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MTA set to pay nearly $3 billion for old, overweight LIRR, Metro-North cars

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Kamaji:
MTA set to pay nearly $3 billion for old, overweight LIRR, Metro-North cars

By Nolan Hicks
January 17, 2023

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 massive 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 studying why US transit agencies struggle to build and operate as efficiently as their major international counterparts.

“So just building to these specs costs more than building to the specs of standard European regional trains.”

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/01/17/mta-opting-for-overweight-trains-that-will-cost-millions-more-analysis/

Fishrrman:
The lightweight Euro trains probably wouldn't save any time.

In the overcrowded NY Metro Area, "time" is lost not so much due to acceleration speeds, but rather "congestion ahead". There were days (on Amtrak) I got to Harold (about 4.5 miles from Penn station around 5.40p, and still couldn't get into Penn by [normal arrival time of] 6.00p. Just too many trains ahead.

The M-9 cars the article references are the evolutionary design that has progressed from the first M-1 and M-2 (New Haven Line) cars of the early 1970's.

They get the job done. I ran M-2's early in my railroad days, and later M-1's as a hostler in the Croton-Harmon shops.

Kamaji:

--- Quote from: Fishrrman on January 18, 2023, 11:23:37 pm ---The lightweight Euro trains probably wouldn't save any time.

In the overcrowded NY Metro Area, "time" is lost not so much due to acceleration speeds, but rather "congestion ahead". There were days (on Amtrak) I got to Harold (about 4.5 miles from Penn station around 5.40p, and still couldn't get into Penn by [normal arrival time of] 6.00p. Just too many trains ahead.

The M-9 cars the article references are the evolutionary design that has progressed from the first M-1 and M-2 (New Haven Line) cars of the early 1970's.

They get the job done. I ran M-2's early in my railroad days, and later M-1's as a hostler in the Croton-Harmon shops.

--- End quote ---

When I first started riding the LIRR they had the old M3’s.  Then in 2003 or 2004 they started bringing in the M7’s.   Now it’s still mostly M7s, some M9s and, just in the last few months, a sprinkling of the old M3s have been put back into service.

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