R211 (New York City Subway car)


The R211 is a future new technology New York City Subway car to be built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries for the B Division and the Staten Island Railway. They will replace all R44 cars on the Staten Island Railway and all R46 subway cars. The order is split into three parts: R211A and R211T cars for the subway and R211S cars for the SIR. The R211Ts will employ open gangways between cars, a feature not present on current rolling stock. The base order consists of 535 cars, with options for up to 1,077 additional cars.
Planning for the R211 order started in 2011. The design process started in 2012, at which time the order was supposed to consist of cars. The cars' lengths were changed to by 2015, and the first request for proposals was solicited in July 2016. After several changes to the proposal, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a contract to Kawasaki in January 2018. The cars are expected to be delivered between 2020 and 2023. They will contain new features such as wider doors, information screens, Wi-Fi, LED-lit doorways, open gangways, and LED interior lighting.

Component orders

The MTA will invest $3.686 billion in this order. The contract is split into three parts: R211A, R211S, and R211T. The base order of 535 cars will comprise 20 R211T open gangway prototype cars, 440 R211A cars that will partially replace the 750 aging R46 cars and 75 R211S cars which are expected to replace the remaining 61-car R44 fleet on the Staten Island Railway. There will be two options for additional cars: the first for 640 cars and the second for 437 cars. Both options are designed to accommodate either standard cars or open gangway cars, depending on the test results from the 20 pilot cars. If all options are exercised, the order would total up to 1,612 cars. In total, the R211 order would provide 1,015 new cars to replace existing fleet, as well as up to 597 cars for fleet expansions following the extension of the Second Avenue Subway and the automation of the New York City Subway.
The option cars would entirely replace the older R46s by December 2024. Since the R46s are long, and the R211 cars are only, the 752 R46s would need to be replaced by 940 R211s. Any additional cars not replacing existing rolling stock will be used to expand the system's fleet. The R211Ts would also increase capacity and allow passengers to walk seamlessly from one car to the next. The delivery of the base order is scheduled to be completed by August 2023, with option 1 and option 2 completed by December 2024 and October 2025 respectively.

Features

The doors on the R211s will be wide, wider than the current MTA standard of, thereby projected to reduce station dwell time by 32%. This design change partially incorporates a design feature of the R110A prototype subway cars, which had doors that are wide. The new cars will have Wi-Fi installed, USB chargers, digital advertisements, digital customer information displays, illuminated door opening alerts, and security cameras, unlike the current New Technology Trains, which lack these features. Each car will contain an on-board computer system that could detect breakdowns in critical systems such as braking and door-opening.
It was announced in July 2016 that some of the cars would have open gangways that allowed passengers to move between cars during train movement. To test out the curve radius and gangway flex in the existing 60-foot-long cars, an R143 test train was equipped with measuring gauges and was operated on most parts of the B Division.
There will be a change in exterior appearance from previous New Technology Trains. The subway cars will have a blue front with large windows, LED headlights, and a blue strip with gold accents on the sides, similar to the new MTA Regional Bus Operations livery released in 2016. To designate the route, a large LED screen with the route bullet will be displayed at the ends of the train, a feature similar to trains with rollsigns. Also, the route's destination will be displayed above the door on the front, similar to the overhead rollsign arrangement last used on the R38 order from 1966, which displayed both the route and destination.
There will also be several changes in interior appearance. Updated FIND displays would be installed. The seating on the inside will be blue and gold, and flip seats will be installed to allow for space for wheelchairs. There will also be looped stanchions, a feature found in some R46, R62A, and R160 cars, as well as on all R179 cars.
All R211A and R211T cars will be equipped for communications-based train control, while all R211S cars will be equipped with cab signaling.
As part of an action plan to fix the subway's state of emergency of 2017, many of the R211's features are now being implemented on several R160s assigned to the E, F, and L routes.

