New train cars are coming to the Staten Island Railway for the first time in 50 years — but MTA officials couldn’t estimate when passengers will be able to ride them.
Siu Ling Ko, the vice president of car equipment at NYC Transit, said during a committee meeting on Monday the new train cars will be tested on the railway for a month starting in mid-August. She said the MTA’s manufacturer, Kawasaki, will begin delivering the agency’s full order of 75 new Staten Island Railway cars by the end of the year.
The delivery is already two years late, which MTA officials have blamed on problems at Kawasaki’s manufacturing plant in Nebraska. MTA spokesperson Michael Cortez said the agency still doesn’t know when passengers will be able to ride the shiny new cars — called R211S’s — because they’ll need to be tested before they’re approved for service.
The new train cars will be a major modernization for the dilapidated Staten Island Railway. The current fleet of trains on the line — called R44s — first entered service in the early 1970s when John Lindsay was mayor, and are now prone to mechanical issues. Today, the line only carries about 7,000 riders per weekday, compared to nearly 4 million trips per day on the subway system.
“The R44’s on Staten Island are really very old there and the Staten Island Railway is an important part of the mass transit system in the region,” said MTA President of Construction and Development Jamie Torres-Springer.
MTA board member Norman Brown recommended the new trains be taken away from Staten Island because elected officials from the borough have been vocal opponents of congestion pricing, which was put on pause by Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this month in a move that blew a $15 billion hole in the agency’s construction budget.
“Since representatives from Staten Island on the state, local and federal level do not support the capital plan, since they don’t really care, could we run them on the A line?” Brown said.
Ko said the new Staten Island train cars could technically run on subway lines in the other four boroughs — but it would require more work from the manufacturer.
The new trains are part of a larger order that also includes modern cars on the A line and the open-gangway trains on the C line — with accordion style connectors that allow riders to walk through the entire length of the train.
The cost of the Staten Island trains was covered by the MTA’s 2015-2019 capital plan, which did not rely on money from congestion pricing. But the MTA in 2022 ordered another 640 train cars from Kawasaki designed to run on subway lines, which officials said could be on the chopping block because of Hochul’s move to pause the tolls.
The full MTA board is slated to meet Wednesday, where officials plan to lay out which projects could be cut from its current capital plan due to the loss of the revenue from the congestion pricing tolls.