The authority said it would increase the order from 160 to 460 train cars, splitting the order with Metro-North, and hoped to award a contract by June of 2019. The MTA nixed the plan to order those cars in September 2018, records show. The Federal Transit Administration’s Project Management Oversight Contractor, who was monitoring the project, then called East Side Access, wrote the agency “remains concerned about the schedule slippage.”
The MTA’s service plan for the launch of Grand Central Madison could have been more flexible had it made good on previous plans to order 160 new electric train cars, known as M9As, to run service into the new terminal.īut, like so many things at the MTA that rely on third party vendors, the order was botched.įederal reports show the train car order was already behind schedule in late 2016.īy early 2018, they still had not been ordered. Those trains make up 22% of the LIRR's fleet, and the only East River tunnels they fit in are the ones serving Penn Station. And MTA officials said its M3 train cars from the 1980s are small enough to fit in the tunnel, but do not have the right equipment to run on its tracks. The agency’s diesel trains, which serve areas of Long Island without electrified tracks, are 14 feet tall. The tube runs between Long Island City and East 63rd Street, carrying subway trains on its upper level and LIRR trains on the lower level.
The tunnel used by trains going to Grand Central Madison was completed in the early 1970s, but it's too small for the LIRR’s diesel trains. Officials at the MTA were aware the train fleet could cause problems for the new service as far back as 2016, according to records from the Federal Transit Administration. To run the new service, the MTA has been forced to operate fewer trains to and from Penn Station, which means more riders must make frustrating transfers at Jamaica Terminal. And the MTA's failure to order new LIRR cars has forced the agency to bring some of its oldest and least reliable train cars out of retirement. That has limited service into the East Side Access terminal. Aside from the schedule confusion and marathon transfers, there’s a much simpler reason why last month’s opening of full service to Grand Central Madison has caused problems for riders: Nearly a quarter of the Long Island Rail Road’s train cars can’t run through the East River tunnel that serves the new station.
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