PHILADELPHIA _ Marking the start of a return to normalcy, the Philadelphia area transit authority on Thursday operated cars on its Regional Rail service that, due to defective parts that have since been fixed, caused a scheduling nightmare earlier this summer for rail commuters in the region.
Four of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority's Silverliner V cars returned to service. They were equipped with new equalizer beams that replaced cracked parts that forced 120 cars out of service for safety reasons. And more beams are on the way. SEPTA officials provided a tour Thursday of an area metalworking business where replacement beams are being cut and prepared. The authority's general manager, Jeff Knueppel, said commuters should see a return to regular service by the beginning of October.
"I think it's been a very aggressive return-to-service schedule," he said, surrounded by dozens of newly painted black beams ready to be installed on rail cars.
The company, PennFab Inc., has cut 340 of the 480 equalizer beams needed to replace the flawed parts. The 380-pound, 9-foot long beams are cut from plates of T1 high-strength steel with a white-hot plasma cutter and then are machined, tested and painted. The company has been making 60 equalizer beams a week, said PennFab's president, Michael Mabin.
"We commit the entire resources to our company, and that's what makes it get done," he said.
The beams have feet from Hyundai Rotem attached at either end with pins and then are sent to Kinkisharyo International in Jersey City, N.J., where the beams are attached to trucks. The last step, attaching the repaired trucks under the Silverliner V cars, happens at a SEPTA maintenance facility. The process, from factory to finished car, takes about 12 days, Knueppel said. He expected all 120 Silverliner cars to be back in service by mid-November.
PennFab and Kinkisharyo were selected by Hyundai Rotem and are being paid through that company, so no bidding process was required, though SEPTA provided input as to the selections, SEPTA officials said.
The process of making and installing the beams is happening much faster than usual because of the urgent need to get cars back on the rails, Mabin said. He used the schedule for obtaining steel as an example. Getting steel for this kind of manufacturing usually takes six to eight weeks, he said. This steel arrived from an Arkansas company 72 hours after an order was placed.
The weekend of July Fourth, a SEPTA inspector observed a listing train car, and the subsequent investigation revealed the cause, equalizer beams in 115 of 120 Silverliner V's had cracks in them. The beams transfer the weight of the car to the vehicle's axles, and the strain of use caused cracks to develop where foots were welded to the ends of the beams. Officials have blamed a poor design and improper welding for the flaws in cars that had only been in service for three to six years.
SEPTA pulled all 120 of the Silverliner V's almost immediately after discovering the cracks, which had the potential to cause a serious accident if allowed to get worse. But losing a third of its rail fleet has created a debacle for riders. Late and overcrowded trains have become the norm and SEPTA estimates it's lost 10 to 20 percent of its rail passengers to other modes of travel. Before the Silverliner V cars failed, SEPTA was transporting about 65,000 people per weekday by Regional Rail.
Summer's unofficial end this weekend means returning students, an end to vacations, and more train riders. SEPTA anticipates a difficult September. It is creating express bus routes to supplement trains. SEPTA also has boosted its fleet of leased cars to 48 vehicles, which should allow a return to normal schedule more than a month before all the Silverliner V cars receive new beams.
Though the exact cost of repairs per car weren't provided, Hyundai Rotem, the South Korea-based company that won the contract to construct the Silverliner V's, has so far spent $2.7 million to fix the Silverliner V's, a company spokesman said Thursday.
Even though Hyundai Rotem is absorbing the repair costs, SEPTA is still taking a big financial hit. The transportation agency lost $2.7 million in revenue in July. That month it also spent $600,000 in leased rail cars, an expense that's expected to increase to $1 million in September. The express bus service will cost $100,000 a week.
