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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.
Hair-Raising Door Glitches Send New Orange Line Trains Back to the Shop
Governor Baker, MassDOT Secretary Stephanie Pollack, and MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak celebrated the new Orange Line train at Wellington Station on August 14, 2019. Photo by Joshua Qualls, courtesy of the Governor's Press Office.

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:

https://twitter.com/8_eyed_spy/status/1175115623535452166

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

https://twitter.com/cpmotts/status/1175029662893916161

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.

Photo of Christian MilNeil
Christian has edited StreetsblogMASS since its founding in spring 2019. Before that, he was a data reporter for the Portland Press Herald in Maine. Got tips? Send them to me via Signal, the encrypted messaging app, at 207-310-0728.

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