San Francisco Bay Area: BART restarts delivery of its Fleet of the Future rail cars

[marmar]

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is accepting deliveries of its Fleet of the Future rail cars after pausing deliveries in January 2021 due to reliability issues.

When BART temporarily halted the new car deliveries in January 2021, it said the move would allow Bombardier “time to take steps to improve the cars’ reliability and availability, and to alleviate rail car storage constraints at BART’s maintenance yards.”

BART explains one of the issues with the new fleet involved software in the on-board automatic train control system that would cause the cars to stop while in service. This would require the train operator to reboot the system resulting in a five-to-10-minute delay. Additionally, BART noted that stopping trains under wet or rainy conditions could cause the development of flat spot in the wheels of the cars. While neither issue was a safety concern, BART says the impacts to service reliability and car availability were of concern.

BART worked with the rail cars’ manufacturer to make the necessary upgrades and modifications during the pause in deliveries. The transit agency says those modifications coupled with software improvements have improved the overall performance of the new cars. ................(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/vehicles/article/21257110/bart-restarts-delivery-of-its-fleet-of-the-future-rail-cars

[Auggie]

1. Hope they worked out the kinks

Being stuck on mass transit during commute hours is not fun.