(The following article by Joie Tyrrell was posted on Newsday.com on July 5.)
NEW YORK — First the seats, now the toilets.
Starting this week, the Long Island Rail Road will begin modifying the bathrooms on its new M-7 fleet because the toilets clog, leaving some facilities out of order, railroad officials said.
“We have had some problems and we are working with the manufacturer to come to a resolution concerning those problems,” said LIRR spokesman Bob Brennan. “All the cars are going to be modified. We have 276 in service and there’s 138 bathrooms. They are all going to be modified.”
According to the LIRR, problems include defective level sensors, kinks in the flexible piping and a seizing flush regulator. All work is under warranty from toilet manufacturer Temoinsa of Spain, and the cars’ manufacturer, Bombardier Transportation Inc. of Canada.
But the toilet problem is the latest in a string of criticisms of the new cars, which cost $1.7 million apiece. Since the introduction of the M-7 cars in 2002, the railroad retrofitted cars because they swayed too much while traveling in extreme cold.
Also, the railroad plans to refit extended arm rests because commuters have complained they catch on pants and tear pockets. And, commuters have complained the new seats are too narrow.
Peter Haynes, president of advocacy group LIRR Commuter’s Campaign, said he has heard complaints that a number of the M-7 bathrooms seem to be consistently out of service.
“When a new car comes in, everyone looks at it and it is brand new and everyone says, ‘Oh gee, this is nice,’ but they have been here a couple of years and now we are starting to see the design failures and the maintenance failures,” he said. “Ten to 20 years down the road who knows if these are going to be better than the [older] M-3s.”
But railroad officials have been pleased with the M-7 trains, which they said have exceeded reliability expectations. The M-7 has an average 217,084-mile mean distance between failures, the measure of how many miles a train runs before it needs mechanical service.
The M-7s have surpassed the contractual number of 100,000 miles between service. By contrast, the much older M-3s average 47,784 miles between failures.
By April 2006, the railroad expects to be running 678 M-7 cars on all electrified lines, making up the bulk of the LIRR’s electric fleet.
Brennan said new cars will have bathroom modifications before they are put in service.
The situation is “not unusual with new equipment like this,” as the kinks are worked out as the cars roll into service, Brennan said.
Brennan said the toilets are serviced every three to four days and that customers and cleaning crews had noticed problems.
“I can’t emphasize the point enough that these are still under warranty and it is not costing us a dime,” he said.