Reliability among subway cars on the lettered lines is steadily slipping, MTA data shows — even after the transit agency recently retired its most breakdown-prone trains, which carried riders for more than half a century.
An analysis by THE CITY of transit agency numbers posted to the state’s open data dashboard reveals that Mean Distance Between Failure (MDBF) — a key MTA metric for tracking subway car reliability — has been declining since 2021, with cars now breaking down every 126,416 miles, based on a 12-month rolling average calculated in September.
MTA data shows that reliability across the 6,523-car fleet has dipped to its lowest level in four years after hitting pandemic-era highs of nearly 150,000 miles in 2020 and 2021 when ridership plummeted. That figure is now beneath 2015 levels, when subway cars were averaging more than 133,000 miles before breakdowns, according to MTA data.
The 3,633 cars on the lettered lines, the so-called B Division, have particularly been a drag on subway car reliability this year, with THE CITY’s analysis of MTA data showing a 13.4% dropoff in reliability from 2022 — in contrast to a nearly 2% dip on the numbered lines of the A Division.
The drop in lettered line car reliability has come even after the R32 and R42 subway cars — which came into service between 1964 through 1970 — took their final runs on ceremonial rides in 2020 and last year. The oldest cars still in service, the R46 cars that are on the A, C, N, W and Q lines, began running in 1975.
“It is counterintuitive, it is counter-productive and it is counter to what we want to see happen,” Lisa Daglian. executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said of the subway car reliability numbers.
The average age of cars on the lettered lines is 24.3 years old, according to the MTA, while the 2,890 cars on the numbered lines have an average age of 27.2 years.
Yet the oldest models run on the A, C, N, W and Q lines — R46 cars have been in service between 45 and 48 years. An MTA spokesperson pointed out that a large number of those run on the A line, the system’s longest, where they are exposed to sea water in the Rockaways that causes premature wear to components and trains.
Transit officials responded to questions from THE CITY by pointing to post-pandemic gains in other key areas, notably ridership and on-time performance.
“Subways are seeing the best on-time performance and reliability in more than 10 years, which is driving record ridership,” said Demetrius Crichlow, head of subways for New York City Transit, which uses a variety of metrics to determine “reliability.” “As new R211 cars replace aging 50-year-old cars that have been in service since the Nixon administration, the need for overall fleet repairs will be reduced and reliability is expected to surge even higher.”
New Cars, New Problems
But even the newest cars in the subway fleet, which began carrying riders in March, have encountered problems. A gear box problem caused the MTA last month to sideline six of the seven trains made up of R211 cars, though two were put back into service Friday, a spokesperson confirmed.
The car-reliability drop comes as the subway posted its highest ridership in a year during the seven-day period between Oct. 23-29, according to the MTA.
“As soon as ridership goes back up, MDBF is affected,” Daglian said. “It’s wear and tear and it’s also the human factor, such as people messing with doors.”
The MTA last month reported a nearly 80% on-time performance mark on weekdays, with a weekend on-time performance that, at almost 85%, exceeds agency goals.
MTA Chairperson and CEO Janno Lieber has repeatedly touted how far the transit system and MDBF rates have improved since the early 1980s, when massive capital investments helped save a crumbling transit system.
“Back then, subway cars broke down every 6,000 miles,” Lieber wrote in an October Op-Ed for amNewYork. “Today that stat — Mean Distance Between Failures — is 120,000 miles. A 2000% improvement!”
But THE CITY’s analysis of MTA numbers points to a recent trend of more frequent breakdowns, with reliability declining from 2021 on several of the agency’s subway car types.
“[Mean Distance Between Failure] is an important piece of providing the service that everyone knows we need and deserve,” said Andrew Albert, an MTA board member and chairperson of the New York City Transit Riders Council. “If there is a particular problem with a particular car class, it has to be evaluated, diagnosed and fixed sooner than later.”
The MTA plans to buy thousands of new subway cars over the next two decades, but the two newest types of car classes have both had to be temporarily pulled off the tracks. In January 2020 and again in June of that year, the MTA removed close to 300 of the R179 subway cars from service on the A, C, J and Z lines because of mechanical failures on the cars manufactured by Bombardier.
Supply Side Slide
The agency has also contended with lingering pandemic-driven supply chain slowdowns, which delayed the arrival of new subway cars, among other things.
“There were a lot of COVID-related supply issues on parts,” said Matt Ahern, chair of the car equipment division for Transport Workers Union Local 100. “Early on, you couldn’t get anything and if we didn’t make [parts] on property, you were going to be waiting a while.”
At the transit agency’s October board meeting, Lieber cited how the MTA can now only buy train cars from Kawasaki and Alstom after Congress in 2019 banned U.S. transit agencies from purchasing those made by Chinese companies.
The China Railway Rolling Stock Corp., which in 2018 was one of the winners of the “MTA Genius Transit Challenge” for its proposal to design new, lightweight subway cars for New York City Transit is now among the companies off-limits to American transit agencies.
The “Genius” contest was a 2017 idea of then-Governor Andrew Cuomo as a way to bring innovation to the transit agency, but the selection of a Chinese company was later criticized by Sen. Charles Schumer as a potential threat to national security.
At the Oct. 25 board meeting, Lieber said he supports the decision by Congress, but said the restrictions come with consequences for competition.
“We are down at this point to two companies that produce railcars that are Buy America-compliant and that can build for the MTA based on certifications and qualifications,” Lieber said at the meeting.
Kawasaki and Alstom, multinational companies headquartered in Japan and France, but have plants in Yonkers and upstate Plattsburgh where MTA subway and commuter rail-cars are assembled.
Lieber said at the meeting that the MTA plans to issue a request for proposals in the coming weeks for “ a major strategic study” on how to grow the number of companies that can produce subway train cars, railcars and buses and meet Buy America requirements.
“Sometimes, everybody assumes that you can go down to the corner Walgreens and buy a new subway car,” he quipped.
“We need to incentivize manufacturers worldwide and domestically, especially, to grow their capacity,” Lieber added. “As the 20-Year Needs Assessment highlights, we have 8,700 cars we’re going to need to replace over the next two decades.”