working into provide chain-driven delays throughout the pandemic. The MTA and Kawasaki are aiming for the complete order — which can embrace 80 extra open-gangway variations of the R211s — to be accomplished by 2028.
The place do these new trains come from?
This newest batch was born in Nebraska — with components from throughout.
However remaining meeting and methods testing of the R211 automobiles takes place simply north of the town in Yonkers at Kawasaki’s 250,000 square-foot railcar manufacturing plant, which was as soon as residence to the Otis Elevator Firm.
Opened in 1986, the sprawling Yonkers plant has been the final cease earlier than passenger service for greater than 5,000 railcars ordered by U.S. transit companies, together with the Washington Metropolitan Space Transit Authority, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s PATH service.
With regards to practice automobiles, the MTA has been a constant Kawasaki buyer. Since its 1982-1986 capital plan, the transit company has ordered greater than 4,600 subway, Lengthy Island Rail Highway and Metro-North Railroad trains automobiles for all however one among its 10 five-year plans.
“Without the capital programs, this facility probably wouldn’t exist,” Maurice Andriani, Kawasaki’s vp for enterprise improvement in North America, informed THE CITY. “And our Lincoln [Nebraska] facility probably wouldn’t have been established.”
Earlier than the R211, the New York Metropolis subway automobiles most lately assembled by Kawasaki had been the R188 automobiles that run on the No. 7 line between Queens and Manhattan. They started going into passenger service in late 2013, because the No. 7 line underwent a years-long improve to its alerts.
The brand new automobiles are transported from Nebraska to Yonkers on wide-load flatbed vans and arrive about 90% full — containing roughly 10,000 parts from suppliers far and huge and nearly 20 miles of wire in every automotive.
“It’s a space shuttle,” Andriani stated.
Every R211 automotive is outfitted with components that embrace poles from Pennsylvania and seats from Canada. After arriving, they’re linked to kind five-car trains for weeks of stationary checks atop a number of elevated tracks contained in the manufacturing unit.
“They’re going underneath the cars, they’re opening up equipment boxes, they’re hooking up instrumentation to check for various things and make sure the equipment is working correctly,” stated Nehru Satahoo, senior supervisor of manufacturing engineering at Kawasaki Rail Automotive. “So there’s a lot of work underneath as well as in the interior.”
That’s adopted by extra evaluation on take a look at tracks proper exterior the manufacturing unit.
As soon as the brand new automobiles cross muster in Yonkers, they’re delivered to the MTA for much more trial runs earlier than finally going into passenger service.
Commuters trip in a brand new open-gangway G practice in Brooklyn, March, 2025. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
With wider (by 8 inches) doorways, outfitted with a number of cameras and intensive digital shows on each automotive, brighter interiors and flip-up seating, the R211 automobiles and all future fashions should be appropriate with the fashionable sign system that the MTA is putting in alongside extra subway traces.
Generally known as “communication based train control” or CBTC, revamped alerts will enable trains to run extra incessantly and nearer collectively and have been a prime precedence in the newest MTA capital plans.
An previous R46 practice on the W line at Metropolis Corridor, March 31, 2025. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The R62 automobiles on the No. 1 line have been working because the Reagan administration, April 2, 2025. Credit score: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
The remaining R68 automobiles from the mid-80s are in line for retirement if the MTA secures billions in capital funding. Credit score: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
The R142 automobiles on the two, 4 and 5 traces first went into service in 2000. April 4, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
An R143 automotive on the L line, the primary within the subway with trendy alerts. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
An R160A automotive pulls into the Metropolis Corridor station, April 2, 2025. Credit score: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
Technicians examine doorways on a R179 automotive in Jan. 2020 after defective doorways brought on MTA to briefly pull 300 out of service., Jan. 9, 2020. Credit score: Marc A. Hermann/MTA New York Metropolis Transit
The R179 automobiles, manufactured by Bombardier, started working in 2017 Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
A Kawasaki-manufactured R188 practice runs on the 7 line, April 2, 2025. Credit score: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
The latest automobiles within the subway, referred to as the R211, characteristic flip-up seating designated for riders with disabilities. Credit score: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
Rising the availability of recent practice automobiles is central to high-tech efforts to replace alerts and enhance service.
“You need new cars to be able to [work with] CBTC,” Tim Mulligan, the MTA’s chief of rolling inventory program, informed THE CITY. “So this is really part and parcel with signal modernization, which is a big thrust of the last plan and this plan as well.
“You have to have the cars to be able to do that.”
What are the oldest subway automobiles within the system, and when will they be retired?
The subway’s longest-running automobiles are the orange-seated R46s and also you’ll solely see them on a couple of traces: the A, C, N, Q, R and W traces and alongside the Rockaway Park Shuttle.
Constructed between 1975 and 1978, some have been in service happening 5 many years. There are a whole lot nonetheless rattling alongside the rails.
There have been 752 such automobiles in service when the 2025-2029 plan was unveiled final fall, although the MTA says most of these have outlived their anticipated helpful lifetime of greater than 40 years.
The Staten Island Railway has automobiles which have been round even longer, the R44 fashions that had been constructed between 1971-73.
The oldest within the subway and on Staten Island are within the means of being retired and step by step changed by R211 automobiles.
If the MTA receives the funding wanted for its 2025-2029 plan, automobiles which have been in service because the days of the Reagan Administration could be subsequent to go. These embrace the R62s, which rolled out in 1984 and nonetheless run alongside the 1, 3 and 6 traces. The remaining R68 fashions from 1986, which function totally on the B, D, N and W traces, would even be retired.
In case you’re curious, the “R” within the names stands for “CAR equipment” inside the MTA. Why? In response to the company, “C” was already used for “construction” and “A” was designated for “stations.” As for “S,” it’s used for “signals.”
The place do subway automobiles go to die?
Most are scrapped, whereas some are preserved for historic and academic functions. The New York Transit Museum, housed in a decommissioned station in Downtown Brooklyn, has a number of retired automobiles which might be a part of its classic fleet and that are sometimes introduced out for nostalgia rides.
Different retired automobiles are additionally utilized in emergency response coaching or transformed into work trains which might be used to clear tracks of snow and ice or to move particles out of the system.
However previous subway automobiles are now not dropped into the Atlantic Ocean for a watery retirement. Between August 2001 and April 2010, the shells of greater than 2,500 cleaned and decommissioned rail automobiles had been dropped to the underside of the Atlantic to function synthetic reefs for aquatic life.
The newest retirement of a whole class of subway automobiles got here in February 2020, simply earlier than the beginning of the pandemic. That’s when the final of the R42 subway automobiles took a farewell trip on a practice full of rail aficionados.
Constructed between 1969 and 1970 by the long-defunct St. Louis Automotive Firm, the R42 automobiles carried New York Metropolis commuters for greater than 50 years, with most being retired between 2006 and 2009.
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