(The following article by Joie Tyrrell was posted on Newsday’s website on November 2.)
NEW YORK — It rolled into service a year ago, a gleaming new Long Island Rail Road car making its debut on the 8:38 a.m. westbound commute out of Long Beach.
At the time, the new M-7 car received accolades from the morning riders, who noted the coat racks and graffiti-resistant walls. It was the first glimpse of the fleet that would eventually replace the railroad’s dated equipment.
Railroad officials anxiously monitored the new cars’ performance. After all, there had been problems early on with the railroad’s diesel fleet some years prior.
But so far, the M-7s have performed admirably, exceeding the railroad’s expectations, LIRR president Jim Dermody said.
“They performed exceptionally well. Customers like them, the engineers like them and the crew likes them; they have excelled in everything they have done for the first year,” he said.
The M-7s are manufactured by Canada- based Bombardier Transportation Inc. at a cost of $1.7 million per car. So far, 160 are in service, with 20 to 22 rolling in each month. By the end of 2004, there should be 364 cars in service.
The M-7 has a 223,794-mile mean distance between failures, the measure of how many miles a train runs before its needs mechanical service. The M-7s also have exceeded the contractual number of 100,000 miles between service.
They have been running on all electrified branches of the LIRR with at least one M-7 train set operating the peak period. Many have multiple sets running.
Joseph Tischner, 16, a railroad buff who is a senior at Farmingdale High School, has ridden the new trains and found them “more comfortable.”
“They’re definitely an improvement over the old electric equipment,” he said.
Peter Haynes, president of the LIRR Commuter’s Campaign, a transit advocacy group, said the M-7s have advantages and disadvantages. The equipment is new, the accessibility for the disabled is greatly improved, and climate control works well, he said.
“The bad points are the automated announcements don’t work properly. They are overly loud, announce the wrong destinations, and external speakers can be confusing if two or more trains pull side by side and both are going at the same time,” he said.
Some riders have complained that the cars seem too cramped. In order for the new trains to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, there are fewer seats than the current fleet. Each pair of cars seats 211 to 213 passengers, compared with 238 on the old cars. However, there is a bigger bathroom that can fit a wheelchair and room for wheelchair seating.
“The seats are a bit too structured for me, very comfortable, but they are a little tight,” said Jim McGovern, chair of the LIRR Commuter’s Council. “It’s not the railroad’s fault. They had to put in the ADA bathrooms and had to maximize seats.”
By 2007, the electric fleet will grow to 1,088 with the new M-7s and M-3 cars and some M-1s, which were purchased in 1985. The M-7 $1.6 billion contract calls for 678 cars.
“They definitely needed to replace the fleet – no question about that,” Haynes said. “Overall, I give this a very slight positive.”
The M-7 will eventually replace many of the M-1 cars, but some M- 1s will remain in service. A total of 168 M-1 cars should be retired by the end of the year.
The M-1s travel to the Hillside facility, where they are salvaged for parts. The cars then are loaded onto flat freight cars and transported to Mexico, where they are taken to a Bombardier plant in Sahagun. There, they are dismantled and sold for scrap.
The contract calls for decommissioning 424 M1 cars at a cost of $14,000 per car.
The M-7 will continue to complement the M-3 cars in service, though some commuters may want the new cars all the time.
“People like them very much,” McGovern said. “I often hear them comment if I ride the same train two days in a row, and one day it’s an M-7 and the next day an M-3, people inevitably ask where the new train went.”