NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s New York City Transit Committee on Monday approved an order for an additional 435 new subway cars, including 80 with an open-gangway design. The full MTA board will vote on the order at its monthly meeting, this Wednesday, Dec. 18.
The order will bring to 1,610 the number of Kawasaki R11 cars in service or on order; 345 of the cars are currently operating on the A and C lines, and on the Staten Island Railway.
“These new train cars make the world of difference for transit riders, in both reliability and the customer experience with better amenities for passengers,” NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said in a press release. He said the cars will be equipped with communications-based train control, as well as security cameras.
“Old train cars break down six times as frequently as new cars,” said MTA CEO Janno Lieber, “so replacing them is more than just a matter of aesthetics.”
The latest order will give New York City’s subway system 100 cars with the open-gangway design; 20 were included in an earlier 535-car order of the R211 cars as a pilot program [see “MTA provides first look …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 6, 2023]. Rather than featuring end walls and doors, the cars are connected by soft, accordion-like connections — more common on light rail trainsets — to allow passengers to move more easily between cars. Some transit advocates believe the open-gangway cars will help combat “subway surfing,” in which a thrill-seeking individual (usually young) rides on top of a train, because the accordion connections eliminate the space between cars where those individuals can climb to the roof.
The first open-gangway trainsets have been operating on the subway C line; New York City Transit has announced it will introduce two trainsets on the G line early in 2025, while continuing to operate one on the C line.
The new cars will eventually replace all R44 cars on the Staten Island Railway and the fleet of R46 cars, some of which date to 1975. The new order will allow the MTA to begin replacing R68 cars, the oldest of which date to 1986.
The website Gothamist reports that the $1.3 billion order for the new cars — a relatively low $2.9 million each, Lieber said — reflects an option locked in more than five years ago. Lieber called it “pre-COVID pricing before its supply chain issues have dramatically increased.”
