Hair-Raising Door Glitches Send New Orange Line Trains Back to the Shop

Frequent riders of the MBTA’s Orange Line have noticed that the line’s brand-new vehicles haven’t been around to delight their riders for a few days.

Last night, transit advocate Chris Friend observed that the last time one of the new trains was in service was last Friday afternoon, right around the time this MBTA customer offered this review of the new equipment:

Another rider’s tweet from earlier the same day suggested that this wasn’t a one-off event:

MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo confirmed Wednesday that the new trains had been pulled from service in order to fix the automatic doors.

“As part of the early stages in any procurement process for new rail cars, vehicle engineers closely monitor a train’s performance and identify areas for improvement,” Pesaturo in an email message. “To improve the performance of the cars’ doors, personnel this week are replacing a component with a new one modified by the doors’ manufacturer. The modified door component comes at no cost to the MBTA.”

Pesaturo said that the new trains should be back in service by next Monday.