History

Initial request for proposals

The R211 Design Master Plan was approved by the MTA in December 2011, and design planning began in December 2012. An R211 solicitation was posted in the classified section of Metro Magazine's May 9, 2013 issue, stating the proposal to acquire these cars in the near future. At the time, the order was planned to be in length, the same length as the R46 cars. Open-gangways, which would allow passengers to seamlessly walk throughout the train or units, and other alternate configurations were also initially considered for the entire order.
By the release of the MTA's 2015-2019 Capital Program in October 2015, the order specified cars, which has been the standard length of new B Division cars since the R143 order., open-gangways will be tested on ten cars. Additionally, the order was broken up into a base order of 565 R211A cars and two option orders: the first for 375 R211A cars, and a second for up to 520 R211As.
The Request for Proposal was issued on July 22, 2016 and the contract was to be put out for bidding. With the RFP, the breakup of the order was changed. The base order consisted of 285 cars, with 10 R211T cars, 75 R211S cars, and 200 R211A cars. There were still two option orders; the first option order contained 740 cars, and the second base order contained 520 cars. The RFP closed in December 2016 and the contract was expected to be awarded in early 2017, at which time the existing R46 fleet would be 42 years old, making the oldest cars years old, in. However, in January 2017, the contract was pushed back to mid-2017.
On April 24, 2017, at the New York City Transit Board Meeting, the breakdown of the order was changed once again. The base order will now include 535 cars, with 10 R211T cars, 75 R211S cars, and 450 R211A cars. The option order now consisted of between 490 and 640 R211T cars. This change was made to allow for faster deliveries of the R211 cars. The R211As, with their standard configuration, could be delivered as soon as 2020—earlier than the open-gangway R211T cars, which would not be delivered until at least 2023.

Creation of mockup and awarding of contract

In May 2017, the MTA quietly built a mockup of the R211 in a sparsely-used section of the 34th Street–Hudson Yards station's mezzanine, hidden behind a construction wall. The New York Daily News first reported on the mockup's existence in September of that year. The mockup contains features such as the open-gangway designs, digital screens showing next stops and their station layouts, multicolor lights next to the doors to indicate which set of doors will open, and a blue-and-gold-stripe paint design on its exterior. The model was completed and was made publicly accessible from November 30 to December 6, 2017 so riders could review it.
In August 2017, Bombardier Transportation, who was manufacturing the R179s at the time, was banned from bidding on the R211 contract due to various delays and problems associated with the R179 contract. Shortly afterward, it was reported that CRRC had also opted out of contention for the R211 contract, leaving Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Alstom Transport as two of the likely bidders for the contract.
On January 19, 2018, the MTA Board suggested that Kawasaki Rail Car, Inc, a subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Kobe, Japan be awarded the $3.7 billion base order for the first 535 new R211 cars. The cars are anticipated to be delivered from 2020 to 2023, with the option orders to be delivered by 2025. The R211 base order includes 20 R211T cars with open gangways; 75 R211S cars for the Staten Island Railway, to be delivered near the end of the base order; and 440 cars similar to the R143/R160 series, operating in five-car units. The cars will be assembled at Kawasaki's factories in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Yonkers, New York. The first test train is expected to be delivered in July 2020, with the production cars being delivered between 2021 and 2023. At the same time it was announced that there would be two option orders, with the first consisting of 640 cars, and the second consisting of 437 cars in 89 sets. In October 2018, it was confirmed that the second option order would consist of 89 sets, and in September 2019, it was confirmed that the 89 sets would be formed from 437 cars. The entire order will consist of 1,612 cars with both options exercised.
By January 2019, the first R211A test train was scheduled to be delivered in July 2020. Thereafter, new R211 cars would be produced and delivered at a rate of 30 to 40 cars per month. The first two test trains of ten R211T open-gangway cars would be delivered in May 2021, followed by the first 5-car set of R211S cars for the Staten Island Railway in December 2021. Under the schedule outlined in January 2019, the base order of R211 cars would begin delivery in October 2021 and continue to be delivered through mid-2023. If the two option orders of 1,077 cars were exercised, deliveries would continue through late 2025. A decision on whether to make the first option order as open-gangway or standard trainsets would need to be decided by late 2022. It was also announced in January 2019 that Kawasaki had made a full-car mock-up of the R211 fleet.