I'm not surprised they're being dismantled. Subway cars tend to do a lot of stop and go operations and that tends to put enough physical stress on the entire vehicle that by the time they reach retirement age, they can't be refurbished on a life extension program--it'll be cheaper to just scrap them instead.
@JeffreyOrnstein7 жыл бұрын
Well, it depends. Take New York for instance. Their subway cars are built like battleships. They're built to take a beating and to run long lengths of time with limited maintenance. Some of the R-32 cars, built by Budd in 1964, are still running. Mainly because the new R-179 cars from Bombardier have not been accepted by the NYCTA for revenue service yet. Many problems were encountered on the pilot cars during their tests. Thousands of New York City subway cars have been rehabbed after 20-25 years to add another 20 years of service (mainly back in 1988-1990). But New York is an anomaly - no other system has the same operational demands as it does.
@azumatakeshi7 жыл бұрын
Certainly, replacing the vehicle and replacing it with a new car does not change the cost very much. So, disassembling old vehicles, purchasing new vehicles has increased.
@Sacto16547 жыл бұрын
Jeffrey, true in the case of the overbuilt NYC subway cars. But the Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway cars are built quite a bit lighter, and as such they will wear out after a couple of decades of hard use in stop and go subway operations. However, because of the plan to go to computer-controlled traffic monitoring and due to the need to get subway cars with lower power consumption, I expect once the bugs are worked out the R-179's will replace the aging R-32 cars on the NYC subway system.