The agency Wednesday issued a request for proposals for at least 200 new railcars and is urging manufacturers to suggest alternative designs that might work better than the widely used bi-level gallery cars, an industry staple.
“We are excited to open this procurement up and explore all the alternative designs that may be proposed,” Metra CEO/Executive Director Jim Derwinski says in a statement. “Safety, reliability and an improved, modern passenger experience will be important aspects to Metra in this procurement.”
Metra says its cars have an average age of 30 years, the oldest in the nation, and that the oldest cars in daily service are more than 65 years old.
Proposals will be due in August and Metra said it hopes to finalize a deal by the end of the year. The order will be for at least 200 new cars, with options to buy up to 200 more if funding is available.
The agency said an important consideration for the new cars will be their seating capacity. Metra said yard space and platform length currently limit the number and length of trains that can operate. Thus, the agency hopes higher-capacity cars can meet increased ridership demand within the existing confines.
In addition, the agency said the interior design of the seats, aisles, stairwells and doors must create the “most efficient passenger flow possible.”
The seats must have arm rests and cup holders, features which Metra started adding in the past few years.
Manufacturers will also have the option of proposing features such as USB ports, foot rests, tray tables, and even heated floors.
The RFP says the new cars also must include bike racks for two to five bikes, a camera/DVR system for the passenger area and LED lighting. Onboard Wi-Fi may be proposed as an option; but if the proposal does not include Wi-Fi, there must be provisions for it to be added later.
Metra said some alternative car designs now available have lower, platform-level boarding that could benefit Americans with Disabilities Act customers and families with strollers when boarding and detraining.
Experts say one deficiency with gallery cars is “dwell time” — the time it takes passengers to board and exit the train. Metra said it will consider other designs that have different side-loading door configurations that could potentially speed train loading.
Metra had sought to purchase as many as 350 new railcars as recently as 2016 but put off the decision citing a shortfall in capital money from the state of Illinois.
Agency officials have been pressing Illinois officials strongly to come up with a new long-term bond program to pay for new equipment. The state has not had such a program for more than a decade, but the recently elected governor has indicated he is open to the idea.
John, To the best of my knowledge passenger cars like freight are some where around 10′ wide, not sure what the available inside width is but obviously it’d less. Four abreast on each side of the aisle would mean about one foot per seat. Don’t think a bucket seat would help me much.
I’ve ridden the New Mexico Rail Runner which has doors near both ends. If crowding was a problem with people trying to get off while others were boarding my suggestion would be to have passenger board at one end and de-train at the other.
As a person who runs G-scale equipment, where would one find schematics of the old cars for modeling purposes? The bi-level design has been around for 70 years and would in my opinion be a sure-fire seller to the modeling community of all scales.
If the Bombadier’s were superior, Metra would have ordered them by now. I will have to research it in more depth, but I don’t think they meet some of the RFP criteria. Passenger capacity is one.
This would be a good article for the magazine.
“Whats makes a good commuter passenger car?”
Or “Why can’t Metra find what they need?”
John and August – Doesn’t Bombardier have bi-level cars on MBTA? From what I remember it’s a superior design to the Chicago gallerys.
The Chicago gallerys seem to work well with high-level platforms on Metra Electric. My question is this: is there any variant of the Chicago gallerys that can switch-hit as between high-level and low-level platforms?
Having ridden all generations of the bi-level gallery cars of the various suppliers, Pullman, Budd, NipponSharyo, US Amerail(MK) and Bombadier, here is my 2 cents.
The bi-level capacity can be increased due to digital ticketing. The legacy 2nd floor was always 1 abreast on each side because the conductors had to be able to reach up and punch the ticket or accept cash fares.
Cash fares have been eliminated now.
Also there was a need for modesty panels to be retro fitted on the legacy cars as more women entered the workforce. This made it harder for 2nd floor patrons to collect change for their fare. Again, an obsolete requirement.
Any new design should contain a “full” second floor with 4 abreast seating on each side with the usual push-pull seat backs that look more like buckets, than benches.
Ingress/Egress should be handled at each end of the car. The lower level seating enters/exits at one end and upper level at the other end.
One issue with push-pull operations on Metra and dwell time is that everyone must exit on the same side. The current gallery cars require both the lower and upper levels to converge and deboard in the center car 3 wide door.
Bombadier did this by having two doors per side at the 1/4 mark of the car. But all upstairs had to enter exit said doors. By separating the upstairs and downstairs ingress/egress, there is no clogging or aggregating all levels in the same doors. But Bombadier wasted a large amount of space that could have been used for standard seats downstairs to accommodate ADA. Also Metra has learned that not all cars need ADA compliance, depending on the traffic types, they only needed 1 -2 cars that fulfilled ADA mandates.
The pitfall of this is that people can’t see how many seats are available and change their minds after the train moves on. This can be resolved by having open seat indicators, just like a parking garage does, that shows how many open seats are available. If a level is full, the display will say “Stand Only”. If the level has no room at all, the door will report “Full”.
Car status can be displayed on a large screen at the station so people can plan their car boardings. Even a phone app can help provide guidance on seat planning.
Metra had retrofitted bike attachment hooks on their cars, but this required the fare payer to bring the bike onboard into the passenger area. Instead of this, the new gallery car should have a “bike tray” that comes out and unfolds when the train comes to a station stop.
When the train is ready to leave, the tray with the bikes attached folds back down and recedes under the car until the next stop.
As for the in car WiFi, that is easy. Place a 5G/4G LTE modem with a router in each car, and the wifi name is the car number. Passengers can select “basic” which is free, preferred which allows videos, you tube, etc and premium for people who want to use their work VPN. They can purchase a plan with their digital ticket if they so choose or pay as they go using Wayport, AT&T, Comcast or some other provider of their choice.
Since each car has a 5G link, any/all car telemetry can be piggybacked and push seating availability data to the apps. They can even push car telemetry to acquire data on air conditioning, security camera feeds, system updates to the LCD signs in the cars themselves, brake quality on the trucks, etc.
Then Metra can use analytics to crunch this passenger and car data and optimize car availability based on loading patterns, maintenance schedules, when ADA needs peak, etc.
Again just my 2 cents.
Metra should go with the bombardier Bi level commuter cars cause I’ve ridden in the Bombardier commuter cars for years on many different commuter railroads such as ACE, New Mexico Rail Runner, Sounder, and of course Metrolink and I’ve always liked them. Nice seats, especially leg room and the design I’ve always liked as well. Can’t complain about Bombardier.
Plus Metra should stick with Bi level commuter cars.
It’s NOT all about Siemens.
It’s taken 70 years to see the limitations of the gallery cars?
Then again, there’s only so much that can be down with low-level platforms.
Good. Those bilevel gallery cars are cramped and getting to the 2nd floor is impossible for people who are at all mobility impaired because the stairways are incredibly narrow. They’re a 1950s design that needs to go away. Far better designs exist.
The loading and unloading is very slow. I used to regularly ride Caltain, which uses cars of a similar design (made by Nippon Sharyo) and it takes forever at crowded stops to get on and off. The cars need to have two doors per side and easier access to the 2nd level (as Caltrain’s newer Bombardier cars do).
It’s not really very complicated.