The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's oversight board on Monday unanimously approved up to $277 million to order 120 additional cars the Boston Red Line subway. for its Red Line.
The cars will supplement 284 the MBTA is already buying to upgrade its Red and Orange lines and means the Red line, some of whose existing trains date to 1969, will have an entirely new fleet by 2022.
Many Red Line trains broke down during the transit crisis in the winter of 2014-2015, when a record 110 inches of snow fell on the region. It prompted Beverly Scott, the MBTA's general manager at the time, to say: "This is not a spring-chicken system by any stretch of the imagination." Gov. Charlie Baker and state lawmakers then created the Fiscal and Management Control Board, which meets weekly.
The MBTA, which operates the oldest mass transit system in the U.S., will order the new cars from CRRC MA, a Springfield, Mass., subsidiary of Chinese Railroad Rolling Stock Corp. The authority had originally intended to overhaul and upgrade some of its cars.
"One standardized fleet would increase the number of customers transported per hour by 30,000 and would make for more efficient maintenance," said state transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack, whose Massachusetts Department of Transportation oversees the MBTA.
The MBTA estimates this replacement, along with minor speed code changes, will boost capacity by 50%, raising the number of trains per hour from 13 to 20. The new cars also have the latest propulsion and braking systems, allowing the system to plan a target of three minutes headway between trains to reduce customer wait times.
