NEWARK, N.J. — NJ Transit has exercised options to purchase an additional 200 Multilevel III commuter railcars and 12 ALP45 dual-power locomotives from Alstom, the manufacturer has announced.
The purchase, valued at approximately $1.05 billion, had been authorized by the NJ Transit board in May.
“Service reliability and safety is one of my highest priorities, and having a fully modernized rail fleet is one of the most critical ways to deliver on that commitment for our customers,” NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said in a press release. “… NJ Transit is taking a major step toward ensuring consistent, dependable service, while also putting us firmly on the path to achieving a fully modernized fleet by 2031 — a first in the agency’s history.”
The new railcars will replace single-level Bombardier Comet II, IV, and V coaches. Capable of top speeds of up to 110 mph, they will be capable of traveling to 10 to 20 times farther between critical repairs, Alstom says. They will also increase capacity by 12%.
“Alstom is proud of our long-standing partnership with NJ Transit and this new order reaffirms our commitment to deliver NJ Transit passengers with safe, state-of-the-art railcars that will get them where they are going reliably and comfortably,” Michael Keroullé, president of Alstom Americas, said in a press release. “These third-generation multi-level trains … are designed with energy efficient features, redundancy and durability to maximize the value of NJ Transit’s fleet over its lifecycle.”
The new cars will join some 174 Multilevel III Electric Multiple Unit and unpowered cars first ordered in 2018 from Bombardier, now part of Alstom; NJ Transit subsequently exercised two options for additional cars. Delivery of those cars began last year [see “NJ Transit introduces first …,” Trains.com, Oct. 30, 2024].
NJ Transit still holds an option to order 50 more of the Multilevel III cars at a later date.
The locomotives will replace some of the agency’s oldest diesels and will join 60 ALP45 locomotives built by Bombardier and Alstom already on the agency’s roster. Those units — part of the Alstom Traxx series of passenger locomotives operating in North America, Europe, and Asia — can operate on overhead electric or diesel power.
