The Metropolitan Transportation Authority rolled out its first brand-new subway cars in five years Friday, giving riders used to the old yellow-and-orange seats the first glimpse of the agency’s future.
The shiny new cars — pressed into service on the city’s longest subway line, the A train — feature wider doors for quicker boarding, flip-up seats to provide additional space for the handicapped, new security cameras to bolster safety and digital information signs that offer information about transfers.
“It’s just so exciting just to see,” said Candace Chen, 37, who happened across the train’s maiden run during her afternoon commute.
“I think that’s what is really catching everybody, and getting everybody in such a good mood,” she added. “You don’t expect on your daily commute to be walking across like, ‘oh, wow, this is the inaugural ride’.”
The 10-car train — which ran from 207th Street in Inwood to the Far Rockaway terminal in Queens — is part of the MTA’s next generation subway fleet, known as the R211.
The agency has put in orders for nearly 1,200 of the new cars, enough for roughly 120 new trains, worth an estimated $3.2 billion.
“The new cars are gonna give our riders a more modern passenger experience,” said MTA chairman Janno Lieber during a press conference at the Inwood A-train subway station. “Riding the subway no longer feels like a step into the past.”
These new trains are set to first replace the Reagan-era R68s that currently provide much of the service on the A and the C.
The new train cars are needed to take full advantage of the MTA’s new computerized signaling system, which the agency is spending billions on to replace the decades-old and malfunction-prone stop light system that it currently relies on.
Officials recently reorganized their signal replacement time table to prioritize the A/C/E and the B/D/F/M trains, which are some of the least reliable and most delay-prone in the entire system.
Installation of the new system, known as Computer Based Train Control, is currently underway on the 8th Avenue trunk line.
MTA officials also recently moved up the schedule to overhaul the signals on the Fulton subway, which also serves the A and the C through Brooklyn.
As part of the program, the MTA has purchased two trains with the subway cars linked together by an open passageway, allowing riders to easily move around and find seats during the rush hours.
It’s the agency’s first test of the ‘open gangway’ trains that have become a staple of the subway systems in London, Paris and Toronto because they offer 10 percent more space for passengers when compared to their closed-door counterparts.
However, officials have said they are optimistic about the idea and have made ‘open gangways’ a likely design component of the MTA’s next generation of subway cars for the numbered lines, dubbed the R262.