(Kimberly Paynter/WHYY) Few cars, growing congestion Such major problems should not happen earlier than that.”īelow the Market-Frankford Line car, a beam was added and welded to mend its crack. “For rail cars, their life can easily be 40 years. “This is unusual, that you would only have 138 out of 218 cars in service,” he said. When SEPTA purchased the cars in 1997, Vuchic thought the agency had bought more than it would ever be able to use. Busch attributed the disparity to M-4 trains being built in “married” sets of two inseparable cars.īut retired University of Pennsylvania transit professor Vukan Vuchic, who planned SEPTA’s regional rail network, said the lack of spare cars was surprising. He said that SEPTA needs all of its 138 operational M-4 cars to run the line at rush hour, but more than 30% of the entire MFL fleet is out for either steel beam repairs, regularly scheduled five-year overhauls, seat reconfiguration or other types of maintenance.įor comparison, only about 15% of the 1980s-era Kawasaki cars that traverse the Broad Street Line are out for service at any given time. Repair crews have dubbed it ‘the hoagie approach,’” Busch said.īut until the subway cars are properly hoagie-fied, SEPTA will have to juggle already limited number of M-4 cars available for daily use - and also handle increased frequency and ridership demands. The process, developed with consultant LTK Engineering Services, involves sandwiching defective beams between two new steel plates.
The agency will spend an additional $15 to $18 million over the next five to six years to perform specialized repairs designed to permanently fix the problem. SEPTA invested $3.3 million last fall in the construction of a specialized repair facility for the cracked cars at 69th Street Transportation Center in Upper Darby. But we’ve had instances where we applied that weld and cracks reappeared.”
“It was expected that the repairs would be good for a couple of years. “We knew at that time we were going to have to find a permanent fix down the road,” SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor
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