(The following story by Eric Moskowitz appeared on the Boston Globe website on July 15, 2010.)
BOSTON — The MBTA yesterday agreed to spend $115 million to buy 20 new locomotives for its oft-criticized commuter rail lines, saying the purchase should improve on-time performance of trains that daily carry 70,000 people between Boston and its suburbs.
The new locomotives will allow the T to retire a significant part of its aging fleet of locomotives, which are blamed for about half of all service delays on the commuter rail lines. About 14 percent of all commuter rail trips were late during the first half of this year.
The locomotive purchase, which was delayed for years because of cost concerns and disputes over whether the trains would be built in the United States, will be financed by a loan taken out by the T. But agency officials said they expect the federal government to reimburse 80 percent of the cost of the purchase.
The new locomotives, T officials said, will also be more environmentally friendly than the existing fleet, burning less fuel and emitting fewer pollutants.
The T had initially hoped to buy 38 new locomotives, but the process dragged on so long that the agency can no longer afford to buy that many. Nonetheless, agency officials hailed the decision, which was approved yesterday by the agency’s board.
“This is great news,’’ said MBTA General Manager Richard A. Davey, who previously was general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co., the private company that manages the MBTA’s commuter rail operations. “It will provide reliability and better service for our present customers, give us more flexibility to provide future service, reduce our long-term costs in terms of fuel, and it’s an environmentally more friendly locomotive than we have in the fleet today.’’
Brian Kane, budget and policy analyst for the MBTA Advisory Board, which represents the cities and towns served by the T, welcomed the purchase, but said it should have happened sooner. The new locomotives are scheduled to arrive in 2013.
“We would have all preferred if this deal was done a year or two ago,’’ Kane said.
The commuter rail runs 476 combined inbound and outbound trips a day, about three-fifths of those along South Station lines. Riders regularly complain about the trains’ occasional failure to meet posted schedules — a phenomenon the T blames on everything from medical emergencies to construction projects. But aging engines have increasingly been cited as the cause in recent years.
At South Station yesterday, outbound commuters said they would welcome new locomotives. Jason Tucker, an attorney from Wrentham, estimated that one in every five trips he takes is delayed by five to 10 minutes or more. “Always good to upgrade,’’ said Tucker, 44, waiting to catch a Franklin train.
Noreen Simpson said the trains she takes to and from Norwood Central Station typically run on or near posted times. But once last year she sat on a broken-down train for two hours, stalled midway on the commute to her engineering job.
“They do break down, so I guess an upgrade would be good,’’ said Simpson, 59. “As long as our rates don’t go up.’’
More than half of the T’s existing 80 locomotives are near or beyond their expected lifespan of 25 years. All of the locomotives date at least to the 1990s, and 18 were built between 1978 and 1980.
The T uses three-quarters of its fleet on a given weekday to propel the commuter coaches that fan out from North Station and South Station.
As a stopgap measure, the T recently arranged to purchase two unused, surplus locomotives at $3.5 million each from the Utah Transit Authority, and to lease up to nine others, with the first of those expected to arrive by Oct. 1, MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.
The new locomotives approved yesterday by the board will be built by the Idaho-based MotivePower Inc., using parts manufactured by General Electric. Future warranty work and a parts inventory will be handled in Worcester through a partnership between MotivePower and the Providence and Worcester Railroad, a freight company. The new locomotives will take three years to build and are expected to arrive between spring and fall 2013.
The purchase will chip away at a $3 billion backlog of investments needed to maintain basic service levels on existing train, bus, and subway routes and at stations, a “state of good repair’’ deficit noted last year in an MBTA review ordered by Governor Deval Patrick and led by former John Hancock chief David D’Alessandro, T officials said.
The T’s earlier attempt to purchase locomotives was derailed in part by lobbying from Idaho politicians seeking to protect MotivePower against a rival bid from a European company proposing to assemble most of its locomotives in Kentucky after designing and building the first few overseas. The T unsuccessfully sought a waiver to have that bid considered eligible under the “Buy America’’ requirements for federally reimbursed transit projects.
The T’s locomotives each run roughly 50,000 miles a year. The new locomotives together will save more than 700,000 gallons annually in fuel — more than $1.5 million — over their aging counterparts, and will emit 924 fewer tons of nitrogen oxide, 38 fewer tons of hydrocarbons, and 26 fewer tons of particulate matter, according to the T.