(The following story by Steve Ritea appeared on the Newsday website on April 23.)
NEW YORK — The Long Island Rail Road will begin attaching metal plates at the base of each door on all of its newer M-7 electric trains in October at a cost of about $2,811 per door, officials said Wednesday.
The “threshold plates,” which include an internal heating mechanism to prevent icing in winter, will extend out two inches to help shrink the gap between platforms and trains systemwide.
LIRR senior vice president of operations Ray Kenny said the work should be completed by April 2010, with about eight cars each week being taken out of service for the work.
On Wednesday the Long Island committee of the MTA board voted to award a $9.4-million contract to Bombardier Transportation of Canada to do the work. With 836 M-7s making up the bulk of the LIRR fleet, that comes out to about $11,244 per car. Each car has four doors.
This contract requires a vote of the full MTA board next week.
Committee member James McGovern said the cost is higher than he’d like, but ultimately worth it.
“I’ve been doing this long enough to realize it’s not like going down to the local Ace Hardware,” he said. “At the end of the day it’s a pretty good fix. And an acceptable cost.”
The price includes the cost of new “loop steps,” which allow maintenance crews to climb into each car from the ground, when they are not at platforms. The current steps would be obstructed by the plates.
The contract does not include adding similar plates to 170 older M-3 electric cars or 134 bi-level cars used on diesel trans. That work will be done by LIRR staff.