The MTA’s board voted to buy a batch of substitute subway wheels on Wednesday, after provides have been depleted by a mysterious wheel-wear challenge on the E, F and R traces.
The $7.4 million buy will yield New York Metropolis Transit 3,000 subway wheels from Normal Metal — or sufficient to reshod 375 subway vehicles.
“While steps have been taken to mitigate [the wheel-wear], the need for wheels increased,” learn the procurement doc earlier than the MTA board. The three,000 new wheels come on high of 25,000 substitute wheels ordered from companies Normal Metal and Transit Sourcing Companies in 2023.
The metal wheels of subway vehicles sometimes final months earlier than needing to be refreshed and resurfaced — a course of referred to as “truing” that ensures prepare wheels are spherical and correctly tapered to maneuver simply over the rails.
However late final yr, the wheels of the R160 vehicles working on the E, F and R traces have been sporting out in a matter of weeks. That led to a shuffling of prepare vehicles on the subway system’s lettered traces, and brought about NYC Transit to briefly transfer a number of the system’s oldest vehicles over to the G line.
“We started looking at the rail-to-wheel adhesion rate, had a consultant come on board to give us some pointers on determining what curves in the system were causing more wear,” Crichlow instructed the board. “We looked at some of the locations, and just a small adjustment to the speed in those particular curves — where you were going around a curve, going a lot faster — slowing it down just, in some instances, five miles [per hour], reduced the wheel wear.”
“Since we made that modification, wheel wear resumed back to where it was previously,” Crichlow stated.
“We actually looked at the specific curvature of the track itself,” the subway boss stated. “We bought in a consultant that looked at where the wheel wear was actually taking place, and it was specifically at certain curves in the system.”
Crichlow stated Wednesday that metallurgical testing had decided that there have been no defects with the wheels that skilled further put on.
“We actually did a steel metallurgy evaluation of prior wheels as well as the wheels we had, and we determined that it wasn’t an actual issue with the wheels.”
“We looked for every different scenario,” he stated. “We looked under every rock, and found the culprit.”
The brand new subway wheels are anticipated to be delivered inside the first quarter of subsequent yr.
