San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) will begin testing four of its new cars on the Hayward test track. The first new cars are expected to enter service this winter.
“These are going to be extremely energy-efficient cars,” said Henry Kolesar, BART’s group manager for vehicle maintenance engineering. “We had asked for a lot from them (car manufacturer Bombardier), to produce trains that were 7 percent more energy-efficient that the current ones, and we’re expecting to get something even beyond what they had promised.”
BART trains are all-electric, running on third-rail power of 1,000 volts. The new cars will have the following energy-efficient features:
- The propulsion system efficiency will be around 4.5 kilowatt hours per car mile;
- A new traction motor design provides more torque, or turning power, with less energy;
- An air-conditioning system uses dual, parallel refrigerant compressors for better climate regulation;
- Microplug doors provide a tighter seal;
- LED lighting, including headlights, is cooler and self-adjusting;
- The exterior is aluminum, which is lightweight and recyclable when the cars are dismantled;
- The tops of the cars are white instead of silver to reflect sunlight and reduce heat loads;
- Regenerative braking pumps energy back into the third rail system more efficiently.
“BART has always been a leader on the edge of efficiency technology,” continued Kolesar. “We didn’t want to experiment with entire new concepts that had never been tried before. Instead, we took known technology and pushed it to its limits to get the maximum efficiency.”
BART Chief Marketing Officer Aaron Weinstein remarked, “With the Fleet of the Future, our goal is to increase the number of train cars in the BART fleet by 62 percent to accommodate more people on BART and help them get where they need to go. And that, in turn, will help reduce traffic on Bay Area freeways, lessen chemical runoff into the Bay, and improve air quality."