Bombardier subway cars returned to service: safe, reliable and carrying passengers again in New York

Steps taken to further enhance door operation safety.

Global mobility solution provider Bombardier Transportation announced that its fleet of subway cars for New York City Transit (NYCT) returned to passenger service on Friday, January 24, 2020, ahead of New York’s early morning rush hour. The cars had been removed from service after two isolated incidents related to the door mechanisms.

Known as the R179s, the cars were approved to return to service after Bombardier completed all work related to verifying the safety of the door systems. This work included the inspection, calibration and testing of the door locking mechanism, new software upgrades, static and dynamic testing and all necessary accompanying analytics and documentation.

Two isolated incidents – passenger safety was not at risk
Bombardier’s root-cause analysis indicated that the two incidents triggering the verification were due to a rare and very specific combination of unforeseen mechanical and operational circumstances that proved extremely difficult to replicate and were unlikely to reoccur. As safety is Bombardier’s utmost priority, the company acted swiftly and decisively to put in place corrective measures on the entire fleet.

Bombardier committed to quality, safety, customers and passengers
“Bombardier stands by the quality and integrity of its rail cars and components and wants to reassure customers and passengers that the R179 doors are completely safe,” said Elliot G. (Lee) Sander, President, Americas Region, Bombardier Transportation. “We are proud of our collaboration and partnership with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New York City Transit and we sincerely apologize for the impacts to our customer and their riders. We hope that our absolute commitment to safety, reliability and making things right, as demonstrated by our rapid and dedicated response to this issue, reassures all passengers who ride on Bombardier trains.”

Fleet exceeding contractual reliability requirements
Since the start of passenger service in January 2018, the R179 cars have accumulated over 10 million miles in operation and are performing well. The fleet is exceeding the contractual requirements for reliability amid steady improvement in the cars’ performance, as measured by NYCT. The R179s were the best performing car class for November 2019.

www.rail.bombardier.com

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