The final selection of new cars for the Red Line. Photo: courtesy of MBTA.
The Massachusetts Fiscal and Management Control Board (FMCB) has approved an order for 120 additional Red Line cars from the CRRC MA Corporation to be used on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) Red Line. The FMCB authorized MBTA management to spend up to $277 million for the procurement of the 120 cars, with an option to acquire an additional 14 cars, along with associated capital spare parts and an extension of the technical support period.
“This decision represents a new day for the MBTA, one that that the Fiscal and Management Control Board has been working so hard to build as they take the lead on improving service for customers,” said State Secretary of Transportation Stephanie Pollack. “The new approach with this decision was to ask the question, ‘What are the actual needs of the customer and of the fleet for Red Line service.” The answer came back that one standardized fleet would increase the number of customers transported per hour by 30,000 and would make for more efficient maintenance.”
“With this decision, the T is now on track to have a new Red Line fleet with sufficient capacity to run about 50 percent more trains at rush hour and to reduce the time customers have to wait for a Red Line train to only about three minutes,” added Pollack.
There are currently 132 Red Line cars on order from the CRRC MA Corporation that will replace the oldest cars in the Red Line fleet by 2022. Instead of overhauling and upgrading 84 older cars that are in need of extensive work, the FMCB approved the MBTA's proposed recommendation to replace them with new cars, increasing the current order by 120 with an option to purchase an additional 14.
The MBTA estimates the new cars along with minor speed code changes will boost capacity by 50 percent, raising the number of trains from 13 to 20 per hour. The MBTA will also be able to implement a life-cycle maintenance program, resulting in better maintained vehicles, fewer disabled trains and breakdowns causing service interruptions, and an extended service life of at least 30 years.
“This is a historic day for the MBTA, certainly for our Red Line riders,” said Jeff Gonneville, MBTA chief operating officer. “The MBTA will have 120 new cars good for thirty years instead of getting no more than ten years of extra life out of a fleet of eighty-four cars that are already nearly twenty-five years old. The new cars will cost $310,000 less per car than overhauling the old cars currently in use.”
“Right now, we run about a four-and-a-half minute headway on the Red Line. This would get us down to a three-minute headway,” continued Gonneville. “That equates to twenty trains per hour, which also equates to about 30,000 passengers per hour increase of what we would be able to carry. In order to run a three-minute headway, we will be operating about 210 trains per hour. (There will be a) total of 252 standard Red Line cars at the Authority.”
“The MBTA will have 120 new cars good for thirty years instead of getting no more than ten years of extra life out of a fleet of eighty-four cars that are already nearly twenty-five years old,” Gonneville added. “The new cars will cost $310,000 less per car than overhauling the old cars currently in use.”
As part of the 2014 contract, CRRC is building a new plant for the final assembly of the new cars. Completion of the facility is expected in September 2017 with manufacturing to begin in April 2018. CRRC has estimated that the plant will create at least 150 new permanent jobs in Springfield and the MBTA noted that increasing the number of Red Line cars purchased from CRRC adds more job opportunities at the facility.
“This means that the employees working out of the factory in Springfield, instead of wrapping up, will continue to have jobs even longer, producing cars into the year 2023,” said Secretary Pollack. “It’s Massachusetts jobs, Massachusetts workers, a Massachusetts supply chain.”