SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah Transit Authority’s FrontRunner commuter service will remove its fleet of single-level Comet passenger cars from service April 18. The 25 cars were built for Erie Lackawanna in the early 1970s and used in commuter service in New Jersey by EL and New Jersey Transit. The cars have served UTA since FrontRunner’s inception in 2008.
The 50-year-old cars have exceeded their standard life span, are becoming more difficult and costlier to maintain, and finding parts for them has become nearly impossible, the agency says. UTA says dropping the cars will result in fewer delays due to maintenance problems with the cars, and improved acceleration/deceleration due to reduced weight of trains. UTA says it will save $600,000-$800,000 per year on fuel and maintenance costs.
UTA will retain the cars as backups until new cars can be acquired and could use them again if needed to provide increased capacity for large community events or unexpected spikes in ridership.
With the current four-car train configuration, the Comet cars provide 25% of seating capacity, but the percentage of riders using the Comet cars is consistently in the single digits. During Free Fare February, fewer than 6% of riders used the Comet cars. The overwhelming majority of riders are using bilevel cars, so UTA said sidelining the Comets now should not be an issue. Current ridership on FrontRunner can be accommodated with three-car FrontRunner trains, and there is room for ridership growth before replacement cars are needed, the agency said.
To remember the cars, UTA said train hosts this week will hand out Comet car stickers on request.
Sounds like a new contract for Siemens.
I’d favor Alstom for new cars, they (or rather the recently-acquired Bombardier) built the existing BiLevel cars. May as well get more to make the sets longer if they’re working well now.
The spare parts problem needs new provisions of purchase contracts when ordering new rail cars. Some builders and parts suppliers may go out of the business of supplying what was used for building the materials. All purchase contracts for rail cars must have provisions that all blueprints and tooling will go to buyer(s) of the equipment once termination of construction is to be terminated.
Giving out the Comet Car Stickers as collectables is a touch of class. Definitely not something I would expect even from a well run communter agency.
I think the photo is mis-captioned. Morgan, UT is east of Ogden on freight-only UP tracks. My guess is that this picture is between Centerville and Farmington.