NEW YORK — New York City Transit will stop accepting delivery of new cars from Bombardier until the company fixes problems on existing cars, Reuters reports.
The news agency says that NYC Transit President Andy Byford told a Metropolitan Transportation Authority committee meeting that Bombardier is not making a case to win future orders, based on delays and other problems with the current 300-car, $600-million order. He said the agency would not accept any more deliveries “until they get their act together.”
Bombardier has delivered 160 cars in the order, which was originally to be completed in early 2017 but is now expected to be complete in September 2019. A company spokesman told Reuters it is working with New York City Transit to approve a solution to return sidelined cars to service, and that it expects that to happen shortly. The cars are out of service because of problems with air compressor software.
Reuters reported earlier this week that Swiss Federal Railways had similarly declined delivery of new equipment from Bombardier until existing equipment is fixed.
The more complex you make it the more difficult it is to fix it. Way too much automation in today’s trains. Bombardier and Kawasaki must have the same people building commuter cars. Absolutely terrible to work with. Pullman Standard built cars with a lot less computers and a lot more manual operations. Bring back the Pullman’s!
Once again a sad commentary on how things are made today and lacking in quality and durability and too much emphasis on Space Age and Star Wars technology to move the masses around. Apparently the MTA still has not learned their lesson from past experiences and problems with earlier subway car models. Anybody who has lived in New York City for the past 50 years or so will remember the issues with the R 44,46, 68 and R143 and present R160 and while the R 44 model is gone save for the Staten Island fleet nd both the R 46 and R 68 are nearing the end of their service life, we still have the R 32 and a handful of R 42 cars still chugging along and both models are well over 50 years in service Let’s see if any of these new hi tech subway cars will ever last that long in service. The riding public just wants a subway car that works with efficient service, no breakdowns and gets them from Point A to Point B Lets save the technology for space, national defense and communications.
Just a bit of transit history The orginal subway cars of the old Interborough system lasted almost 60 years before being replaced. The BRT took old wooden coaches and rebuilt them into a three car articulated unit called the C type and placed them into service on the old Fulton Street el in Brooklyn. Downright noisy, ugly and something that would be hideous looking, neverless they were dependable, never really broke down and provided good dependable service for over 30 years before being scrapped. Maybe those old models lacked technology, they were plain and nothing fancy or shiny but they provided good dependable and safe service for New York’s transit users for over 60 years. Can’t today’s generation do the same thing? or is the builders of today’s new hi tech subway cars lacking something or the MTA just an overgrown out of control bureaucracy drowning in its own red tape and ink. We can fly space probes to Mars and beyond, have computer guided missles and drones and practically have our lives controlled by computers but we can’t build and operate transit
vehicles and subway cars to operate efficiently and last for years. Very sad indeed
Bombardier……a once great company. Poor management a lousy customer service.
They are made in a Plattsburg NY but if supplies are subpar, so will be the end result. CTA went to the Chinese and so will others, Oh and Air compressor software issues? are you !&@“?! kidding me? Since when its such a simple object. Sh.. breaks when you make it complicated. Did Fs & Es have software? Ridiculous!!
ROGER – Rail car construction was a fast way to go out of business. Bombardier was supposed to be the backstop to that process. Sadly they don’t seem to have what it takes to go forward. We’re looking at a world of three or so major suppliers and Bombardier may not be one of them.
As for Bombardier’s commercial aircraft, it’s goodbye Bombardier, hello Airbus. Guess it’s back to snowmobiles.
Canada has lost locomotives and is losing railcars and commercial airplanes. As for automobiles, the same car can be made in any factory in Thailand, Japan, China, Mexico, India, Slovakia, Spain or the United States at a lower cost than in Ontario.
Bombardier seems to have lost its way. They couldn’t deliver the Toronto Transit Commission order for LRT cars on time and they have defects to repair. Now Andy Byford, who was at TTC when the Bombardier problems started, has to deal with similar issues at NYCT. Bombardier lost LRT orders in Ontario and didn’t get the Via Rail deal when they should have enjoyed a home team advantage. Now they are in trouble with Swiss Federal Railways. As far as I know, the equipment has come from different factories in Canada, Europe and the US. A sad situation.
The fine craftspeople and engineers at Pullman-Standard that is now part of Bombardier are obviously long gone.
Software for compressors? What do they do? Play Angry Birds? Stop making things so complex.
Sometimes I think that maybe it’s all too dependent on computers and software (and I’ve worked in IT for 25 years). NYCTA still runs cars built by St Louis Car in the late 1960s (some of the last cars built by STLCC) where most everything is analog.