The metal wheels of a subway automotive sometimes final months earlier than needing to be refreshed and resurfaced by means of a course of referred to as “truing,” which ensures the wheels are spherical and correctly tapered to glide easily over the rails.
An E subway prepare. (Shutterstock)
“NYC Transit engineers are reviewing why wheels on some R160 cars appear to have worn down sooner than anticipated, requiring nonurgent repairs,” William Amarosa, MTA’s appearing head of subways, confirmed in an announcement. “Preliminary review is underway to determine the root cause of the apparent additional wear on those wheels, beyond what is routinely anticipated by the planned maintenance schedule.”
The fast wheel put on has resulted in a large prepare scarcity on the system’s “B division” — the lettered traces — and has brought on the MTA to shuffle round older rolling inventory to maintain up adequate service throughout the board.
Massive chunks of the territory served by the E, F and R trains — particularly the Queens Blvd. line in Queens and the Culver line in Brooklyn — function with computerized signaling programs and require automobiles geared up to speak with the fashionable sign community.
Meaning the MTA has needed to pull extra trendy trains from elsewhere within the system to complement the ailing R160s out of Jamaica.
A mysterious monitor drawback is carrying out the wheels on some New York Metropolis subway automobiles. (Evan Simko-Bednarski / New York Every day Information)
Final weekend, G prepare riders had been greeted with the acquainted orange “conversational” seating of the previous R68 prepare automobiles, roughly 60 of which had been pulled off of the B, D, and N traces to serve on the G.
In flip, the MTA despatched a dozen five-car R160 units from the G prepare to Jamaica, the place they had been configured into six 10-car trains for service on the E, F and R traces. An unknown variety of R179s from the A and C are additionally being despatched to Jamaica.
The extra trains are supposed to enable service to proceed as regular on these three traces, even though trains are being taken out of service for wheel truing extra often.
Thus far, MTA officers say, the subway swap has been successful — all B-division traces concerned have been operating with the identical variety of trains on the identical schedule this week, in line with MTA headquarters, and the one change straphangers see is a retro journey on the G.
However the reason for the quickly carrying wheels stays a thriller — and it’s anticipated to have an effect on the automobiles borrowed from different traces quickly sufficient.
The R160 trains in query rotate between the E, F and R traces, the sources mentioned, and are usually not strictly devoted to 1 route or one other.
The E, F and R trains run collectively alongside the Queens Blvd. line from the Jamaica Yard earlier than splitting to go their separate methods below Sunnyside. The F prepare travels into Manhattan by way of the newly refurbished 63rd St. tunnel. The E joins the M within the 53rd St. tunnel, and the R joins the N and the W within the sixtieth St. tunnel.
Automobiles from different traces that share parts of monitor with the E, F and R are usually not exhibiting comparable put on points, sources mentioned — which means that the issue is probably going in a piece of monitor used solely by E, F or R trains. Such sections would come with the 63rd St. tunnel, the Rutgers St. tunnel connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan, or the southern ends of the Culver and Fourth Ave. traces in Brooklyn.
An MTA spokesman mentioned the company is anticipating to seek out and repair the issue quickly. The borrowed R160s are anticipated again on the G line by the top of March, once they’ll be joined by two new R211 trains.
An R160 and a set of monitor defects had been on the heart of a weird derailment final January, when a slow-moving F prepare jumped the monitor on the Culver Line in southern Brooklyn.
There is no such thing as a indication that the wheel-wear difficulty is in any method associated to final yr’s derailment.
Initially Printed: January 8, 2025 at 5:15 PM EST
