The agency started the day with an announcement via Twitter that trains will operate at reduced speeds due to the potential triple-digit temperatures predicted for Thursday through Saturday.
“Reduced speeds will ultimately result in slightly longer travel times,” Metra warns. The agency explained that when temperatures exceed 95 degrees, Metra is required to reduce train speed by 10 mph to compensate for heat-related stress on the tracks.
“This is a required safety practice that we must follow,” Bruce Marcheschi, Metra’s deputy executive director/chief operating officer, says.
Most of the Chicago area will be under an Excessive Heat Watch for several days as heat index values could rise as high as 112 degrees in some places.
But while trains may be slower, the passengers should be more comfortable than last summer because of improved maintenance of the air conditioning units on Metra’s coach cars, Marcheschi says.
“I’m happy to say this year was a great improvement over last year,” he says. The number of reported problems are down by 78 percent, he said.
“We are attacking this problem,” Marcheschi says. “When we do get a complaint … we get on top of it right away.”
The problem of “hot cars” due to air conditioning failures was especially acute last summer on the BNSF line, Metra’s busiest. Tempers boiled over quickly among customers in standing-room-only cars with 90-degree temperatures. Riders lit up Twitter with gripes.
Metra’s board has summoned BNSF officials twice to explain the cause for the problems. The Fort Worth, Texas-based BNSF Railway operates the line under contract to Metra.
On any day, 12 to 14 of the 211 coaches in the BNSF line’s fleet were experiencing problems with air conditioning, with many cars having repeated breakdowns.
Metra CEO/Executive Director Jim Derwinski also says that crews will be stationed and ready to respond quickly if mechanical breakdowns occur.
Metra knows why and always have. But if you tell your riders that they need a fare increase to fix/replace the cars, it is considered a cynical ploy.
The real issue last year was the reduction of available crews during the overnights to repair gallery cars that were set aside. And set asides are a challenge because BNSF doesn’t have a large quantity of cars just sitting around. And some cars are going through their periodic maintenance cycle.
So when a car was ordered back to the shops with a bad AC unit and there was no cars available to replace it in the consist, it either was left in to avoid overcrowding the next day but would run hot, (no substitutes available) or the car was removed and the train ran overcrowded (didn’t get fixed in time to get back to the consist)
BNSF finally relented on their pride and requested backup cars from Metra to backfill. Of course these backfill cars from Metra are not free and comes out of BNSF pocket.
Many of these gallery cars are way over their useful life and are tending to break down more often even though Metra tries to maintain funding to keep them in good operating condition.
Metra has pretty much told the world through their RFP process what they need to replace these old gallery cars and as everyone knows Nippon Sharyo went to the grave trying to meet it. They have opened it up to all comers to try and come up with some original designs now. Haven’t heard much response just yet.
Ask Metra why the ac keeps breaking down. They’re their cars, BNSF just repairs them.