MARTA unveils new cars, part of $646 million order

ATLANTA — The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority unveiled its newest railcars on Friday, representing a $646 million investment to replace its aging fleet of 340 cars.

The new CQ400 railcars will replace MARTA’s existing fleet of CQ310, CQ311 and CQ312 cars.

In November 2019, MARTA’s board of directors approved the $646 million deal with Swiss-based Stadler Rail, which is manufacturing them in Hungary and outfitting them in Salt Lake City. The deal for 56 four-car train sets — 224 total railcars — marked the largest procurement for either organization.

“MARTA had procured rail cars in the past, of course, three times since 1971,” MARTA General Manager and CEO Collie Greenwood said during a Friday ceremony at MARTA’s South Yard in College Park. “But this is the first time that we’ve made a wholesale commitment to change out our entire fleet. And it was time; our fleet is aging.

Friday’s ceremony featured some of the bodies of the new railcars, currently en route from fabrication in Hungary to completion in Utah.

The “CQ310s, 311s, 312s that are out there now, they’re doing yeoman’s work,” Greenwood said. “It’s an amazing system, but they’re 40 years old, many of them … and at 112,000 miles a year, when you get to 40, you’ve done like four and a half million miles. Just think about your car. If you’ve got a car with 112,000 miles a year, you better have a good mechanic.”

Greenwood said the aging fleet is to blame for many delays customers experience.

“The age of the fleet is a big contributing factor to many of the customer delays that we face,” Greenwood said. “About 65% of the delays that our trains endure are related to age — aging doors, pneumatic systems, electrical systems, propulsion systems; all of these things take effort, time and investment.”

The fleet replacement, he said, “is intended to greatly reduce those types of delays. These new trains will be safer and easier to work on from our transportation folks to our maintenance folks. But the people that will benefit most from these trains are the customers.”