The MTA will vote later this week to approve the $599 million purchase of 300 new subway cars to replace the oldest trains on the rails, starting with the C line, which will be 50 years old by the time the upgrades begin in 2015, says the Wall Street Journal.
The first of the new cars, says the article, will arrive for testing at the end of 2014, and will move into service the next year. Still, the MTA hasn’t decided yet whether the C line will get brand-new cars, “or just less-old trains,” says the Journal.
MTA records show that the cars on the C line made it about 62,000 miles between failures in January, says the article, which is a 40% drop in monthly performance from the previous year. Conversely, the newer trains on the E line in Manhattan and Queens averaged more than 1.6 million miles between failures, which is the system’s best.
According to the Straphangers Campaign’s 2011 State of the Subways report, the C line was the worst of all 18 lines (tied with the 2 line), with the least amount of daylight service, and no night service, with cars breaking down more often than other lines, and poor in-car announcements.
