Gov. Charlie Baker addresses reporters at the MBTA's Wellington maintenance yard in front of a new Orange Line train in July 2019. Photo courtesy of the Office of Gov. Charlie Baker.
Heading into 2020, the MBTA does not have a timeline for putting its new Orange Line cars back into service after the trains were pulled from the rails in November.
MBTA spokeswoman Lisa Battiston said Tuesday that tests are ongoing to solve an issue with pads that sit between the train cars and their wheel assemblies.
“Vehicle engineers continue to test a fix with the new cars,” Battiston said in an email. “Following the success of these tests, the MBTA anticipates the new cars being put back into passenger service. The MBTA will provide an update after engineers have completed the process of collecting and analyzing the data generated through testing.”
Battiston did not provide a specific estimate of when the vehicles, launched in August, will once again enter operation, and she did not respond to follow-up inquiries seeking a timeline.
The first six-car set began running passenger trips in August following a celebratory press conference. MBTA officials pulled the cars from service in September after a door leaf opened while one of the vehicles was moving, then reintroduced them after a repair.
Noise produced by the train prompted the T to take the vehicles offline again on Nov. 18 and attempt to address the pad interface problem.
The MBTA plans to replace the entire existing Orange Line fleet with a larger set of new cars by December 2022.
The news comes as new data from MassDOT shows reliability on three of the T’s four train lines declined last year, with its busiest lines – the Red and Orange lines – seeing their second consecutive year of declining performance. Subway reliability for the Green Line improved from fiscal year 2018 by 0.5 percent to 78.1 percent in fiscal 2019. The Blue Line saw a small decline of 0.4 percent to 94.8 percent. The Orange Line saw a decline of 0.9 percent to 91.7 percent, and the Red Line saw a decline of 2 percent to 89.4 percent. Subway reliability is the percent of customers who wait no more than the scheduled time between trains, but does not necessarily capture the experiences of passengers already on trains that are delayed.
